A collection of hundreds of digitized video clips of unique research aircraft from the 1940s until this past decade is making its way to YouTube. The collection contains footage of many of the vehicles flown at NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center, previously known as the Dryden Flight Research Center, at Edwards, California. It only takes a few minutes to get sucked into this visual history of modern aviation and spaceflight. Every few days more video resource materials are being uploaded to YouTube by the Center, and the result is a superb educational tool. For decades much of this footage was limited to access by the public via still images in World Book Encyclopedia, and now anyone can observe and compare NASA’s aerial test vehicles at their own pace.
Want to revisit the liftoff and landing of the space shuttle Columbia? Check it out here from April 1981. How about flights of the Enterprise, Endeavour, and Discovery, and a beautiful landing of the Atlantis? Much footage has been made available for everyone in the past few years by NASA, but not in such a complete collection as is happening this summer. NASA has even uploaded footage of a visit by Nichelle Nichols to the Flight Research Center’s page, as well as a 1969 training flight of the lunar landing vehicle by the Center’s namesake, Neil Armstrong.
You’ll find a full history of experimental flight–views of the rocket-powered supersonic research aircraft X-1 from the 1940s and 1950s to Boeing’s present day flying wing, the X-48. Some of the videos are mere curiosities, like painting the first Orion crew module and various earthbound Mars Rover tests.
