Editing NASA M2-F1 (section)

==Development==
The lifting-body concept originated in the mid-1950s at the [[National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics]]' [[Ames Aeronautical Laboratory]], [[Mountain View, Santa Clara County, California|Mountain View, California]]. By February 1962, a series of possible shapes had been developed, and [[R. Dale Reed]] was working to gain support for a research vehicle.

The construction of the M2-F1 was a joint effort by Dryden and a local glider manufacturer, the [[Briegleb Glider Company]]. The budget was US$30,000. NASA craftsmen and engineers built the tubular steel interior frame. Its mahogany plywood shell was handmade by Gus Briegleb and company. Ernie Lowder, a NASA craftsman who had worked on [[Howard Hughes]]'s [[Hughes H-4 Hercules|H-4 Hercules]] ("Spruce Goose"), was assigned to help Briegleb.

Final assembly of the remaining components (including aluminum tail surfaces, pushrod controls, and landing gear from a [[Cessna 150]], later replaced by [[Cessna 180]] landing gear<ref name="Jenkins">{{cite book|last=Jenkins|first=Dennis R.|year=2001|title=Space Shuttle: The History of the National Space Transportation System|edition=3rd|publisher=Voyageur Press|isbn=0-9633974-5-1|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/spaceshuttlehist0000jenk}}</ref>) was done at the NASA facility.

The wingless, lifting-body aircraft design was initially conceived as a means of landing a spacecraft horizontally after atmospheric reentry. The absence of wings would make the extreme heat of reentry less damaging to the vehicle. Rather than using a ballistic reentry trajectory like a [[Apollo command and service module#Command_module_(CM)|Command Module]], very limited in maneuvering range, a lifting-body vehicle had a [[landing footprint]] of the size of [[California]].<!--dead link<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20080304051136/http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Movie/60th_Anniversary/HTML/EM-0093-14.html  Dryden's 60 Years of Flight Research: The Lifting Body Era].</ref>-->