The NASA Paresev ("Paraglider Research Vehicle") was an experimental

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

glider aircraft based upon the

kite A kite is a tethered heavier than air flight, heavier-than-air or lighter-than-air craft with wing surfaces that react against the air to create Lift (force), lift and Drag (physics), drag forces. A kite consists of wings, tethers and anchors. ...

parachute A parachute is a device used to slow the motion of an object through an atmosphere by creating drag or, in a ram-air parachute, aerodynamic lift. A major application is to support people, for recreation or as a safety device for aviators, who ...

studies by NASA engineer

Francis Rogallo Francis Melvin Rogallo (January 27, 1912 – September 1, 2009) was an American aeronautical engineer inventor born in Sanger, California, U.S. Together with his wife, he is credited with the invention of the Rogallo wing, or "flexible wi ...

. Between 1961 and 1965 the ability of the

Rogallo wing The Rogallo wing is a flexible type of wing. In 1948, Francis Rogallo, a NASA engineer, and his wife Gertrude Rogallo, invented a self-inflating flexible wing they called the Parawing, also known after them as the "Rogallo Wing" and flexible wing ...

(also called "Parawing") to descend a payload such as the

Gemini Gemini may refer to: Space * Gemini (constellation), one of the constellations of the zodiac ** Gemini in Chinese astronomy * Project Gemini, the second U.S. crewed spaceflight program * Gemini Observatory, consisting of telescopes in the Northern ...

space capsule safely from high altitude to ground was studied.Aviation News article
The Paresev was a test vehicle used to learn how to control this parachute-wing for a safe landing at a normal

airfield An aerodrome (Commonwealth English) or airdrome (American English) is a location from which aircraft flight operations take place, regardless of whether they involve air cargo, passengers, or neither, and regardless of whether it is for publ ...

. Publicity on the Paresev and the Ryan XV-8 "Flying Jeep" aircraft inspired hobbyists to adapt Rogallo's flexible wing airfoil onto elementary

hang gliders Hang gliding is an air sport or recreational activity in which a pilot flies a light, non-motorised foot-launched heavier-than-air aircraft called a hang glider. Most modern hang gliders are made of an aluminium alloy or composite frame covered ...

leading to the most successful hang glider configuration in history.

Development

NASA experimented with the flexible Rogallo wing, which they renamed the Parawing, in order to evaluate it as a recovery system for the

space capsule A space capsule is an often-crewed spacecraft that uses a blunt-body reentry capsule to reenter the Earth's atmosphere without wings. Capsules are distinguished from other satellites primarily by the ability to survive reentry and return a payl ...

s and recovery of used Saturn

rocket stage A multistage rocket or step rocket is a launch vehicle that uses two or more rocket ''stages'', each of which contains its own engines and propellant. A ''tandem'' or ''serial'' stage is mounted on top of another stage; a ''parallel'' stage is ...

s. Under a directive by

Paul Bikle Paul F. Bikle (5 June 1916 – 19 January 1991) was director of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Dryden Flight Research Facility from 1959 until 1971, and author of more than 40 technical publications. He was associat ...

, NASA engineer Charles Richard in 1961–1962 designed the collapsible four-tube Rogallo wing used in the Paresev. The Paresev series included wing configurations that were tightly foldable from the nose plate for easy transport, using initially a cloth sail and later one of

Dacron Polyethylene terephthalate (or poly(ethylene terephthalate), PET, PETE, or the obsolete PETP or PET-P), is the most common thermoplastic polymer resin of the polyester family and is used in fibres for clothing, containers for liquids and foods ...

. Data developed by NASA in the late 1950s fed both the Charles Richard team and a different

Ryan Aeronautical The Ryan Aeronautical Company was founded by T. Claude Ryan in San Diego, California, in 1934. It became part of Teledyne in 1969, and of Northrop Grumman when the latter company purchased Ryan in 1999. Ryan built several historically and tech ...

team that produced the

Fleep ''Fleep'' is a graphic novel by Jason Shiga. It was originally published in comic strip format in ''AsianWeek'' in 2002. It was later collected and published by Sparkplug Comic Books. Synopsis Jimmy Yee awakens to find himself trapped in a telep ...

. The Paresev used a cantilevered cross-beam but did not use a kingpost. Note that the "paraglider" involved in the early 1960s experiments is a different airfoil concept used today in

paragliding Paragliding is the recreational and competitive adventure sport of flying paragliders: lightweight, free-flying, foot-launched glider aircraft with no rigid primary structure. The pilot sits in a harness or lies supine in a cocoon-like 'po ...

Design and construction

The Paresev 1A and 1B were unpowered; the "fuselage" was an open framework fabricated of welded SAE

4130 steel 41xx steel is a family of SAE steel grades, as specified by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). Alloying elements include chromium and molybdenum, and as a result these materials are often informally referred to as chromoly steel (common ...

tubing, called a "space frame". The keel and leading edges of the wing were constructed of aluminium tubing. The leading edge sweepback angle was held at 50 degrees by a rigid spreader bar. Additional wing structure fabricated from steel tubing ensured structural integrity. The basic vehicle was slightly more than high from the top of the paraglider's wing to the ground, while the length of the center keel was . Total weight was about On August 24, 1962, seven weeks after the project was initiated, the team rolled out the Paresev 1.

Control

The Paresev was controlled by moving the tensionally hung pilot's and fuselage's mass relative to the position of the wing. This mass-shifting was effected by tilting the wing from side to side and fore and aft by using a control stick in front of the pilot that descended from the wing above. Another version translated the same weight-shift control via cables. As the Paresev was towed in a kite mode, it usually rose from the ground at about and had a maximum air speed of about . The Paresev control pendulum weight-shift control system was presaged by a published patent, an early use of the hung pilot behind a cable-stayed triangle control bar in 1908 in the territory of Breslau, and then also by the "control wing" of George Spratt in the 1920s.

Variants

*Paresev 1 - first flight on January 25, 1962, crashed on March 14, 1962. Frame fitted with a linen membrane wing and the control stick coming from overhead in front of the pilot's seat. *Paresev 1A - first flight May 18, 1962, last flight was on June 28, 1962.Paresev index: Paresev Photo Gallery Contact Sheet
/ref> Used a rebuilt frame from the Paresev 1, but had a control stick and a Dacron membrane wing. *Paresev 1B - first flight on July 27, 1962. Last flight on Feb 20, 1963. *Paresev 1C - first flight March 4, 1963. Last flight on April 14, 1964. It had a modified frame with a half-scale version of an inflatable parawing. Paresev flight log (NOTE – This log is incomplete*):

* The Paresev vehicle was flown 341 times. Thompson made numerous ground-tow flights and claimed about 60 air-tow flights. Peterson claimed 228 flights (ground and air tows). Grissom made two flights. Champine made four flights. Kleuver made at least eight flights. It is unknown how many times Armstrong, Hetzel, and Slayton flew.

Operational history

The Paresev completed nearly 350 flights during a research program that ran from 1962 until 1964. Using the fully flexible parawing or the tube-stiffened paraglider of the Paresev 1A, 1B, 1C as an alternate to spacecraft recovery was deemed too unreliable upon unfolding so round

s for water landings were used instead. The Paresev and other flexible-wing projects such as the

Ryan XV-8 The Ryan XV-8 Flexible Wing Aerial Utility Vehicle (nicknamed Fleep, short for "Flying Jeep") was an improved version of the Flex-Wing. Both aircraft were built by Ryan Aeronautical Company in collaboration with NASA for the United States Air F ...

stopped being funded by NASA on 1965. Although Rogallo wrote about, modeled, and spoke about recreational applications including hang gliding, NASA was not in the business of applying Rogallo's family of airfoils to personal aircraft such as kites, hang gliders, and powered light aircraft. The Paresev was transferred to the Smithsonian

National Air and Space Museum The National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, also called the Air and Space Museum, is a museum in Washington, D.C., in the United States. Established in 1946 as the National Air Museum, it opened its main building on the Nat ...

located in

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

for display.

Test pilots

Milton Orville Thompson Milton Orville Thompson (May 4, 1926 – August 6, 1993), ( Lt Cmdr, USNR), better known as Milt Thompson, was an American naval officer, aviator, engineer, and NASA research pilot. He was one of twelve pilots who flew the North American X- ...

, NASA FRC *Robert Apgar Champine, NASA LRC * Neil A. Armstrong, NASA FRC *

Bruce A. Peterson Bruce A. Peterson (May 23, 1933 – May 1, 2006) was an American aeronautical engineer, and test pilot for NASA. Biography Early life and education Peterson was born on May 23, 1933. A native of Washburn, North Dakota, he attended the Univer ...

, NASA FRCBruce Peterson
/ref> *Charles Hetzel, North American Aviation *Maj. Emil "Jack" Kluever, U.S. Army * Donald K. "Deke" Slayton, NASA MSC * Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, NASA MSC

Tow aircraft

Piper PA-18 The Piper PA-18 Super Cub is a two-seat, single-engine monoplane. Introduced in 1949 by Piper Aircraft, it was developed from the PA-11 Cub Special, and traces its lineage back through the J-3 Cub to the Taylor E-2 Cub of the 1930s. In close ...

Super Cub (N-68P) *Cessna

O-1 Bird Dog The Cessna L-19/O-1 Bird Dog is a liaison and observation aircraft. It was the first all-metal fixed-wing aircraft ordered for and by the United States Army following the Army Air Forces' separation from it in 1947. The Bird Dog had a lengthy ...

(50-1675) * Stearman (N69056) *

Boeing The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product ...

HC-1A helicopter (58-5515)

Specifications

References

External links

{{commons category, NASA Paresev
NASA Dryden Paresev Photo Collection
*Paresev photo collection by NASA

* Link to videos of Paresev in flight
Paresev Flight Log, compiled by Peter W. Merlin, NASA History DepartmentEVALUATION OF TWO UNPOWERED MANNED PARAGLIDERS
* Hewes, Donald E.: Free-Flight Investigation of Radio-Controlled Models With Parawings. NASA TN D-927, 1961

* 1960, Augus

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20090815013853/http://members.lycos.nl/joujelle/nasa%20gliders.htm members 1960s United States experimental aircraft Glider aircraft Tailless delta-wing aircraft NASA aircraft Aircraft manufactured in the United States Parafoils