Women in Flight Research at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center from 1946 to 1995 (Monographs in Aerospace History #6), NACA Muroc Flight Test Unit, Supersonic Flight, Data Before Digital Computers

This print replica reproduction of an excellent NASA document reviews the work of women in flight research at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center during the exciting years of supersonic and space research.

Women have been involved with flight research at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center since its inception as the site for flight research on advanced, high-speed aircraft. The first research involved transonic aircraft, including the X-I, the first piloted aircraft to exceed the speed of sound (exceed a Mach number of 1.0). The working environment for the women in the engineering field was influenced by several factors. One factor was the growth of Dryden from 13 or 14 employees (2 of them women) at the end of 19461 to the December 1995 size of approximately 450 employees. Other factors include the effect of World War II on the availability of engineers and the advent of digital computers. This monograph describes the working and living environment for the women during the late 1940s and early 1950s. The number of women engineers, their work and the airplanes they worked on from 1960 to December 1995 are also discussed. In order to better understand the labor intensive data gathering and analysis procedures before the age of digital computers, typical instrumentation used on the X-series aircraft from the X-I through the X-15 is shown. The data reduction technique to obtain the Mach number position error curve for the X-I aircraft, used to document the historic first flight to exceed the speed of sound, is discussed. A Mach number and altitude plot from an X-15 flight is also shown. The author, employed at Dryden since 1963, used available records along with memory to document the number of women in engineering at Dryden, comment about observed trends, and make personal observations.