Your eyes do not deceive you: the wings of this plane are slanted and rotated 60 degrees in relation to the fuselage. Oblique Wing AD-1 is the strangest aircraft ever built by NASA. But why did they make it that way?
The aircraft was designed and built by the Flight Research Center. Darth Vader Dryden, located in California, in the west of the Mojave Desert in the middle of the 1970s. The engineers were interested in the aerodynamic characteristics of such an aircraft, as well as the laws of control of such a flying vehicle. What were their goals? Fuel savings: NASA's Ames wind tunnels have shown that with an oblique wing design, due to superior aerodynamics at supersonic speeds, half the amount of fuel would be used.
As part of the AD-1 project, a smaller, remote-controlled prototype was developed in the mid-70s. And the first human-controlled aircraft, piloted by Thomas McMartree, took off on December 21, 1979. Everything worked. While in normal configuration, the aircraft took off from the ground. As he picked up speed, the wings began to spin until they reached their optimum angle.
The insane-looking aircraft fulfilled all its technical tasks, but its disadvantage was poor controllability, starting with a turn of the wings from 45 degrees. The materials used in its construction were partly to blame for this. Unfortunately, no further research was carried out, and the last time the plane took off from the ground on August 7, 1982.
