DC Wings - Test Flights - Beyond the Limits (1998)

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DC Wings - Test Flights - Beyond the Limits (1998)

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Go behind-the-scenes at Dryden Flight Research Center, NASA's remote outpost where the world's top experimental flight researchers and pilots develop cutting-edge technology and flight test the world's most advanced aircraft. Here you’ll get the very rare opportunity to experience the power of top aircraft like the X-1, the X-15, the X-33, the X-43 and many more. This is the story of high risk and engineering genius, pushing the envelope to fly higher and faster. Like early explorers, these aeronautical adventurers travel where no one has gone before and share a passion to push the limits of speed, sometimes even risking death to improve and expand our horizons. This extraordinary production combines unprecedented camera access with never-before-seen test flight footage, and state of the art computer graphics.

Part 1: Flights of Discovery
Witness the cutting edge of space research. Take a front row seat on the runway at Dryden Flight Research Center as pilots attempt to flight test the X-33's radical new "linear aerospike" rocket engine on the world's highest and fastest aircraft, the SR-71 Blacbird. It's highly explosive ! It's high risk ! It's high adventure ! Plus meet the early pioneers whose heroic flights blazed the trail for today's modern day explorers by taking on the challenges of the X-15 and the Lifting Body, the prototype for a wingless aircraft that could fly into space and back.

Part 2: The Need for Speed
Follow the latest quest for speed - to make "supersonic" speed practical, and "hypersonic" speed possible. Join us as we follow the latest experiments for the next generation of a supersonic passenger jet (High-Speed Civil Transport), and visit researchers who are working on an even more advanced high-speed concept - the Hyper X, designed to push hypersonic flight into the fiery inferno of Mach 8 … and beyound. This is the story of courage, skill and determination which drove the early pioneers to fly faster than the speed of sound, and a celebration of the lives lost in solving the operational problems of the world's fastest fighter jets to make the SR-71 possible.

Part 3: The New Frontier
Computers have opened up a whole new dimension of flight allowing aircraft to perform flips, spins and dog-fight maneuvers impossible for a pilot to physically control. Share the drama of developing the Fly-by-Wire technology that has allowed the F-16, F-18, the Stealth Fighter and the B-2 Bomber to fly. Meet the researchers who helped prevent a possible catastrophe with the space shuttle. From the radical looking X-29 to the amazing thrust vectoring X-31, see how computer technology can improve safety and deliver undreamed of performance … just one more challenge on the cutting-edge of flight research.

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DC Wings - Test Flights - Beyond the Limits (1998)

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DC Wings - Test Flights - Beyond the Limits (1998)

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DC Wings - Test Flights - Beyond the Limits (1998)

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