Expanding the Envelope: Flight Research at NACA and NASA

by Michael H. Gorn

Expanding the Envelope is the first book to explore the full panorama of flight research history, from the earliest attempts by such nineteenth century practitioners as England's Sir George Cayley, who tested his kites and gliders by subjecting them to experimental flight, to the cutting-edge aeronautical research conducted by the NACA and NASA.

Michael H. Gorn explores the vital human aspect of the history of flight research, including such well-known figures as James H. Doolittle, Chuck Yeager, and A. Scott Crossfield, as well as the less heralded engineers, pilots, and scientists who also had the "Right Stuff." While the individuals in the cockpit often receive the lion's share of the public's attention, Expanding the Envelope shows flight research to be a collaborative engineering activity, one in which the pilot participates as just one of many team members.

Here is more than a century of flight research, from well before the creation of NACA to its rapid transformation under NASA. Gorn gives a behind the scenes look at the development of groundbreaking vehicles such as the X-1, the D-558, and the X-15, which demonstrated manned flight at speeds up to Mach 6.7 and as high as the edge of space.

Genres: Aviation

488 pages, Hardcover

First published August 13, 2001

About the author

Hello, I’m Michael Gorn, and I’m a native Californian living in the Los Angeles area with my wife, Christine. My writing specialty is the history of aeronautics and spaceflight, which I’ve been pursuing for nearly 40 years.

I’ve published a number of books in the field. My latest, due out in September 2018, is Spacecraft: 100 Iconic Rockets, Shuttles, and Satellites that Put Us in Space (Quarto Publishing Group, 2018).

Spacecraft is timed to commemorate two of the most historic events of the space age: the 60th anniversary of the founding of NASA in 2018, and in 2019, the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11—the first landing by human beings on the Moon. Illustrated with over 300 beautiful, original artworks by my collaborator Giuseppe de Chiara of Naples, Italy, Spacecraft is an oversize, lavishly illustrated book that depicts the world’s great space vehicles, from Sputnik 1 in 1958 to the massive James Webb Space Telescope in 2020. I contributed concise and, I hope, enlightening historical profiles that accompany the images.

Some of my previous books include NASA: The Complete Illustrated History (Merrell Publishers, 2005, revised 2008) and Expanding the Envelope: Flight Research at NACA and NASA (The University Press of Kentucky, 2001). I also wrote The Universal Man: Theodore von Karman’s Life in Aeronautics (Smithsonian, 1992), Superstructures in Space: From Satellites to Space Stations, A Guide to What’s Out There (Merrell Publishers, 2008), and I was a contributing author for Spyplanes: The Illustrated Guide to Manned Reconnaissance and Surveillance Aircraft from World War I to Today (Quarto Publishing Group, 2016).

I enjoyed a long and fruitful career as a historian in the U.S. civil service. I served for nearly thirty years with the Air Force, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, becoming the Chief Historian of the NASA Dryden (now Armstrong) Flight Research Center, at Edwards Air Force Base, California.

I’ve been fortunate to receive several awards for my work, most notably the Gardner-Lasser Aerospace History Literature Award for Expanding the Envelope, presented by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. I also received the Alfred V. Verville Fellowship from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum and was selected for the Fellowship in Aerospace History by the American Historical Association.

I have a strong attachment to Southern California, where I grew up (in the San Fernando Valley, a suburb of L.A.) and attended the University of Southern California, where I earned a doctorate in history. Aside from the pleasures of writing about aeronautics and spaceflight, I’ve had a lifelong passion for morning walks, amateur (very amateur!) gardening, and for wood carving birds and other wildlife.