William H. Dana

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William H. Dana
1960 Dyna-Soar Group 1
Missions	X-15 Flight 174, X-15 Flight 197

William Harvey Dana (November 3, 1930 – May 6, 2014) was an American

program.

On two separate flights, Dana flew the X-15 to an altitude above 50 miles, thereby qualifying as an astronaut according to the United States definition of the boundary of space; however, neither flight exceeded the Kármán line, the internationally accepted boundary of 100 kilometers (62 miles).

Early life and education

Dana was born in

.

Dana married his wife Judi in 1962, and they had four children.

Test pilot and astronaut career

From 1960 through 1962 he was a pilot astronaut in the U.S. Air Force

program. That program was canceled before the vehicle flew, but Dana later tested several other lifting-body space vehicle projects. He made one of the earliest flights in the plywood M2-F1, and flew the HL-10, the M2-F3, and the X-24B. He made the highest-ever flight in a lifting body, to 90,303 feet, in the HL-10. He also made the final powered flight of a lifting body, in the X-24B (1975).

Dana began as an

, although he was not formally recognized as an astronaut until 2005. He was the pilot on the final (199th) flight of the 10-year program.

In the late 1960s and in the 1970s, Dana was a project pilot on the manned

missions.

NASA career

Dana was Chief Engineer at NASA's

aircraft, as well as many others.

Before his assignment as Chief Engineer, he was Assistant Chief of the Flight Operations Division, a position he assumed after serving since 1986 as Chief Pilot. He was also a project pilot on the F-15 HIDEC (Highly Integrated Digital Electronic Control) research program, and a co-project pilot on the F-18 Hornet High Angle of Attack research program.

As a research pilot, Dana was involved in some of the most significant aeronautical programs carried out at Dryden. For his service as a flight research pilot, he received NASA Distinguished Service Medal in 1997. In 2000 he was awarded the Milton O. Thompson Lifetime Achievement Award by the Dryden Flight Research Center.

Death

Dana died at age 83 in Phoenix, Arizona, on May 6, 2014, of Parkinson's disease.^[2][3]

Honors

For his contributions to the lifting body program, Dana received the NASA Exceptional Service Medal. In 1976 he received the Haley Space Flight Award from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) for his research work on the M2-F3 lifting body control systems.

A member of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots, Dana is the author of several technical papers. In 1993, he was inducted into the Aerospace Walk of Honor.

Astronaut wings

During the X-15 program, eight pilots flew above 264,000 feet or 50 miles, thereby qualifying as astronauts according to the United States definition of the space border. Of these pilots, five were active-duty Air Force personnel who were awarded military

References

Bibliography

• Thompson, Milton O. (1992). At The Edge Of Space: The X-15 Flight Program, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington and London.
  ISBN 1-56098-107-5

External links

• NASA Dryden Biographies, Former Pilots: William H. Dana at NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center (Archived September 20, 2015, at the Wayback Machine)
• William Harvey 'Bill' Dana at Astronautix.com
• William Harvey "Bill" Dana at Spacefacts.de