The “heavy” lifting body test program actually began in 1966, but the first powered flight of the HL-10 happened on October 23, 1968. The program was flown out of NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Facility at Edwards Air Force Base, and is briefly showcased here. Here’s a contact sheet of medium-resolution photos from the program.
I found it interesting that one of the HL-10 test pilots was Bill Dana, whom I mentioned on this blog a few days ago.
I also found the Wikipedia page on the program to be interesting, too, particularly the “What Might Have Been” section. Project engineer R. Dale Reed proposed
to heavily modify the HL-10 at the Flight Research Center with the addition of an ablative heat shield, reaction controls, and other additional subsystems needed for manned spaceflight. The now space-rated vehicle would have then flown on the Apollo-Saturn V launch vehicle in the same space which originally held the Lunar Module. Once in earth orbit, it was planned that a robotic extraction arm would remove the vehicle from the rocket’s third stage and place it adjacent to the manned Apollo CSM spacecraft. One of the astronauts, who would be trained to fly the vehicle, would then spacewalk from the Apollo and board the lifting body to perform a pre-reentry check on its systems.
It was planned that there would be two flights in this program. In the first, the lifting body pilot would return to the Apollo and send the HL-10 back to earth unmanned. If this flight was successful, on the next launch, he would then pilot the HL-10 back to earth for a planned landing at Edwards AFB.
That would’ve been cool.
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