The exhibition "GPS: A New Constellation" is now on permanent display in "Beyond The Limits".

If there has been one development that has most affected flight technology since the opening of the Museum in 1976, it has been the application of digital computer to flight. That phenomenon is the subject of the Beyond the Limits gallery.

Designing, building, and flying aircraft have always been activities that required calculations and data collecting. In the 1930s, aeronautical labs and companies employed dozens of "computers"--people whose job it was to digest and analyze larges quantities of wind tunnel data, using pencil and paper, and perhaps a mechanical desk calculator. Meanwhile, in the cockpit, pilots carried in their pockets "flight computers"-- specialized slide rules that helped them navigate over long distances.

By the end of the 1940s, the word computer meant a machine that could do those calculations. The first computers, built with vacuum tubes, were heavy, expensive, and unreliable. Nonetheless aerospace companies were among the first to purchase and use these machines. Despite the limits of these machines, areospace engineers felt that designing new-generation jet-powered planes and rockets demanded them. Computers were crucial in getting these crafts off the drawing board but were much too bulky to be carried on board.

All that changed in the late 1950s, with the invention of the integrated circuit, familiar to us all today as the silicon "chip." A single chip could replace racks of fragile and heavy tubes. Now it was possible to bring computing power into the air as well as to use it on the ground. The first application of chips was in the guidance system of the Minuteman ballistic missile. It was followed shortly by the on-board guidance and control computer for the Apollo space craft that took men to the Moon.

With Minuteman and Apollo as pioneers, chips became faster, more rugged, and cheaper. Today, consumers can buy a pocket computer far more powerful than the ones that took men to the Moon in 1969.

For the aerospace community, the computer is a tool, no more and no less. The gallery focuses not on the computers themselves but on the aerospace applications of computers, illustrating how these have transformed the everyday jobs of pilots, engineers, astronauts, and scientist. In the past, airplanes or spacecraft designer relied on calculating instruments to help them create light, safe, and fast machines. Although the basics have not changed, Computer-Aided-Design /Computer-Assisted-Manufacture (CAD/CAM) has transformed the design process in recent years. Air traffic controllers and navigators also depend on computer technology every day. The visitor can manipulate work stations to experience these computer uses.

See two experimental NASA aircraft-- the HiMAT, and a full scale model of the Grumman X-29. The HiMAT (Highly Maneuverable Aircraft Technology) is an important project in pioneering technology for future military aircraft. It incorporates a number of advanced design features for far greater maneuverability than is currently attainable.

An unconventional machine with a swept-forward wing, the X-29 was deliberately designed to be unstable in order to enhance the aircrafts maneuverability. As a result, no human pilot can respond quickly enough to maintain control of the airplane during maneuvers. An advanced flight control computer is used to create artifical stability through small control inputs.

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Other interesting exhibits, such as a full-size Space Shuttle cockpit simulator and a theater devoted to the use of computer for training pilots and astronauts, illustrate the vital role computer play in aerospace technology every day.

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