NASA departing the crash-test business

The general aviation and transport aircraft crashworthiness program that NASA has been operating since the 1970s will discontinue several planned and ongoing projects before closing in September, the victim of budget cuts. The facility, located at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., is the site for crashworthiness research of both aluminum and composite airframes. Many an airplane, including a Learfan and Beech Starship, has been virtually destroyed after being dropped from a giant gantry to help establish crashworthiness and survivability baseline data.
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