Charles Richards (NASA engineer)

Charles Richard was a design engineer, who designed the collapsible four-tube Rogallo wing used in the experimental NASA Paresev glider.[1] The wing configuration he created was used for manned hung-pilot kite-gliders and was to be found copied only with slight ornamental variation in a decade of hang gliders.[2] Richards was of the Flight Research Center's Vehicle and System Dynamics Branch. The four-beamed wing folded from the nose plate; one of the beams was the spreader beam that kept the flexible-wing's sweep.[3] Those in the following decade copying the Charles Richard wing configuration expanded kiting, hang gliding, ultralight, and trike flight.

  1. ^ Richard Hallion (1984). On the Frontier: Flight Research at Dryden, 1946-1981. Scientific and Technical Information Branch, National Aeronautics and Space Administration. p. 138. Retrieved 14 February 2021.
  2. ^ "NASA Dryden Paresev Photo Collection". Archived from the original on 2008-09-21. Retrieved 2008-10-01. NASA Dryden Paresev Photo Collection
  3. ^ Charles Richard and his key designing is noted in the 407 page online-available book On the Frontier at https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4303.pdf