In this historical photo from the U.S. space agency, Engineer Dale Reed holds a model of the M2-F1 Lifting Body aircraft with the full scale version directly behind him in March of 1967.
In support of the M2 lifting body program in the early 1960s, Dale Reed had built a number of small lifting body shapes and drop tested them from a radio controlled mothership.
Each weekday, SPACE.com looks back at the history of spaceflight through photos (archive).