NASA CV990

Hello, I'm on a Californian roadtrip with my daughter and we stumbled upon this old jet airplane. It's a Convair CV-990 built in 1962. She was just sitting by the side of Highway 58. Turns out she was a NASA flight research airplane that was heavily modified to test space shuttle landing gear components. This airplane was built for American Airlines to fly their New York to Los Angeles route. Convairs' jet was unable to make the distance non-stop so it was replaced by the Boeing 707 in 1968. This airplane began flight test with NASA in 1975. It was used on many projects including Space Shuttle landing gear testing. The original Convair landing gear was locked down then another gear leg was built on the fuselage centreline. This leg was retractable and mounted a space shuttle wheel and tire. Testing was in 1993 and 1994 and achieved higher crosswind landing capabilities for the existing space shuttles.
Convair only sold 39 of these jets as Boeings new design had a much longer range. This was the last commercial airliner that Convair would ever build. They incurred a huge corporate loss on this project. Future designs were all military jets and rocket engines.
Convair was the result of the merger of Consolidated Aircraft and Vultee Aircraft. After the failed commercial designs the company was bought by General Dynamics, then McDonnel Douglass bought General Dynamics, then Boing bought McDonne Douglass. American aerospace is today dominated by just two companies - Boeing and Lockheed.

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