Early Aviation NEW
Class | Registration opens 12/6/2026 9:00 AM EDT
From the late 1910's to the late 1940's, we witnessed an evolution in flying machines from the wood, wire and cloth of the Wright Brothers to the rocket-powered, bullet-shaped supersonic aircraft of Chuck Yeager. Several technology breakthroughs in aeronautics made all of this possible. This class will examine those breakthroughs—the science and engineering behind the technology, the aircraft which employed those breakthroughs and the individuals involved in the discovery. There will be particular emphasis on the advances made during the two World Wars.
Thomas Benson
 | Tom Benson is a Retired Senior Research Engineer from the NASA Glenn Research Center. He retired in 2015 after more than 35 years of service at NASA Glenn. For the first 20 years, he specialized in computer modeling of supersonic and hypersonic flows in propulsion systems. The last 15 years were mainly devoted to educational outreach.
Tom earned a Bachelor and Master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from The Ohio State University in 1971. He then spent four years in the Air Force at Wright Patterson AFB doing high speed inlet testing and installed engine performance calculations for the F-5E, YF-16, YF-17, and B1-A. He returned to graduate school at OSU and passed the qualifiers for a PhD before coming to work at NASA in 1978. He is a board member of the Cleveland Astronomical Society, where he has given talks on the Apollo Moon Program, the International Space Station, and NASA Science Missions. |