Even more historic NASA flight footage is up on YouTube

2025-04-27 20:55:30admin

NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in California has a trove of old flight footage -- like 1940s old.

The videos have always been available but hidden away on the Edwards, California-based center's website. More recently a lot more of the historic videos, like test flights from the 1970s and into the '90s and early 2000s, have been moved onto YouTube.

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In just the past few days, the center's YouTube page has been filling up fast. Armstrong's social media manager Rebecca Richardson said in a phone call Wednesday that older legacy videos are being migrated to YouTube in a big push to put the archival footage on a more searchable and accessible platform.

So far just over 300 videos have been migrated over since earlier this year. The center, which was previously named Dryden before changing to Armstrong in 2014, has 500 videos total that it eventually will house on its YouTube page and the NASA website.

Richardson said some videos are really short with just a few seconds of footage and pretty old so the quality isn't perfect. But that makes it almost better.

"We have a following who love the older content," she said.

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Like these clips from 1947 showing the initial flight of the D-558-I aircraft.

Or this 1962 home video of an M2-F1 "flying bathtub" model filmed by now-deceased NASA engineer Dale Reed.

Here's a test drop of the plane which led to wingless flying vehicles that helped with Space Shuttles research.

Other popular videos show NASA's X-planes, like the one from the late 1950s at the top of this page showing the X-1, flight tests, and anything related to life-saving technology, Richardson said.

Here's a 1976 landing test of the Space Shuttle Enterprise, which never flew in space.

"Anybody that’s interested in airplanes is fascinated by all of it," she said.

Take a look through the historic playlists and watch history take off.

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