From: www.wired.com

Flight test programs at Edwards Air Force Base and NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center usually are off-limits to outsiders, but we got a peek at one of its coolest programs, the X-48B, when the Air Force recently threw open the gates for an open house.

The X-48B is the latest in a long line of experimental X-planes, and the joint venture between NASA and Boeing’s Phantom Works is unlike most that came before. The blended wing body aircraft isn’t some sort of sierra hotel fighter jet, it doesn’t have a pilot on board and it’s not even full size. Despite being an unmanned scale model, the test pilots who fly it say all the challenges of experimental flight are still there.

“We try to fly very precise data points,” Boeing’s Dan Wells, one of three test pilots flying the X-48B, told Wired.com. “It still requires precision flying, you just don’t have those motion cues. You still feel like you worked hard when you fly it.”

Sitting in a cockpit on the ground, Wells says flying the X-48B isn’t much different than flying a real airplane. The 8.5 percent scale plane has a camera in the nose, and the veteran Army test pilot has the same stick, rudder pedals and throttle controls he would use in a normal airplane.