re space research spin off in article c zxa k zoo toronto edu henry zoo toronto edu henry spencer writes in article ppm j ip access digex net prb access digex com pat writes i thought the area rule was pioneered by boeing nasa guys developed the rule but no one knew if it worked until boeing built the hardware and maybe the fb nope the decisive triumph of the area rule was when convair s yf contractually commmitted to being a mach fighter and actually found to be incapable of going supersonic in level flight was turned into the area ruled yf a which met the specs this was well before either the or the fb the flew in late and convair spent most of the first half of figuring out what went wrong and most of the second half building the first a all work is one man s work henry spencer u of toronto zoology kipling henry zoo toronto edu utzoo henry good thing i stuck in a couple of question marks up there i seem to recall somebody built or at least proposed a wasp waisetd passenger civil transport i thought it was a but maybe it was a dc sure it had a funny passenger compartment but on the other hand it seemed to save fuel i thought area rules applied even before transonic speeds just not as badly pat
