This is the cockpit of the XV-15 tilt rotor aircraft following its final flight at the   National Air and Space Museum's new Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Washington Dulles International Airport in Herndon, Virginia on September 16, 2003.  Tilt rotors are a unique type of aircraft that possess the take-off, hover and landing capabilities of a conventional helicopter with the range and speed of a turboprop aircraft.  Tilt rotor flight research began in the 1950s with the Bell XV-3 convertiplane.  NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., in partnership with the U.S. Army, developed design specifications for a new aircraft to demonstrate the viability of the tilt rotor concept.  After extensive ground, wind tunnel and simulator tests at Ames, the first of two XV-15s, built by Bell Helicopter Textron, took its maiden flight on May 3, 1977.  The success of the XV-15 has led to the development of the V-22 Osprey and the world's first civil tilt rotor, the nine-passenger Bell Agusta 609, now under development and scheduled for deliveries in 2007.  The National Air and Space Museum, comprised of the Udvar-Hazy Center, which is scheduled to open to the public on December 15, 2003, and the museum's building on the National Mall, .will be the largest air-and-space-museum complex in the world. .Credit: Ron Sachs / CNP
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