10 May 1967 Astronaut Steve Austin crashed his experimental aircraft in the California desert sustaining catastrophic injuries. Injuries that required advanced science to repair him, rebuild him, into the worlds first bionic man. Enough with the silliness. On 10 May 1967 the wingless NASA research aircraft M2-F2 Lifting Body piloted by Bruce Peterson crashed during testing. Peterson suffered a fractured skull, facial injuries and lost an eye due to secondary infection in the hospital.
Peterson was commissioned as a U.S. Marine Corps 2nd LT in 1954 and left the Marines in 1960 to become a NASA aeronautical engineer and later a test pilot.
(Peterson with Star Trek actor James Doohan talking about the M2-D2 Lifting Body in 1967) During the 16th glide flight of the M2-F2 Lifting Body a landing accident caused the aircraft to cartwheel over and over destroying the craft and almost killing Peterson. This is the clip seen in the intro to the 1973 movie The Six Million Dollar Man and its spinoff TV series. Peterson also flew 17 flights of the M2-F1, two other M2-F2 flights and one HL-10 Lifting Body flight. Over his flight career he logged over 6,000 flight hours in 68 different aircraft such as the Douglas F5D-1 Skylancer, North American F-100 Super Sabre, Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark, Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star Variable Stability Trainer and many other aircraft. Bruce Peterson, passed 1 May 2006 at the age of 72 after a long illness.
