In a groundbreaking flight experiment known as the Controlled Impact Demonstration, NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, now NASA Armstrong, and the Federal Aviation Administration collaborated in 1984 to test a promising fuel additive for delaying or suppressing fire in a hypothetical aircraft crash-landing scenario. The FM-9 addition, a high molecular weight long-chain polymer, had shown in simulated impact testing that it could prevent ignition and flame propagation of the spilled gasoline when mixed with regular Jet-A fuel.
The Federal Aviation Administration provided a decommissioned Boeing 720 four-engine airliner for the project, which would culminate in the remotely piloted aircraft intentionally crashing landing into several steel structures placed on the bottom of Rogers Dry Lake at Edwards Air Force Base to breach the dam.
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