An aeronautical engineer, Rogallo spent his entire career at NASA, starting with its predecessor, NACA (the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics), in 1936. But he couldn’t get them interested in his extracurricular project: he was fascinated by a lightweight “flexible wing” concept he developed in 1948.
His wife made a prototype using a flowered chintz curtain from their kitchen: a triangular kite-like wing that Rogallo thought could lead to new transportation concepts. It was so kite-like, in fact, that Rogallo and his wife were awarded two patents for it as a kite. But once the space race with the Russians started, NASA got interested: newly dubbed the “parawing,” NASA thought it could be used to glide spacecraft back to Earth, and Wernher von Braun asked Rogallo for a personal briefing.
Alas, NASA was in too much of a hurry, and opted to use parachutes to return space capsules safely. But that wasn’t the end: the parawing, by then dubbed the “Rogallo Wing”, was adopted by hobbyists — as hang gliders. David Glover, past president of the U.S. Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association, calls Rogallo “the father of hang gliding” and notes that top-level members of the association are still called “Rogallo members”.
In the 1950s, Rogallo donated his patent rights to the federal government to ensure it was developed to its fullest. He retired from NASA in 1962 and settled near Kitty Hawk, N.C., because that’s where the Wright Brothers first flew — and then took up hang gliding himself, flying regularly until his 80th birthday. He died September 1 at home, at 97.