NASA TP PRELIMINARY AERODYNAMIC DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS FOR ADVANCED LAMINAR FLOW AIRCRAFT CONFIGURATIONS can be found from the following link. I found it quite interesting.

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19880014362_1988014362.pdf

NASA has nice photo collection. If you like the looks of the Proteus (in my opinion it is one of the most beautiful aircraft ever done), have a look:
http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/gallery/photo/Proteus/index.html

Nearly everyone on planet Earth has heard of the organization called NASA.  They may not know that NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration, but they do know that it runs the world’s most successful space program.  Though founded in 1958, NASA was immortalized in 1969, when it sent a man to the surface of the moon.  The event was the landmark of the twentieth century, and cemented the United States as the world leader in space exploration. 

The economic benefits that the United States reaped from its lunar landing cannot be overstated.  Leaders in aerospace are leaders in technology, and leaders in technology are economic superpowers.  If the American energy and auto industries matched the level of excellence of NASA, the United States would be technologically untouchable.

I would bet that the vast majority of Canadians haven’t a clue what CSA is.  The Canadian Space Agency is the Canadian equivalent of NASA, but the two organizations are hardly equivalent.  CSA is a fine organization.  They participate in the expensive practice of space exploration on a meagre budget; it is however the level of funding of national space organizations that determines the extent to which they may participate.

Here is an order of magnitude scale for the kind of aerospace related activity you can afford for a given amount of American dollars in 2011:

$100,000,000,000                 Manned interplanetary mission

$10,000,000,000                   Manned lunar mission

$1,000,000,000                     Unmanned rocket for satellite placement

$100,000,000                        Complete communications satellite or a 747 airplane

$10,000,000                         Space payload (eg, Satellite Antenna)

$1,000,000                           Basic helicopter

$100,000                              Half a tank of gas for a 747 airplane

$10,000                               One foot wide meteorite (collector’s item)

$1,000                                 Typical coach plane ticket with return

$100                                    Nike sneakers to jump as high as you can

$10                                      Movie ticket for Apollo 13

$1                                        Paper airplane

The table above shows that you need a factor of ten in terms of dollars to take an aerospace project to the next level.  Ten million buys the payload... Add a factor of ten for the satellite to mount it on... Add a factor of ten for something to launch the satellite with.  To merely participate in a project outside the atmosphere, the kind of budget required is ten million dollars.  This is why many nations stay out of the space game entirely.

   

NASA has an annual budget of 18.7 billion dollars.  This money comes from the roughly 300,000,000 US tax-payers, to the tune of about sixty dollars per tax-payer.  This level of funding allows the organization to explore space independently via unmanned probes.

CSA has an annual budget of about 300 million dollars.  Each of Canada’s 30,000,000 tax-payers contributes about ten bucks towards their nation’s space exploration effort.

The six-to-one US to Canada tax-payer contribution ratio used to be ten-to-one.  The gap has closed in recent years, not because Canadians pay more, but because Americans now pay less.  Still, with ten times the population and six times the per-person funding, NASA’s budget is sixty times greater than that of CSA.

With an operating budget of 300M, CSA can build payloads independently (Canadarm and Dextre, feeds and reflectors), and on occasion, with the help of private industries like MDA, build complete satellites (Radarsat-1 and Radarsat-2).  CSA also conducts research, both at its home base in St. Hubert, Quebec, and on the International Space Station, thanks to its accomplished crew of astronauts.

Still, with funding of this magnitude, Canada will never be able to launch anything into space independently.  And, maybe that’s OK.  By removing themselves from the propulsion side of space exploration, Canada has become a world leader in space payloads by developing its prowess in both robotics and antenna engineering.  CSA can be commended for doing a lot with not very much.

The classic argument against funding space agencies is that there are so many current problems that this money could help to solve here on Earth.  If we are forward-looking enough, we will realize that money invested in aerospace will usually pay for itself in spinoff technologies.  Other organizations like ESA (European Space Agency), JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), and ROSCOSMOS (Russian Federal Space Agency) continue to fund their space presence on the world stage for this very reason.

The accomplishments of a nationally funded space program should be saluted by the tax-payers that contribute to it.  As a Canadian, I have pride that my country has done so much with so little.  I hope that the level of funding for CSA will be maintained, and perhaps even increased over the years.  The boomer generation of kids were inspired by the lunar landing.  If space funding dwindles, this generation of kids will have to settle for paper airplanes.  

NASA has nice photo collection. If you like the looks of the Proteus (in my opinion it is one of the most beautiful aircraft ever done), have a look:
http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/gallery/photo/Proteus/index.html

NASA TP PRELIMINARY AERODYNAMIC DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS FOR ADVANCED LAMINAR FLOW AIRCRAFT CONFIGURATIONS can be found from the following link. I found it quite interesting.

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19880014362_1988014362.pdf

If you have wondered why Cirrus has the discontinuity on the wings. This may answer to that to some extent. I have not found any factual information about the airfoil section used on the Cirrus other than that it is a natural laminar flow section. Cirrus VK-30 used the Jeff Viken NLF414F airfoil. I don't know if the SR20/SR22 uses the same airfoil or a different NLF section.

Anyway in this NASA tech paper it is explained how the stall resistance can be made better with the wing droop. The wing droop on the NASA test C210 actually indeed resembles the discontinuity on the Cirrus SR20/SR22 wing. Please have a look:
Wind tunnel results of the low-speed NLF(1)-0414F airfoil

Notable thing is that the Vmax-probe did not have this wing droop or any other means to prevent tip stall. And it crashed on landing possibly according to NTSB report and Bruce Carmichael's book, because of unfavorable stalling charasteristics at low Re of the airfoil caused a hard landing (which the pilot did not survive). NLF414F is not to be used without some means to prevent tip stall and to soften the otherwise very sharp stall at low Re.

Link:

Interesting technical papers

There is link to the NLF215F airfoil tech paper. It was particularly interesting. Now I understood the philosophy of the profile - I was always wondering, why this profile has the low drag bucket at so high Cl (around 0.5) rather than what is realized in cruise with small aircraft (up to 0.2). But, it seems, that this airfoil is designed to be used with -10 degrees flaps. With those, the low drag bucket gets into the cruise area. Heureka.

Here is a direct link to the paper:
http://www.n91cz.com/Interesting_Technical_Reports/NASA-81-tp1865.pdf

Here is a link to the book:

Concept to Reality

I find it quite interesting.