Charles Richards (NASA engineer)

Charles Richard was a design engineer, who designed the collapsible four-tube Rogallo wing used in the experimental NASA Paresev glider. The wing configuration he created was used for manned hung-pilot kite-gliders and was to be found copied only with slight ornamental variation in a decade of hang gliders. Richards was of the Flight Research Center's Vehicle and System Dynamics Branch. The four-beamed wing folded from the nose plate; one of the beams was the spreader beam that kept the flexible-wing's sweep. Those in the following decade copying the Charles Richard wing configuration expanded kiting, hang gliding, ultralight, and trike flight.