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Air Force to Test Aeroelastic Wings

Posted by michael on from the silly-putty dept.

firegate writes "The New Scientist is reporting that the US Air Force is planning to test a variant of the Wing Warping steering system used on the original Wright Brothers plane to steer new supersonic jets. They've invested $41 million in the project so far, and the first test flight will take place next month at NASA's Dryden research center in California."

2 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. The briefing at the base this morning by PD · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    We won't know if these planes are any good until we can do a double blind study to see if these new planes can kill people more efficiently than the older types of planes. Of course, it's a bit difficult to do a double blind study, because it would require the people killed to actually not know they are dead! Taking care of the researchers is easier; we can hire a bunch of those civil war re-enactors to pretend to be dead (or not!). Well, since it's hard to do a proper double blind study, we'll just have to settle for several single blind studies and work some magic with statistics.

    Anyone got a problem with that?
    NO SIR!
    Good, you are dismissed.

    --
    If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
  2. Wing Warping = Aeroelastic by sohp · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    If I were cynical I'd say the defense contractors came up with the fancy new name "aeroelastic" for technology that's been around since the beginning of heavier-than-air flight because you can't go to the Air Force and say, "Please give me a billion dollars to play with wing-warping".