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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."

1 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. Test speeds. by Jade+E.+2 · · Score: 5, Funny
    From the article:
    The technology will be tested at subsonic and supersonic speeds, though not in the unpredictable range close to the speed of sound.
    Now, I'm no aerospace engineer, but how exactly do you test at supersonic speeds without at least passing through the range of speeds 'close to the speed of sound'? Or, if the wing snaps in half as it passes mach 1, do they just say "Oops, that didn't count, better not tell anyone."?