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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."

3 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. As a skydiver, I have this to say... by AntiNorm · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Will it be jumpable?

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  2. Re:uh...excuse me... by overunderunderdone · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Mission adaptable wings are not really that new

    Cool, but Off-topic. This article has nothing to do with mission adaptable wings. This wing is FLEXIBLE instead of using flaps the whole wing warps.

  3. Transonic by A+nonymous+Coward · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Somewhat off topic, and I ain't no aero engineer either :-)

    Transonic is the airspeed regime where parts of the airflow are supersonic and parts are subsonic. Subsonic, all airflow is subsonic; supersonic, it is all supersonic. Due to the shapes of wings, canopies, antennas, whatever, the airflow is not smooth, so for instance the airspeed over the top of the wing is faster than below the wing, and you can get supersonic above, subsonic below.

    Zipping thru keeps the stresses and turbulence to a minimum. Like going past Mount Rushmore without telling the kids in the backseat, as opposed to parking the car, getting everyone together, payng for tickets, keeping everybody together, waiting in line, ..... all of which is a quite severe test :-)

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