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NASA Ames Research To Close Largest Windtunnels
Makarand writes "The world's largest and second largest
wind tunnels operated by the
NASA Ames Research center
will be shutdown after 60 years
and may remain shut unless major defense contracts from
the Pentagon or the private sectors are available.
The largest windtunnel will be fired up for the last time in June for four hours.
It will test the parachutes that will land the Mars exploration rovers onto the Red Planet
next year.
Fewer defense contracts and the increasing use of computer simulations are being cited as reasons
for the windtunnels to face closure."
That really blows. No, really.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
I bet they could find a way to make a pretty cool amusement ride out of it.
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The experiments formally tested at this wind tunnel site have been moved to congress. An unnamed NASA reseacher was quoted as saying "There is just so much hot air expelled there, it seemed redudant to have a wind tunnel. In fact, we're also looking at this thus untapped resource as a possible source for energy".
NASA is also looking into tapping the "natural gas" deposits found around the nation's Taco Bells.
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
I don't know, my "Hello World" program seems to be bug free. Be careful with sweeping generalisations.
Isnt the surest way of knowing how an object will behave in the wind is to run it through a wind tunnel? After all, consider sending a probe to mars. What if the parachute checked out OK in a computer simulation, but doesn't apply to real physics because of some bug?
Computers can do cute things like simulate the parachute in a Martian atmosphere. Which might be kind of handy given that the air density on Mars is 1% of Earth.
For the simple stuff, there are wind tunnels. For everything else, there's computers.
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