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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
Despite the advances in super computer technology that allow the behaviour of even very complex materials to be tested in a virtual environment, a wind tunnel may still be a far cheaper and less time-consuming option, especially with one-off experiments (such as for the Mars landing parachute mentioned in the article). The wind tunnel tests the actual thing, and although it takes time to setup, a supercomputer takes a considerable amount of time, work and money to program to mimic the effects of the wind tunnel and the item being tested.
What is the point of the internet?
My first job out of University was working as a computer operator at a wind tunnel.
We did lots of commerical and military stuff, and I'm really not surprised to find the F117 and a few other machines that I prolly shouldn't mention not on their list of aircraft we helped build.
For a young geek in Western New York, this was a radically cool job. When I started working there we used a bunch of IBM 1401's, at the time their largest single installation of these machines.
Later we became a DEC shop, and beta tested their PDP 11/70 series of machines.
Prolly the neatest thing - aside from the computers that is - were the models. There were a group of craftsman that would carefully, over a period of months and sometimes years, hand craft these incredibly accurate models of the various aircraft.
But they weren't just static models, being integrated with hundreds of air pressure sensors.
I worked on what was called the 'Data Reduction Team'; our machines captured, in real time, data from these sensors and later we could model the prototype aircrafts performance - should it be built that is!
Far cheaper to spend a few months in a wind tunnel testing various models then to build the real thing and have it crash.
When working we were a 24/7 shop, and although the money was good, that was the rub. The biz was largely defense driven, and after a few years I got tired of the binge and purge nature of working in defense.
But the story had a happy ending, as I landed a gig at Bell Labs and never looked at the defense industry again.
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During the early '90s, I was stationed at Onizuka AFB which is right next to the Moffet/Ames facility. Back then, the wind tunnel had so many customers they were trying to get permission to operate the wind tunnel earlier and later than usual. Why did they need permission for the local government? This thing was LOUD. Once I was in a classroom that was right next door to the tunnel. Right in the middle of the lecture, it sounded as if a giant air conditioner was turned on. When we went outside, we figured out that it was the wind tunnel - you had to shout to be heard. The local communities (which had houses about 1.5 miles away) always complained about the noise. They didn't want it operationg before 7:30AM or after 9PM. NASA supposedly begged to get exceptions to this rule because they had "customers lined up from all over the world."
It is interesting to see now they don't have enough customers.