Historic Photos of NASA's Cavernous Wind Tunnels | Hacker News Reader

Historic Photos of NASA's Cavernous Wind Tunnels

theatlantic.com

119 pointsohjeez28 comments

In 2014 I went to the open house event that NASA Ames had in honor of their 75th anniversary. They had the giant 80 by 120 foot wind tunnel open for viewing from the outside and I had a very hard time comprehending the visual size of it because the only scale references I had were the square lights on the ceiling. It was an experience that stuck with me. A few years prior I lived in Sunnyvale and even several miles away you could tell when it was operating because of the low rumble of sound.

Some of this is still visible: https://maps.app.goo.gl/de6StyBysTMH2Xon8?g_st=ic

Nice website with Ames Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel history: https://www.nasa.gov/nasa-ames-unitary-plan-wind-tunnel/

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/05/historic-photos-of...

Magnetically levitating the model in the tunnel and measuring the forces by measuring how the magnets need to be driven to keep the model in place is pretty cool.

The NASA Langley stability wind tunnel [0] is now part of Randolph Hall at Virginia Tech. You can visit it in Blacksburg, VA. Beautiful campus, btw. The stability tunnel is the biggest, they also have smaller hypersonic tunnels and

I worked there as a work-study student. Part of the job was wiping down the tunnel chamber after their test runs. The smoke you see used in wind tunnel videos is not actually smoke, but a white oil. And for a FWS job the pay wasn't bad, had to put on a bunny suit and crawl around tight spaces, LOL.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_Stability_Wind_T...

I discovered a few years ago that a such a wind tunnel facility existed in my area (France), but at a smaller scale. I had the opportunity to visit it. The facility is about 100 years old. What amazed me is not just the facilities (they have various tunnels for different measurements), but how it adapted to customer usages through time as engineering needs evolve. One building was initially designed for seaplanes but has long ago been refurbished for other uses. Another one is used by the French cycling team which has headquarters nearby.

https://iat.cnam.fr/les-souffleries-1224762.kjsp

> In 1920, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) completed its first wind-tunnel facility, a copy of an existing British tunnel.

This is a reminder that nobody starts at the top. They usually start by copying a lot of what those at the top do, as a shortcut to getting there.

It's kind of what China has been doing in the field of research for the last 15-20 years... And it's starting to pay dividends

The 1937 construction picture with the horses is a great contrast of technologies.