Photos: A whirlwind tour of wind tunnels
At NASA's Langley Research Center there's long been more than one way to test the aerodynamics of things that go zoom.
1920 - Langley's first wind tunnel
Last week, we brought you a photo gallery on the Langley Full Scale Tunnel, a historic wind tunnel that NASA took out of operation in September after nine decades of distinguished research. As it turns out, the Langley Research Center has long been a cornucopia of wind tunnels large, small, and often specialized. In the early 1990s, NASA said that the Hampton, Va., facility had 23 major wind tunnels, along with an unspecified number of other wind tunnels. (We haven't been able to come up with a more recent count.)
At Langley Laboratory, the forerunner to the LRC, the first major U.S. government wind tunnel went into operation in June 1920. Pictured here, it was a replica of a 10-year-old British design, according to NASA.
Ca. 1921 - Air intake
This is the open-circuit air intake for that first Langley wind tunnel, which, NASA says, ensured a steady, nonturbulent flow of air to the test section of the structure. NASA wouldn't be around till almost four decades later, of course--the Langley facility was put into operation by the space agency's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, or NACA.
The very first wind tunnels date back to the 1870s as folks of an engineering bent sought to understand the physics of powered flight. The Wright Brothers, too, used a small wind tunnel to study the aerodynamics of their first flyers in the first decade of the 20th century.
1921- Atmospheric Wind Tunnel #1
1929 - Variable Density Wind Tunnel
Some decades later, the Variable Density Tunnel, the Full Scale Tunnel, and the 8-Foot High-Speed Tunnel were declared National Historic Landmarks.
1931 - 7 x 10-Foot Atmospheric Wind Tunnel
1931 - 5-Foot Vertical Wind Tunnel
1934 - 24-Inch High Speed Tunnel
1936 - 8-Foot High-Speed Wind Tunnel
1940 - 12-Foot Free-Flight Tunnel
1946 - Robert T. Jones
1946 - 9-Inch Supersonic Tunnel controls
1947 - 9-Inch Supersonic Tunnel
1951 - 16-Foot High-Speed Tunnel
1956 - Unitary controls
1959 - Spin Tunnel
1962 - 4 x 4 Supersonic Pressure Tunnel
1962 - Transonic Dynamics Tunnel
1962 - 9 X 6 Foot Thermal Structures Tunnel
1968 - 14 x 22 Foot Wind Tunnel
Like many of the ever-newer Langley facilities, it replaced (and was built on the site of) an earlier one, in this case the 7x10-foot 300 mph tunnel.
1990 - 16-Foot Transonic Tunnel
1993 - 14x22 Foot Subsonic Tunnel
1997 - X-38 model
(2004) - 8-Foot High-Temperature Tunnel
A scramjet engine has few or no moving parts and starts at supersonic speeds; it scoops oxygen from the air and uses the incredibly high rate of speed to compress air and propel itself. ("Hypersonic" means five times the speed of sound.)
In 2004, NASA says, an X-43A scramjet flew at Mach 9.6, or nearly 7,000 mph.