WHEN A friend took me to see the Langley Full Scale Wind Tunnel at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton last week, I came away at a loss for words.
But it is vital that I try, so here it is in a sentence: One of the world's premier aeronautical research centers--where things have been learned that saved countless lives and contributing to this nation's winning wars and staying at the forefront of aerospace technology--is going to be torn down as a useless old hulk.
This comes at a time when there is no shortage of business; academic and government researchers want time in the tunnel to make things that go faster, fly safer and, above all, make a major contribution toward American energy independence.
If I had half an hour of the president's time, I'd tell him it's true the giant wind tunnel doesn't look like much anymore, that it is old and needs repairs. But wandering through its hulking darkened interior with Ken Hyde and Robert L. Ash is a full-blown adventure that no one could ever forget.
These two men should know. Hyde is a world authority on the Wright Brothers and has unlocked some of their most tightly held secrets by flying their machines in the tunnel. Ash is a professor of aerospace engineering and director of the Langley tunnel for Old Dominion University, which operates it under contract for NASA, which owns it.
IMPORTANT HERITAGE
For more than 70 years this giant air chamber has seen critical testing on seemingly every kind of machine that moves through the wind. There are other wind tunnels, most of them specialized to learn particular things, but the LFST was and remains the largest commercially available place on planet Earth where clever people can try to find better ways to design all sorts of things that must deal with moving air.
The list of clients that have--and continue to--buy time in the tunnel is startling. Aerospace companies are just the beginning. Trucks, race cars (all kinds), motorcycles, wind generators, buildings, solar arrays, cell phone towers and more have been put to the test here and made better as a result.
As for the aircraft that have been put through the Langley, the list is too long for this space but includes virtually every fighter plane with which the United States fought World War II.
"It was wind-tunnel testing here that made those planes safe enough for 18-year-olds to go to war in them and come back alive," said Hyde.
Wind tunnels have been around for a long time. Even Orville and Wilbur, who early on knew the need for one, contrived their own little testing chamber. In fact, Orville Wright played a key role in pressing the government to build the Langley giant. (At a cost, incidentally, of
Beneath its yawning 30- by 60-foot test chamber there are two 4,000-horsepower electric motors. These, and the massive twin four-bladed wooden propellers or fans they drive are the living, whooshing heart of the place.
NEW RESEARCH OPTIONS
On my long walk through the tunnel with Ash and Hyde, I could see how the wind those 35-foot fans make is turned at each corner by a phalanx of tree-tall slats that keep it going 'round in circles.
Unfortunately, the tunnel was quiet on my visit. But just below the test pad scientists and technicians worked to rig a one-fifth-scale model of Boeing's X-48B, the Blended Wing Transport. This is surely a glimpse at the future of air transportation.
Another direction for the future of aviation is unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, now a cutting-edge weapon against Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. Quite a few different ones have had their bugs worked out at Langley.
If the tunnel's heritage and future seem linked to aerospace, the surprising thing has been to find other, unrelated fields of research where it is proving invaluable.
As crucial as it may be for testing aircraft designs, it is these new areas of research--especially energy savings, which have enormous implications for national energy savings, security and independence.
In May, Ash ran extensive tests in the tunnel on tractor-trailers--the kind that prowl the nation's highways by the millions. By making a series of carefully calculated improvements to the shape of the big rigs, he was able to show a dramatic decrease in the amount of fuel they burn. Measuring gains from a phased series of six alterations to the truck's shape, he was able to gain up to 16 percent in fuel savings.
Similar experimentation on light delivery trucks, the boxy vehicles that handle merchandise in urban areas, brought fuel savings of up to 20 percent.
Ash said the bottom line of these tests is that aerodynamic changes applied to the U.S. truck fleet "can save U.S. petroleum imports worth more than $1.5 billion per year."
There is much more research needed in finding ways to conserve fossil-fuel energy sources. But Old Dominion University's lease on the tunnel runs out Aug. 18, and NASA plans to close and soon demolish the aging structure.
"The problem," said Hyde--and a wide range of technical people in government and industry agree--"is that the tunnel has found a new life
CAN TUNNEL BE SAVED?
After our tour of the facility, the three of us had lunch at a bistro in Hampton, where I asked Ash how many more years the tunnel could operate without major renovations.
"I'd say it's got another two to three years in it," he said.
Hyde believes that with modest protection from occasional high water, the facility might provide useful service for a decade or more.
In the meantime, even though the facility is set to shut down next month, NASA has given the OK to extend that deadline by a week or two to finish the Boeing Blended Wing work there.
After that, it's anybody's guess. Will the agency's bean counters prevail?
Or will common sense step in, giving new life to a place where so much history has been made?
It may take an act of Congress
Meanwhile, the hulking white structure that Orville Wright approved in 1931 has come into its own with a new life at a critical juncture in our history.
The ugly duckling looks increasingly like a graceful swan.
Paul Sullivan of Spotsylvania County, a former reporter with The Free Lance-Star, is a freelance writer. E-mail him at PBSullivan2@cs.com.