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.
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.
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.
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.
Simply because theory (computational) only gets you so far. As much as we'd like to think we have perfectly modeled everything, most of our models are just very good approximations
Reminds me of the old construction photos for nuclear reactors in the US. Astoundingly complex machines at a massive scale getting out together at what now feels like impossible speed. I can't help but feel like a Roman 100 years after the fall staring up at aqueducts wondering how anyone every built such a thing.
I'm positive someone could show me an impressive thing we built recently. I don't feel like that is my point. Im just astounded those people in that time could build what they built with the tools they had as fast as they did.
We can build amazing things today too, but we have a lot higher standards and a lot more requirements than they did, which makes everything take longer time.
Outside my office window an enormous new new warehouse was erected in just a few weeks, but it is just a huge box with no added extras so it can't have been very hard to do
One thing that changed is that modern engineering moved a lot of complexity from the construction site into the design phase. A project today may take longer because we simulate, certify, model failures, and optimize before pouring concrete. The old projects sometimes had more visible physical labor, but less computational overhead.
Engineering developed a government entwined professional licensure system and used that to capture value that was previously the domain of the construction industry.
This also introduces massive potential for bike shedding, nitpicking, stalling, etc which of course costs us all.
https://iat.cnam.fr/les-souffleries-1224762.kjsp
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...
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.
https://www.cnet.com/pictures/photos-langley-test-tunnel-get...
https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/328830main_E...
https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/hl-10-el-199...
https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/146749main_i...
I'm positive someone could show me an impressive thing we built recently. I don't feel like that is my point. Im just astounded those people in that time could build what they built with the tools they had as fast as they did.
This also introduces massive potential for bike shedding, nitpicking, stalling, etc which of course costs us all.
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.