Canon EOS 5D Mark II
ƒ/5
16 mm
1/40
3200
The LUNAR rocketry club is the perfect fan club for a NASA tour.
Oh, and those are six huge 40-ft. diameter fans back there. They consume 104 Megawatts powering the largest wind tunnel on Earth.
3 responses to “Huge Fans”
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In between us and the fans are a huge tower of vanes that shunt the 40×80 wind-tunnel loop into this newer 80×120 section. (It was a tricky slot to capture in the dark without a tripod)
15 variable-pitch wood blades per fan. At 180 RPM, they move 60 tons of air per second:
The overall flow and some famous test subjects
During testing of the F-35B, the support struts had to be wrapped in a special "Space Shuttle" blanket and steel plates placed on the floor to protect it from the hot exhaust. Even then, the engine could only be operated for a couple of minutes at a time.A peek back at me looking up at the test mast with awe (photo by tour organizer Bruce La Fetra):
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Wow; way cool.
Interesting that the blades for those fans are made of wood. Any discussion about why wood is the optimal material?
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