Blowing people away Around Town, posted by Editor, Mountain View Voice Online, on Dec 7, 2012 at 2:29 pm
A local building that draws more electricity than the entire city of Mountain View turns 25 next week. The massive structure at NASA Ames Research Center is hard to miss from the Stevens Creek Trail, where its larger-than-a-football-field mouth sucks up air from across the bay and spits it out with such force that planes are not allowed to fly overhead.
Read the full story here Web Link posted Friday, December 7, 2012, 11:54 AM
Posted by Ron, a resident of the Waverly Park neighborhood, on Dec 7, 2012 at 2:29 pm
When I was a kid I used to have my grandmother take me on the Nasa tour as often as I could. Sometimes you would get lucky and get a chance to walk inside the wind tunnel (when it was not running of course). You could see the smaller area the aircraft was tested (from the larger room where the air moved into the tighter space), and the huge vents used to redirect the air. Pretty amazing. They would also show you the prototype model used to test the Space Shuttle that was, at the time, still just a concept. It would be cool if they still did those sort of public tours.
Posted by the_punnisher, a resident of the Whisman Station neighborhood, on Dec 7, 2012 at 5:54 pm
Yep, I helped design the supercomputer that built the Space Shuttle. Everyone at Cray Research was horrified when the Challenger disaster happened...quite a few machine hours were used to find out why it happened...
Posted by Beegee, a resident of another community, on Dec 7, 2012 at 6:02 pm
Used to live in Mtn. View. I went to Whisman School in the 1940's. When the wind tunnel started up, it made the school shake. I had an opportunity to go into the wind tunnel as the water tower cooler was being repaired many years ago. The interior is unbelievably smooth.
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