NASA and the Evolution of the Wind Tunnel

Jeremy Kinney

Even before the invention of the airplane, wind tunnels have been key in undertaking fundamental research in aerodynamics and evaluat­ing design concepts and configurations. Wind tunnels are essential for aeronautical research, whether for subsonic, transonic, supersonic, or hypersonic flight. The swept wing, delta wing, blended wing body shapes, lifting bodies, hypersonic boost-gliders, and other flight con­cepts have been evaluated and refined in NACA and NASA tunnels.

N NOVEMBER 2004, the small X-43A scramjet hypersonic research vehicle achieved Mach 9.8, roughly 6,600 mph, the fastest speed ever attained by an air-breathing engine. During the course of the vehicle’s 10-second engine burn over the Pacific Ocean, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) offered the promise of a new revolu­tion in aviation, that of high-speed global travel and cost-effective entry into space. Randy Voland, project engineer at Langley Research Center, exclaimed that the flight "looked really, really good” and that "in fact, it looked like one of our simulations.”[528] In the early 21st century, the pub­lic’s awareness of modern aeronautical research recognized advanced computer simulations and dramatic flight tests, such as the launching of the X-43A mounted to the front of a Pegasus rocket booster from NASA’s venerable B-52 platform. A key element in the success of the X-43A was a technology as old as the airplane itself: the wind tunnel, a fundamen­tal research tool that also has evolved over the past century of flight.

NASA and its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), have been at the forefront of aerospace research since the early 20th century and on into the 21st. NASA made funda­mental contributions to the development and refinement of aircraft and spacecraft—from commercial airliners to the Space Shuttle—for

operation at various speeds. The core of this success has been NASA’s innovation, development, and use of wind tunnels. At crucial moments in the history of the United States, the NACA-NASA introduced state-of – the-art testing technologies as the aerospace community needed them, placing the organization onto the world stage.