A mahogany wind tunnel for testing spacecraft aerodynamics is just too delightfully steampunk for real life. Or is it a real-life simulation of a 1980s-style overly-exuberant display of photographic superposition?
Take a tiny space shuttle, suspend it with magnets, and you have this beautiful low-speed wind test in a transparent hexagonal tunnel wrapped in mahogany. The shuttle model is suspended within the test section by magnets using the MIT/NASA Langley 6-inch Magnetic Suspension/Balance System (MSBS) as part of early testing on space shuttle aerodynamics.
The hand-crafted low-speed mahogany wind tunnel was built at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the 1960s, and relocated to NASA’s Langley Research Center in the mid-1980s. It’s since been retired from active research, and donated to Old Dominion University.
Image credit: NASA
Contact the author at mika.mckinnon@io9.com or follow her at @MikaMcKinnon.
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