Clever Stuff!!
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Clever Stuff!!
Sometimes it DOES take a Rocket Scientist!!
Scientists at NASA built a gun specifically to launch standard 4 pound dead chickens at the windshields of airliners, military jets and the space shuttle, all traveling at maximum velocity.
The idea is to simulate the frequent incidents of collisions with airborne fowl to test the strength of the windshields.
British engineers heard about the gun and were eager to test it on the windshields of their new high speed trains.
Arrangements were made, and a gun was sent to the British engineers. When the gun was fired, the engineers stood shocked as the chicken hurled out of the barrel, crashed into the shatterproof shield, smashed it to smithereens, blasted through the control console, snapped the engineer's back-rest in two, and embedded itself in the back wall of the cabin, like an arrow shot from a bow.
The horrified Brits sent NASA the disastrous results of the experiment, along with the designs of the windshield and begged the US scientists for suggestions.
NASA responded with a one-line memo --
"Defrost the chicken."
Scientists at NASA built a gun specifically to launch standard 4 pound dead chickens at the windshields of airliners, military jets and the space shuttle, all traveling at maximum velocity.
The idea is to simulate the frequent incidents of collisions with airborne fowl to test the strength of the windshields.
British engineers heard about the gun and were eager to test it on the windshields of their new high speed trains.
Arrangements were made, and a gun was sent to the British engineers. When the gun was fired, the engineers stood shocked as the chicken hurled out of the barrel, crashed into the shatterproof shield, smashed it to smithereens, blasted through the control console, snapped the engineer's back-rest in two, and embedded itself in the back wall of the cabin, like an arrow shot from a bow.
The horrified Brits sent NASA the disastrous results of the experiment, along with the designs of the windshield and begged the US scientists for suggestions.
NASA responded with a one-line memo --
"Defrost the chicken."
Thats old... its usually told as being the Channel-tunnel train designer being loaned the chicken cannon from Rolls Royce (who use it to test the effect of bird ingestions in jet engines, or because the local KFC is too far away). That version goes that they used it to test the impact of birds on the windshield of the train at 130mph and found that it went through it, through the drivers' cabin the front bulkhead and landed in the first pax compartment :roll:
Another one (which may or may not be true) relates to the fibre-optics used in the fly-by-light system in the Eurofighter. Legend has it that in the first EF2000 constructed in Germany, workers, being typical neat and efficient teutonic types, firmly fixed the optic cabling along the inside of the fuselage, and tightly around all corners and other facets. Of course you cant bend it more than 15deg/metre, so it all snapped and they were puzzled when none of the control surfaces worked
Another one (which may or may not be true) relates to the fibre-optics used in the fly-by-light system in the Eurofighter. Legend has it that in the first EF2000 constructed in Germany, workers, being typical neat and efficient teutonic types, firmly fixed the optic cabling along the inside of the fuselage, and tightly around all corners and other facets. Of course you cant bend it more than 15deg/metre, so it all snapped and they were puzzled when none of the control surfaces worked
- Garry Russell
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I heard it was the Rolls Royce Cannon they borrowed for testing birdstrikes on the RB.211
Anyway they went to the butcher to get a standard test chicken, set it up fired it and............... they forgot to defrost it.
Garry
Anyway they went to the butcher to get a standard test chicken, set it up fired it and............... they forgot to defrost it.
Garry
Garry
"In the world of virtual reality things are not always what they seem."
"In the world of virtual reality things are not always what they seem."
- Garry Russell
- The Ministry
- Posts: 27180
- Joined: 29 Jan 2005, 00:53
- Location: On the other side of the wall
- Garry Russell
- The Ministry
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- Joined: 29 Jan 2005, 00:53
- Location: On the other side of the wall
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http://www.snopes.com/science/cannon.htm
Makes interesting reading - the USAF deliberately use frozen chickens.
Makes interesting reading - the USAF deliberately use frozen chickens.
Hear the one where they left the chicken in the gun overnight to defrost, and when they fired it the next morning into a jet engine, when they looked at the high speed camera footage later, they saw that there was a cat clinging onto a half eaten chicken!!!
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