On April 24th, I had the opportunity to shadow a physicist at NASA Glenn Research Center. My mentor, Dr. Theresa Benyo, is doing theoretical research in magnetohydrodynamics for supersonic and hypersonic flight (magnetohydrodynamics deals with the motion of electrically conductive fluids through a magnetic field). Dr. Benyo creates computer models that simulate how jet engines would work with the technology she is researching.
The problem she is trying to solve through her research lies in the huge amounts of energy involved in hypersonic flight (speeds Mach 5 and above). For such high speeds, special materials must be used that won’t melt under the heat produced by the engines. Dr. Benyo is working to find a way around this problem by modifying already developed supersonic engines to fly at hypersonic speeds. To do this, three things must be done: 1. Slow the air flow from Mach 5 and above to somewhere around Mach 3 (supersonic speed). 2. Send the air through the engine for combustion. 3. Accelerate the exhaust from the engine back up to hypersonic speeds and kick it out the back of the engine to produce thrust. Step One: this is where the MHD comes in. An MHD generator is placed at the front of the engine. This ionizes and slows the air by removing energy from the airflow (the energy is either transferred to the back of the engine to the accelerator or used for onboard operations). The airflow’s speed has been reduced to Mach 3, a necessary step for the supersonic engine, since it can’t handle hypersonic air speeds. Step Two: the supersonic engine acts as it would at supersonic speeds, using combustion to produce exhaust that will produce thrust for the aircraft. Step Three: the energy from the MHD generator is transferred to the accelerator, which accelerates the exhaust, sending it out the back of the engine at hypersonic speeds.
Using this technique, aircraft could fly at very high speeds without using drastically different engines from what we have right now. This is all theoretical right now, but Dr. Benyo predicts that within the next year, the concept will be tested with small scale models in a 1X1 (one foot by one foot) test chamber at Glenn Research Center.
While I was at Glenn, I also got to go see two guys doing a Digital Learning Network broadcast. The two are educators and Wilbur and Orville Wright impersonators, and one of them is also an aerospace engineer. After their forty-five minute discussion with a class in Virginia, I got to try on a spacesuit. The pants were gigantic, but other than that, it wasn’t too bad. (:
After lunch, we toured some of the facilities at GRC. We went to the G-VIS lab, where interns and high school students in the area made a Lego Mindstorms Mars rover that they drive around in a simulated Mars environment. In the GRUVE lab, we saw 3D virtual reality simulations of a hydrogen tank in space and a 3D x-ray of a tank (in 3D, we could spin the x-ray around and look all the way through it on-end. This allows engineers to see where fractures occur in the material).
We saw a photovoltaics lab where solar cells are grown downstairs and tested upstairs. We went to the hangar and got a quick overview of each of the planes. The Learjet (lower left), a research aircraft, was originally owned by a drug dealer. The FBI tracked him down, confiscated the airplane, and ended up giving it to NASA (NASA didn’t pay for any of the planes in the hangar- most came from the military, like the S-3 Viking below on the right).
After the hangar, we made one more stop…
The SLOPE Lab! The guy who talked to us about the SLOPE Lab on our visit was the same guy who did an INSPIRE LiveChat a few weeks ago! He let us put our hands in the “sink tank,” a big sand box with very fine sand called fillite.
We got to pass around the lunar tires and see how each one worked, and we saw the Scarab vehicle, a test rover used in the lab.
Shadowing at Glenn Research Center was an incredible experience. It was only the second NASA center I’ve visited (the other is Kennedy Space Center), so seeing the differences between them really opened my eyes to see how unique each NASA center is. I hope I’ll get to visit every NASA center someday, and I plan to visit Glenn again sometime in the near future.
“STEM education is very important to us because you, the students, are one of NASA’s most valuable assets.” -Steve Sanderson, Chief of External Programs Division, Glenn Research Center
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