In late April my wife Karen and I made a pilgrimage to the Wright Brothers National Memorial—accomplishing a lifelong mission of mine. I’ve worked for decades helping aerospace scientists with their design of experiments (DOE). For example, a few weeks ago I helped a US Air Force project engineer set up a DOE to characterize the flowfield of a jet via testing at Hypervelocity Wind Tunnel 9.

According to a 2010 Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS) press release (cited below with the quote), Tunnel 9 compresses nitrogen to 30,000 pounds per square inch and heats it to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit to create a pressure ratio of about 1 million. Who knows how much more T9 can do now—16 years later.

“Wind tunnels, the tools used to simulate airspeed environments to test flight capabilities, have come a long way since the Wright brothers built a box with fans to test a kite model.”

– Ian Graham, author of Wind Tunnel Explores Dynamics of High-Speed Flight.

Though use of wind tunnels for aircraft development dates back to 1871, the Wright brothers revolutionized the use of these devices for testing during their pioneering studies in 1901. Of all the amazing artifacts at the Memorial, I was most impressed by the lift and drag measurement equipment—see these described and pictured at this NASA post. With this test capability in place, the Wright brothers achieved a design breakthrough that enabled their great achievement of the first flight of a powered, manned, and controlled heavier-than-air aircraft on December 17, 1903.

If you have not been to the Wright Brothers National Memorial, I highly recommend doing so, not just for the history, but also to take in the epic surroundings of North Carolina’s Outer Banks.