Langley Research Center

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Langley Research Center
NASA Langley 14 x 22 foot Subsonic Wind Tunnel.

Langley Research Center (LaRC) Oldest of NASA's field centers, LaRC is located in Hampton, Virginia and directly borders Poquoson, Virginia and Langley Air Force Base. LaRC focuses primarily on aeronautical research, though the Lunar Lander was flight-tested at this facility and a number of high profile space missions are planned and designed on site. Established in 1917 by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the Center currently devotes two-thirds of its programs to aeronautics, and the rest to space. LaRC researchers use more than 40 wind tunnels to study improved aircraft and spacecraft safety, performance, and efficiency. Between 1958, when NASA started Project Mercury and 1963, LaRC served as the main office of the Man-In-Space program, with the office being transferred to the Manned Spacecraft Center (now the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center) in Houston in 1962-63.

Fabrication Research and Development

Electron Beam Freeform Fabrication (EBF³)

The EBF³ process produces structural metallic parts with immense strength and is conductive to performing repairs in remote locations. In addition, the ability to build functionally graded, unitized parts directly from CAD data offers enhanced performance in a great deal of applications. Just rescently LaRC has become home to this new type of machining process, which is used by their new room-sized electron-emitting device. This machine uses a High Frequency 42kW, X-ray emitting electron gun, (A cousin to the ones found in television Cathode Ray Tubes), which, at high speeds, melts either aluminum or titanium wire, (positioned by dual independent wire feeders), into the desired 3-dimensional metallic parts with material strength comparable to that of wrought products. The machine's deposition rate is 150 in³/hr, similar to that of its plastic-fabricating counterpart. Metallic parts are also built directly from CAD, without molds or tools, leaving the end product with absolutely no porosity. Other facts include:

  • A 6-axis positioning
  • Heated or cooled platen
  • 1x10^-6 torr vacuum capability (Needed for the high power Electron beam gun)
  • 72" x 24" x 24" build envelope
  • Power efficiency in excess of 90%
  • Near 100% feedstock efficiency
  • Can deposit reflective materials not processible with lasers
  • Potential portable EBF³ system (Under Development)
  • Potential Fabrication & repair from the plants to the planets
  • Research assistence for developing large scale fabrication in space

Overall, Electron Beam Freeform Fabrication is a layer-additive technique that offers potential for improvements in cost, weight, and performance to enhance mission success for aircraft, launch vehicles, and spacecraft.

Plastic Fabrication

LaRC also houses a large collection of various, inexpensive plastic reformation machines. These machines are generally very critical in the freeform fabrication department for faster timing, better precision, and larger quantities of low-cost toy, model, and industrial plastic parts. The fabrication of plastic parts is not all that dissimillar to the EBF³ process, except the melting aparatus is a thin, grated heating element, but other than that they are quite simillar, eg. they are both run completely by CAD data and deal with various freeform fabrication of raw materials. Plastic reformation machines have also come to the interest of graphical artist, opening a whole new world of bringing their masterpieces to life, all with a 'flick' of a switch, so to speak.

Langley Research Center Main Focus

Aeronautics

Vortex created by the passage of an aircraft wing, revealed by colored smoke

Langley Research Center performs critical research on aeronautics, including wake vortex behavior, fixed wing aircraft, rotary wing aircraft, air safety, and aerospace engineering. LaRC supported the design and testing of the hypersonic X-43 in the Hyper-X program, which achieved a world speed record of Mach 9.6 (almost 7,000 miles per hour). LaRC assisted the NTSB in the investigation of the crash of American Airlines Flight 587.

Astronautics

Moon

Since the Gemini project preparation Langley was a center for training of rendezvous in space with a rendezvous simulator resp. docking simulator on earth and at the top of big Langley halls on ropes. In 1965 Langley Research Center opened a moon crane named "Lunar Landing Research Facility" for simulations of moon landings on the rope with artificial moon shine and faked moon landscape inclusive. There was experimental work on some Lunar Landing Research Vehicles (LLRV) and Lunar Landing Training Vehicles (LLTV) with astronauts like Armstrong or Shepard etc.d with the aim to realize moon landing with the Lunar Module (LM). When some Gemini projects (6A-12) and when moon landing was not true a big part of it was made in Langley. The control center in Houston had no control if there was controlled a simulation or not...

Mars

Langley Research Center now supports NASA's space mission by designing spacecraft for outer space, recently Mars (see the Mars Exploration Rover) and the moon with notably the Project Apollo.

Langley Research Center conducts Earth Science research to support NASA's mission.

Full scale model of the X-43 plane in Langley's 8 foot, high temperature wind tunnel.
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