Sounded like Someone Was Torturing a Cat

Alternate titles:

Where Should We Go to Test These Poison Fuels? : The Middle of the Everglades

Absolutely Great Engineer, from Alabama of All Places

He Didn't All Burn.

-and-

Jigger in the Main Burner

All of these are snippets from the seminar at UTSI today. The title of the seminar was "Never Told Tales of Blackbirds, U2s and Roadrunners, the Golden Age of Aerospace." The guy giving it had been an engineer at Pratt and Whitney for 32 years before retiring 20 years ago. He was what I hope to be in 60 years, less the cancer. He didn't cover a wide range of topics, and really only talked about the titular elements in passing, but he talked a lot about the engineering process as it was when he was working in the Golden Age of Aerospace. That's always interesting, and this guy was a self described "Irish storyteller" so he told all the stories well. I think I liked them all, but some of my favorites:

They were testing a new engine with a poison fuel with poison exhaust, so where did they go to test it? The middle of the Florida Everglades. Natural wildlife refuge now. Poison fuel test area then. (The program was cancelled before any tests were run there.)

Another test in the area while they were down there "sounded like someone was torturing a cat."

A design he worked on an engine for went from clean sheet design to first flight in 3 years. The F-22, which he also did some of the early engine design work for, took 20 years.

He knew a guy who was an "absolutely great engineer, from Alabama of all places."

When transporting charts for presentations containing secret information, the charts were rolled up and put in a tube which was then handcuffed to the person's wrist. This caused some issues on airplanes when the stewardess asked him to put the tube in the baggage compartment. Here was on sample conversation:

Stewardess: That [secret charts for a presentation] has to go in luggage.
Engineer Brown: I'm sorry, miss, but that's impossible. I can't do that.
S: Why can't you do that?
E: It's my father's ashes.
S: [a little shocked, walks away, returns a few minutes later] Excuse me, Mr, Brown, if that's you're father's ashes, why is it so big?
E: He didn't all burn.

The SR-71 Blackbird experienced significant thermal expansion during its flight. The tanks had to be designed so that they were solid at the expanded conditions, meaning they were very leaky at takeoff conditions, so fuel leaked all over the runway. The Blackbird flies at afterburner at all times, which would tend to light the runway on fire. Oops. So they needed a fuel that wouldn't catch fire on the runway. Unfortunately, if it's hard to catch fire on the runway, it's also hard to start the engine. They fixed that by adding a hypergolic (self combusting when exposed to air) fuel for engineer start-up. How much did they need? "A jigger in the main burner. Three jiggers to light the afterburner." Not sure what the official measure of a jigger is. Not sure if it's really a word, either, but whatever it is, it worked and the BlackBird holds 17 world speed records. It flew from Los Angeles (LAX) to Dulles airport outside of D.C. in 55 minutes, at partial power. It's equipment was supposedly sensitive enough to identify people and read license plates at a distance of 60 miles from an altitude of 90,000 feet. And that was from a plane designed and built 50 years ago.

One other thing this guy mentioned about work back in the golden age - he worked side-by-side with Charlie Lindberg, Jimmy Doolittle, and Juan Tripp. I didn't link their Wikipedia articles because I knew who they were when he mentioned them. If you don't, that's what Wikipedia is there for. Go learn something about the history of modern aviation.

I mentioned that UTSI took my student ID card when I was outprocessing Monday. Today, I finished the process, and they did NOT take my key to the office. What's more important to them? That I can get discounts on food and bowling in Memphis or that I can get into the office where they store several, presumably, important things? Clearly, it's keeping me from getting discounts. And I'm now done outprocessing, so there's nothing else I need to do for them. I may show up on campus a couple more times, depending on whether I feel like coming back up here before I start work, but that'll just be to visit friends. I do need to return a couple things to Dr. Moeller, but that's not directly affecting my outprocessing, just tying up loose ends. Who cares, I'm done, and they can deal with it.

Hey, how'd it get to be midnight already? More tomorrow.