eBay
A RARE OPPORTUNITY!


Being offered is a Sitka Spruce Laminated Wind Tunnel Blade from the Historic NASA Langley Research Center's 16' Transonic Tunnel.

It measures approximately 132" long by 36" wide by 14" thick at the mounting end.  Weight is approximately 250 lbs.

The wind tunnel had two counter-rotating fans, each 34' in diameter.  The upstream fan contained 25 blades, and the downstream fan had 26 blades. 

The blade being offered is from the down-stream fan.




This wind tunnel no longer exists, and very little remains as historic artifacts available to the public from this remarkable tunnel.


Blade is designated as one of the "old blades" used in the tunnel before it was refurbished. 



When the 16' Transonic Wind Tunnel was demolished, most of the blades were repurposed in the new NASA Langley Headquarters Building at NASA Langley Research Center. 

Please refer to pictures to see some of them installed in conference room ceilings.



Over the past sixty plus years, a "Who's Who" of famous and infamous aircraft and spacecraft names and numbers found themselves in the 16-Foot's air stream:

  • Corsair
  • Bell X-1
  • Buffalo
  • Thunderbolt
  • Hustler
  • Aardvark
  • Eagle
  • Hornet
  • Harrier
  • Galaxy
  • X-15
  • Apollo
  • RLV
  • Shuttle
  • Tomcat
  • B-1 
  • B-2
  • X-43
To name just a few. It is even rumored that the Fat Man and Little Boy atomic weapons designs had 16-Foot Tunnel time.

INFORMATION:

The Langley 16-Foot Transonic Tunnel was a closed-
circuit single-return atmospheric wind tunnel that has a
slotted transonic test section with a Mach number range
from 0.1 to 1.3. Test-section plenum suction is used for
speeds above a Mach number of 1.05. The facility was used
primarily for internal (inlet and nozzle) and external
aerodynamic studies of the propulsion airframe integra-
tion characteristics of all types of flight vehicles in the
subsonic and transonic ranges.

Drive fans:


The drive fans constitute a two-stage
axial-flow compressor  with two sets of counterrotating
blades and no stator blades.

The fans are 34.0 ft in diameter less 0.2 in. radial
clearance between blade tip and tunnel wall. The fan
blades are made of laminated sitka spruce with frangible
foam tips.

The upstream fan has 25 blades and the down-
stream fan has 26 blades. The blades have Clark Y airfoil
sections and the average solidity of each fan is about 0.8.
The adiabatic efficiency of the fan system is 96 percent.
The axial space between the two fan hubs is occupied by a floating spin-
ner 8.0-ft long and 20 ft in diameter, which represents a
continuation of the shaft enclosure contour. This spinner
is supported on bearings housed in the ends of the fan
drive shafts and is restrained from rotating by four small
rods.