>> I never actually imagined that I would make it to NASA.
I knew about NASA, and I thought everything that NASA did
was really interesting.
But I never actually imagined myself to make it to work
in a place like this.
[ music ]
My name is Sam Sauber.
I'm a test engineer here at the 14 by 22 foot subsonic
wind tunnel at NASA Langley Research Center.
>> My name is Frank Quinto.
I am the facility manager.
I have been working at NASA Langley for over 42 years.
The coolest part of my job is that
I get to see things that are going to happen in the future.
Like the space shuttle system
before we got to launch
the airplanes that we test will be flying in the future, years from now.
And the other cool part is I get to work with wonderful
people like Sam here.
[ laughing ]
Don’t do that
now I’m going to be laughing all the way through every question.
>> Testing in this tunnel is really important.
Every time you fly commercially, you fly on a plane
that was tested at a facility such as ours.
We've checked it for safety.
We've checked it for fuel efficiency, and we've helped improve the features on it
that leads the technology into the next generation of aircraft.
As a test engineer for the wind tunnel,
I do the technical coordination for a wind tunnel test.
So if a researcher wants to test an airplane in our tunnel,
then I set up the instrumentation and the data system
so that we can get them the best possible data.
A wind tunnel works by blowing air over a model
that we are interested in learning more about.
>> Our maximum speed in here is about 235 miles an hour.
With that speed, we normally concentrate on what we consider
the most important part of flight, which is the takeoff and landing.
There are a lot of things that we tested that need to take off the land.
Future airliners, the space launch system,
helicopters, military airplanes.
Those are some of the things that we have tested in our facility.
>> So as you can see behind me, we have a very large fan.
>> The fan is 40 feet in diameter,
consisting of nine wooden blades made out of a sitka spruce.
Each fan blade is six feet long,
weighing about 650 pounds a piece
the fans attach to a 12,000 horsepower electric motor.
>> That fan will push air through a tunnel that's looped on itself.
And on the other side of this tunnel will be an aircraft or whatever our model is.
>> Some of the
strangest things that we have tested in the 14 by 22 include things
like wheelchairs, exhaust stacks, radar dishes
wind turbines, race cars.
NASCAR's Formula One and Indy racers.
>> Just like any other engineer.
One of the big tasks that always comes up is troubleshooting.
Things don't always go the way that you expect them to go,
but every day there's some other problem that needs to be solved,
whether it's a big problem or it's a small problem.
And it always keeps you on your toes every day.
>> You make it work, Sam.
>> I make it work.
We do a lot of visualization in our tunnel,
which includes putting smoke through the tunnel.
Sometimes we'll put fluorescent oil over the surface of the model,
and in these different ways, we're able to actually physically
see how the wind is moving across different areas of our model.
And I find that really interesting because I'm a visual learner.
When I was in high school, my favorite STEM subject actually was chemistry.
Thank you, Mrs. Mauer.
She did a lot of labs that were hands on.
I think oftentimes people don't think of how important
just tinkering with electronics or with technology really can be beneficial.
>> Oh, yeah. I did a lot of tinkering as a kid.
I built a lot of model airplanes, which was nice,
because then I got to figure out what the different parts of
the airplanes were and how they go together.
>> A lot of people think that just
because they are more artistic or more creative,
that they're not cut out for STEM fields.
But in all honesty, engineers, scientists have to be creative
and have to be somewhat artistic to be able to come up with these new ideas
and see how they can solve the problems in the world around them.
You don't have to be the
biggest genius in math to be able to be an engineer.
If you understand the concept, then if you understand how they applied
to the world, then that's how you become a successful engineer.
>> Almost everything in the world today is part of science,
technology, engineering or math.
Just keep at it.
If it's not interesting to you give a different perspective form
someone else.