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Thanks Shelly, and welcome back. It's at this point in our design process that we begin

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to refine our design. We do that by using scale models of the configuration and testing

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them in the wind tunnel. With me now is Zach Applin, who's head of some of our subsonic

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aerodynamics research here at Langley. Zach, why don't you take it from here.

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Hi Mike. Many models can be made of an airplane concept. There can be part of the airplane,

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such as a wing or a tail, or the entire airplane itself. These models can range in size from

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just a few inches to as large as 12 feet, as the 737 model behind us. We build these

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models up in this wind tunnel on top of these large 80,000 pound gantries. When we're ready

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for tests, powerful jets actually float the entire structure about an inch off the floor.

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We then move the entire assembly into the wind tunnel for testing.

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A wind tunnel is basically a giant tapered tube with a large fan in the circuit. The

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wind tunnel simulates the flow of air as it glides over the plane's surface. Doing this

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in a wind tunnel gives us very controlled conditions to test out concepts from the design

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people. Talking about the blended wing body, we found the design to be very successful

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so far. It holds a lot of promise for the future.

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Thanks Zach. Some of the concepts that you've seen today may very well be the airplanes

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you're flying in tomorrow. Math, science, engineering, teamwork and problem solving

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are all important tools that have to be available for these airplanes to come into being for

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you in the future. Now back to you Shelly.