First up, I got to attend this year's United Family Day at the SFO Maintenance facilities. This year, I brought along Brent & Mary to see things too!
A pic of the Pratt & Whitney engine used in the Boeing 777 undergoing some maintenance (random person on the left for scale).
The tail rudder of a United aircraft getting painted after maintenance.
The mechanics here did a demonstration of the "reversers" on engines which allow thrust to be redirected forwards (rather than backwards) in order to help slow the plane down during landing. Very cool.
Brent agreed that this area of the facility has an impressive safety record.
For the first time I've visited this event, they had a FedEx B757 cargo plane opened up and I got to hop onboard to see the cavernous cargo hold. You actually have a lot of room in those planes when you take out all the seats!
As always, they do a plane pull event for groups to compete. In previous years, I hadn't ever hung around to watch this happen, but this year we stuck around to watch a group of Scouts do the pull. Nice job! By the way, we had exceptionally warm weather that day...so awesome...except for when we had to line-up and wait for things on the tarmac.
Secondly, I had the privilege of attending the NASA Ames 75th Anniversary Open House. This marked the first time in 17 years that they opened up parts of the facility to the public. Somewhat surprisingly, an extraordinary number of people decided to attend, thus crowding up many of the booths and displays.
An impressive side view of the wind tunnel at the Full Scale Aerodynamics Complex. The opening to the right spans 80 feet by 120 feet and is the largest wind tunnel in the world.
A model mockup of a V-22 Osprey that they used for testing within the wind tunnel. Above, you can see people walking along the walkway, which gives you an idea of the size of the wind tunnel!
We kept on walking and saw this Roverscape testing area (the size of 2 football fields) where they have terrain that simulates surfaces that rovers may encounter during their mission (e.g. lunar craters and Martian hills).
The Prometheus crew with the frame of Hangar One behind us. Thanks so much to Liz for the event tickets and for showing us around your workplace!
An interior look at Hangar One. Constructed in the 1930's to house the USS Macon (a large, helium filled dirigible/airship), it covers 8 acres.
Finally, they had a few military planes on display as well and while we go the chance to walk around the exterior of this C-130, we got there too late and couldn't tour the interior. Still yet, a very cool experience to get up close to this giant plane that I occasionally see circling the skies in Mountain View and dropping paratroopers.
All in all, two great events where I got up close to some really cool commercial, scientific and military sites and equipment!
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