Cosa succede realmente all'interno di una galleria del vento?

Cosa succede realmente all'interno di una galleria del vento?

Ogni aereo che abbiate mai visto in cielo è stato prima testato in una stanza dove non vola assolutamente nulla. Le gallerie del vento sono, concettualmente, gli strumenti più semplici dell'ingegneria aerospaziale: prendete un tubo, metteteci aria a un'estremità, metteteci un modello al centro e misurate cosa succede. In...
The Bent Wingtips That Save Billions in Fuel

The Bent Wingtips That Save Billions in Fuel

Sit in a window seat over the wing of almost any modern airliner and you will see it: the wingtip, instead of ending in a clean point, bends sharply upward into a fin. It looks like a small design flourish. It is not. That upturned tip is quietly one of the most...
The Jet With Its Wings on Backwards

The Jet With Its Wings on Backwards

Roll the X-29 onto its back and the wings look wrong. Not damaged, not folded for storage — just backwards. Where every other jet on the ramp sweeps its wings rearward like an arrowhead, the X-29 sweeps them forward, the tips reaching out ahead of the roots as...
Air Canada Bets Big on a Smaller Jet

Air Canada Bets Big on a Smaller Jet

On the first morning of June, an Air Canada jet pushed back at Montreal and pointed its nose at Nantes, a tidy French city on the Loire that no Canadian airline had ever served nonstop. Two days later, a widebody lifted off from Toronto bound for Shanghai for the...
China Eastern Bets $9 Billion on Airbus

China Eastern Bets $9 Billion on Airbus

On a Friday afternoon in Shanghai, executives from China Eastern Airlines and Airbus signed their names to a document that quietly reshapes the balance of power in the world’s most fought-over aviation market. The deal: 25 brand-new Airbus A330-900neo widebodies, with...