The operational art of war iv bob cross12/21/2023 ![]() Today, MIT is home to the most advanced academic wind tunnel in the country, capable of reaching wind speeds up to 230 miles per hour (mph), with the largest test section in U.S. Kohler Professor and director of the Wright Brothers Wind Tunnel, at the helm. In 2017, the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro) announced it would replace the tunnel with a brand-new facility thanks to a lead funding commitment from Boeing with Drela, now the Terry J. Still, by the time Drela had his fateful first encounter, it was already showing its age. ![]() Since its dedication in 1938, the Wright Brothers Wind Tunnel has become a campus landmark used for education, research, industry, and outreach. ![]() He was the first AeroAstro person I met on campus, and he could see how excited I was, so he gave me a tour.” I ran up and knocked on the door, and Frank Durgin answered. “It was my very first day on MIT's campus, so I was just wandering around when I turned the corner and saw it - whoa! A wind tunnel! And it's a big one!” says Drela ’82, SM ’83, PhD ’85. But nothing could have prepared him for the first time he saw the iconic Wright Brothers Wind Tunnel, a moment that would tie into his later career and eventually impact the very fabric of MIT's campus. Just two years before, he constructed a 1-foot-by-1-foot wind tunnel for the Westinghouse Science Talent Search that earned him a visit to the White House as a finalist. When Mark Drela first set foot in Cambridge to study aerospace engineering at MIT in 1978, he was no stranger to wind tunnels.
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