[ Jet engine revving up ]
[ Sonic boom ]
[ Music ]
>> From an early age, I found
that I had a fair amount
of mechanical intellect
just from playing
with Legos and K'Nex.
From the crazy designs that
I used to come up with,
it was pretty obvious to
me that I needed to go
into something with design.
[ Music ]
>> When I was a kid,
I raised birds,
and I also liked
everything mechanical.
I got a car from my grandpa,
and I took it completely apart
and put it back together again.
Here's the HUD
camera prototype.
I want to see if it fits.
That's way too big.
This is the HUD right there.
>> Yeah.
>> So, yeah, we don't
have much room at all.
I've always liked
mechanical things,
and I think engineering was
just the perfect fit for me.
I think I was born to do this.
[ Music ]
>> I went to air shows when I
was a kid where you could fly
in the plane for a penny a pound
so it was a pretty good
deal when you're little.
And I think, at that
point in time,
I always thought I'd be working
on aircraft in the future.
Aero mechanical design group
integrates hardware and systems
into typical military
and commercial aircraft
to make them flight
research vehicles.
>> A common task for the
design group is creating
and designing a bracket
or a fixtures
to hold a research instrument
on one of our airplanes.
>> You might have a new probe
that goes on an airplane
and they want to fly it on an
F-15, we'll help build a probe
or tell them where
they can put it
or tell them what their limits
are and what we can do for them.
>> Generally, it'll
be an instrument
that measures something
in the air or some sort
of camera system, that
kind of thing as far
as taking what somebody
already did
and integrating it
into the aircraft.
>> We are the middleman
in coming up with the data
for research projects.
>> A lot of the design work
that we do has to account
for the environment that
airplanes operate in.
That might include climate,
where it gets very cold
and very hot, and being able to
function well in the air stream
if something is mounted on
the outside of the airplane.
It also has to account
for precipitation
and corrosive effects of
the environment to make sure
that the air worthiness
of the part isn't
compromised during its mission.
For example, if a sensor is
being mounted to the skin
of a wing, we might have to
design or change the shape
of the wing to allow for proper
airflow around it during flight.
>> This is our Gulfstream
aircraft.
And right now we're
testing a morphing flap.
Basically, this flap flexes
instead of actuates downwards.
My job in this project was to
facilitate the installation
of the flap into the wing.
Some of those roles
include creating drawings
for structural components
that attach the two together
and providing up-to-date
inspections,
verifying that the flap
surfaces align well
with the predicted flap data.
Right now, I'm going to
bring in the reference model
for the right wing that the
scan will be compared to.
And you can see that we
have a really good match.
Basically, the green shows
that the two surfaces
are aligned very well.
The blue surface is showing that
the surface is slightly below
where we predicted
and red slightly above.
It's important for us to know
that the two surfaces
are aligned well
because previous
predictions were based off
of an idealized model.
The idealized model tells
us that the plane is safe.
However, if we go
back and we find
out that the actual airplane
is not joining up well
with that idealized
model, our predictions
for flight safety
are no longer valid.
[ Airplane Sounds ] [ Music ]
[ Background conversation ]
>>If we can-- if we put the cone
on and then just leave it.
Can we leave it for a while?
We'll come up with the design
and then we'll often times
run it by the crew and decide
if it's okay with them
as to where we put it
and how it's going
to be mounted.
And then we'll have
structures people look at it.
Knock, knock.
>> Yeah?
>> We'll take the preliminary
drawings down to the shop,
either sheet-metal or the
machine shop, and have them look
at it-- see how manufacturable
it is.
Is there a lot of difference between
manufacturability as far
as aluminum vs. stainless-?
>> Absolutely.
>> On these parts?
>> Oh, yeah.
>> Aluminum would give
us a good trial maybe.
>> That's fine. We could always come back and make another one.
>> Right.
>> Are you redrawing
this now, then?
Are you making
some modifications?
>> I'm just making the fixes.
>> Okay.
>> All right.
>> And then when you
do, bring it back over.
>> Yeah, I will.
>> So we can look it over again.
>> That sounds good.
>> Okay.
>> Thank you sir.
>> All righty.
>> All right.
This is the inside
of that nose cone
that we're looking to put on.
We've gotten the nominal
sizes of the equipment
from instrumentation and
we put that on the pallet.
We only have so much real estate
so we have to just make sure
that everything is adequately
spaced, we know how big it is.
And we're just taking those
components and doing a--
just making sure we have
enough room for everything.
[ Airplane taking off ]
>> In SOFIA, we added all kinds
of things to the aircraft inside
and outside, pretty extensive
modifications on that aircraft.
We had to install large
thermal insulation blankets
and foam insulation into
the telescope cavity.
We added maintenance
stairways and scaffolding
into the cavity,
added all the racks.
[ Airplane landing ]
>> After the part
has been installed
and it's been signed off, we may
be called back to do revisions
if the project requirements
change while the part is
being used.
For example, we found that
the cameras on the back
of the aircraft were
getting way too cold.
Because they were getting cold,
they were distorting
the lens and, thus,
distorting the picture
that people were seeing
in the control room.
I'll be taking a look at that
and trying to find out a way
to prevent the cameras
from getting too cold
so we don't have this
problem in the future.
>> The HD camera goes to minus
22 degrees when we're at 40,000.
>> I think what's happening
is you've got an aluminum body
which contracts a lot with cold.
>> Exactly. Yeah.
>> And it's just
crushing the lands.
>> So it's not even
the polycarbonate that's the problem,
It's the body.
>> If we take the
case that you can--
you're talking about and
we cut it in such a way
that we fit it into--
like take-out--
>> This RTV.
Make this hole a
little bit bigger
and then glue the case to the panel, so that the camera's still not really touching the case...
>> That sounds good.
Okay. We'll do that.
>> I like designing because I
get to try to be imaginative,
try to figure out things, develop my own ideas on how to do something.
It's interesting to me.
>> You never know what good idea is going to turn into something great.
>> One of the coolest things
about my job is I get to work
on nearly all the
airplanes at the center.
On one particular day,
I might be working
on a remote control airplane, a
glider, and a fighter aircraft.
On another, it might be a 747
or a small propellered airplane.
What keeps the job interesting
is the great amount of variety
of design tasks that
are always required.
We provide support in many
engineering areas kind
of like handymen for
the engineering world.
>> I think a lot of people think that engineering isn't creative as art or something,
but there's a lot of different things you can do with the facts you have.
And that's what I like about engineering. We're doing good science and we're trying to make the world a
better place.
To get paid to have fun to do things like that- to do good things and feel good about it-
I can't think of a better combination, really.
