[ Music ]
>> My earliest interest
in science really stemmed
from my love of nature and
the outdoors and wanting
to understand why the world
worked the way it worked
and why animals did the
things that they did.
My parents recognized
pretty early
on that I was a very curious
kid, and did their best
to encourage that, and I was
lucky enough to have teachers
who also instilled and
fostered that curiosity in me.
My name is Erin Waggoner,
and I'm an aerospace engineer
in the aerodynamics
and propulsion branch,
and I work for NASA.
So, I got into engineering,
and then I ultimately went
and majored in aerospace
engineering
at Wichita State University
and minored in math.
Because I knew I ultimately
wanted to end up at NASA someday
for my career, I
applied to be a co-op
through the school's
co-op office.
The boom was very faint
across the entire carpet.
So, I ended up getting picked
up by NASA Armstrong and I came
out here sight-unseen.
I absolutely loved
the work I was doing.
I started out on SOFIA, and the
I had the luck to go over to CEV
and then X-48, so I got to see a
lot of the very unique projects
that were coming through
here in the early 2010s era.
And, I got a call, just before
I was graduating from college,
with a formal job
offer from here,
and it was my dream come true.
Essentially, my job
entails everything
from planning a flight
test all the way
through executing a
fight test and looking
at the data afterwards.
My current project is the
acoustic research measurement,
or ARM-3 flights.
ARM-3 uses a large
microphone array that's set
up in a spiral pattern called
a beam-forming microphone array
to measure aircraft noise off
of a G-III, and essentially,
what we're doing is trying to
measure aircraft noise and look
at aircraft noise
mitigation measures.
So, we have various fairings
and flaps and cavity treatments
that we've put on the
airplane, and we're trying
to see what the effect
of those treatments is
on the overall noise
signature of the airplane.
>> Three, two, one, mark.
>> The beam-forming array is
also called an acoustic camera.
It gives you a picture of
an airplane that looks a lot
like a heat map, if you've
ever seen a heat map,
but in the picture of the
airplane that we end up getting,
red is noisy, or
loud, instead of hot.
So, we can use this to tell
where the noisiest parts
of the airplane are, and we can
use this to figure out if any
of our mitigations
have been successful,
and to what extent they
have been successful.
>> [inaudible] copy.
Let's go ahead and
move to 165, gear up.
>> Two zero.
>> During an ARM flight, the
G-III flies, essentially,
an approach over the
microphone array.
>> Three, two, one,
descend, two point three.
>> Well, before they
reach the array,
the pilots have throttled
back the engines so that it's
as quiet as possible, from
an engine perspective,
while they're over the array.
We also have them fly at
various different airspeeds,
and with various
different flap deflections,
because that will affect
the noise signature.
So, on the other side
of the sound barrier,
I do more acoustic research on
the supersonic side of things.
It's not a boom that happens
once, or it's not a boom
that happens once or twice,
in that a lot of people think,
"Okay, so I've sped up.
I've broken through
this sound barrier.
It's gone.
I'm no longer producing a sonic
boom, and then when I slow down,
and I brake through
it the other way,
now I'm going to make a boom."
It's really not like that.
It's more like a wake on a boat,
so as long as it's
moving supersonically,
or over the speed of sound,
you're going to continue
to drag, effectively, a wake
of a sonic boom with you
through the air that
will reach the ground.
I've worked on SonicBAT
recently, and that was a test
to look at how sonic
booms propagate
through a turbulent atmosphere.
During that project, I had the
privilege to fly in the TG-14
and record the sonic booms
between where they were produced
on the aircraft and where they
were recorded on the ground.
The rationale behind
using the TG-14 is it's
because it's a motorized glider,
so the engine can be turned off
and on in the middle
of a flight,
and it's a very quiet aircraft.
So, the F-18 would
produce the boom
from a very specific location
and at a very specific airspeed.
The TG-14 would record the
boom as it had propagated
through the atmosphere prior to
it hitting the turbulent layer,
and then the microphone arrays
on the ground would have record
how that sonic boom sounded
on the ground after it had gone
through the layer of turbulence.
The way I describe
engineering now is
that you have this giant
puzzle, and you have
to follow some rules in
order to solve your problem,
but the only rules that you have
to follow are physics and math.
And, if you follow
physics and math
and you can find the
right technology,
you can solve any
problem you want to solve.
>> Go on up.
>> I mean, ultimately,
I just feel very blessed
to be able to work here.
That's what I wanted.
You can't let anybody
define your path for you.
>> Six flight copy, clear
takeoff [inaudible].
>> You have to have the
confidence in yourself to go
after your goals and to
go after your dreams,
and you can't let
those people deter you.
[ Jet Noise ]
[ Music ]
