In the not too distant memory of our predecessors, the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory or NASA Langley was a “City Upon a Hill” (see John Winthrop, A Model of Christian Charity, 1630) in that it was the wind tunnel capital of the world. The world looked upon us with envy and watched what we did. …
Continue reading “Temples of the Wind: From Langley to China”
A long time ago, when I was at NASA, I remember the closure of the Shuttle program. In its subsequent place and alongside the relative success of commercial crew, came the Space Launch System (SLS). Working in aeronautics and research, I assumed I would remain involved in fundamental research. That did not last, and by …
I finally published my compressible flow notes online. They are under classes – comp. flow. They are the result of teaching the course over nine years at University of Florida. I compressed the file a bit to conserve my website bandwidth. Enjoy!
Recently my cousin and family member Paul Liebhardt passed away. He worked at NASA for a time and then became a photographer. While a photographer, he traveled internationally. His work as a photographer is well known. The remembrance celebration (link below) shows nice videos and writing of his students coming together from various paths of …
Continue reading “Remembering Family – Photographer Paul Liebhardt”
I received word via the NASA Alumni Association that Dennis Bushnell passed away. Dennis Bushnell was a long-serving Chief Scientist of NASA Langley Research Center. I remember meeting him for the first time when there was internal research funding available at NASA for researchers. I wrote a proposal on fluid thrust factoring of a particular …
Recently I lost a friend, Olaf O. Storaasli, Ph.D., due to medical complications. I first met him through the NASA Langley Alumni Association after giving a lecture titled Life After Academics. Although we did not overlap during my time at NASA, we connected through shared experiences. Later, he and his wife visited Florida, and I …
Below is an article that is upcoming in the NASA Alumni newsletter without images. “The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in the cradle forever.” – Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Modern rocketry began with foundational work by pioneers such as Tsiolkovsky, Oberth, Goddard, and the American Rocket Society. Their theoretical and experimental advances …
Continue reading “The Three Pillars of Rocketry Culminating in Human Spaceflight”
Our present research airplanes have developed startling performance only by the use of rocket engines and flying essentially in a vacuum. Testing airplanes designed for transonic flight speeds at Mach numbers between 2 and 3 has proven, mainly, the bravery of the test pilots and the fact that where there is no drag, the rocket …
My senior colleague, Professor J. Chung, won the NASA Exceptional Public Service Medal. Amazing. https://news.yahoo.com/news/nasa-awards-uf-professor-exceptional-192254541.html
https://everloved.com/life-of/stephen-jurczyk/obituary/ It seems just like yesterday that I was at NASA Langley working for a short time under then Director Stephen G. Jurczyk. He passed away just recently on Thanksgiving of 2023. He helped propel my career in the later stages of my time at Langley. One thing that I appreciated a lot about Stephen …
