Word: rotor
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...Rhodesian air force (1,300 men) makes do with a fleet of about 50 planes, many obsolete, and about 20 Alouette helicopters. Spare parts are such a luxury that when choppers are pockmarked by guerrilla small-arms fire, ground crews literally bandage damaged rotor blades with adhesive tape and send the helicopters back into...
Last week, on a clear afternoon, disaster occurred. Half a dozen people had already boarded Flight 972 bound for Kennedy, and another dozen were waiting in line as the helicopter's five-blade rotor whirled 17 ft. above their heads. Gradually the big blue-and-white helicopter rolled over on its right side. The rotating blades tilted downward, slicing into three male bystanders and badly injuring a fourth, an Italian visitor, who later died. Some of the blades hit the concrete roof and disintegrated, pieces striking people on the walkway; ten were injured. Part of a blade plummeted...
...long aluminum blades. When these blades begin turning in the summer breezes off Lake Erie later this month, they should produce as much as 100 kilowatts of electricity, enough to meet the needs of 30 one-family homes. Other projects range from a large eggbeater-shaped rotor being tested by New Mexico's Sandia Laboratories to small sail-driven devices created by such ecology-minded outfits as R. Buckminster Fuller's Windworks in Wisconsin and the food-growing New Alchemy Institute on Cape Cod (TIME, March 17). Long Island's Energetics Nine, Inc., recently started selling wind...
Advances in metallurgy and aerodynamics make such disasters much less likely today. NASA's Ohio windmill, for instance, borrows directly from helicopter design. Like a chopper's rotor, the 2,000-lb. blades can be "feathered" (or turned on their axes), by manual control; they will continue to whirl at a steady 40 r.p.m. even as the wind varies. In future NASA models, chip-sized computers developed for spacecraft will monitor the performance of the windmills and automatically command them to adjust to wind changes...
...have to. Inside the airbase, a damaged American helicopter, one skid broken off, lay on the ground, its rotor still spinning. A tremendous explosion rocked our bus as a North Vietnamese 130-mm. shell hit the Air America terminal just across the road. "Don't panic!" shouted our Marine escort...