Word: rotors
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...flew off real quick and were far from the snowbound road before we got used to the noise of the rotor and the sight of the damage below. Thirty minutes of waiting and, finally, the other helicopter appeared. It was now a race against Western Airlines--calls were made to hold the flight and the bus was warmed up but the members of our group weren't on that shift. A woman got off, with two small children and six large suitcases. It had cost her $300 to go fifteen minutes in the air but her fur showed that...
...project of the Department of Energy and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the windmill ?more correctly, wind turbine?has a body by Westinghouse and blades by Lockheed, and cost $1.25 million. Parked by its side is a van full of monitoring equipment and computers that start the rotor turning when the wind hits 12 m.p.h. and shut it off, to prevent it from wearing out, at 40 m.p.h. Since winds averaging nearly 15 m.p.h. blow through Clayton almost every day, the turbine more often than not will be generating 200 kw. of electricity?enough to power 60 homes...
...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...
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...