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from Gainesville, Florida Hello, I'm Mike Gannon, and this is conversation. United States aircraft manufacturers are famous throughout the world for the quality and performance of their products. That fame attach is too general aviation craft, as it does to military and commercial planes. But every successful technology builds on an outstanding basic research program.

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We'll talk about some significant people and events in aerodynamics research when I return in a moment with my guest. Yeah, conversation from the University of Florida, a discussion of social, political, scientific and religious issues of the day. Your host is Dr Michael Vegan in Ring professor of ethics and assistant dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida.

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My guest on this conversation is Knocks. Millsaps, professor and chairman of engineering Sciences in the University of Florida, knocks Welcome to conversation. Oh, thank you, since we're going to talk about airplanes and the basic research behind them and any other type of spacecraft that you might want to talk about, Uh, may I start off by saying, What is your favorite aeronautic story?

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Oh, well, toe. Have to sit on the couch or sofa and tell such a story is all but impossible. I think one should be up doing pirouettes and talking. Oliver. Yeah, before we're done. Well, a few years. I was asked that question not too long ago, so I have a ready story.

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A few years ago, I was a member of the Department of Defense Aircraft Armament Board. We had two people from the Navy, two from the Air Force to from on the Army and of course, one representing the secretary of Defense to settle the battle. And the meeting was to be held in Chicago.

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One of these boards and the very distinguished chairman came to right field and we had our airplane. You may remember it. The 8 26 was a 26 interceptor. We called. It really was a bombardier. And so people he said he'd like to fly. And so he sat in the left seat and off we went to Chicago.

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In those days, we had the land at Orchard Place, which is now old hair O hare. In fact, it still has the symbols from Old Orchard Place O r d. If you e always wondered how O'Hare got those initials Org Well, we landed the 8. 26.

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It was pretty hot airplane to land. And as we landed it, we had a flat tire. And the one thing you can't do within a 26 is move it. If you have a flat tire, you could put the follow on the firewall and she won't go.

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And where did it break down? Right it a runway intersection. We tied up traffic and everything. And of course, the tower was furious. They called down to the aircraft is what idiot was in the left seat, All the sort of thing we had a comedian in the right seat who was doing the talking.

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Colonel Jarman, who was head of the aircraft Labatt. Right field time. He very coldly replied, Pile of this aircraft is Brigadier General Charles Augustus Lindbergh. Oh, really? And it was he it waas and we walked into operations. And of course, all the people came down the tower to see if it really waas Charlie and it was Lindy, and, uh, they went back up.

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Of course, it's always nice to be saved from our a nautical accident or incident by being able to report the world's greatest pilot was the cause of it. Yes, that's my favorite story. That's a great story. Well, Lindbergh was a man who not only was the world's most famous pilot, but he was interested in aerodynamics to, was he not?

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Oh, yes. And, of course, armament in such things. And incidentally, and he's, I think he made a tremendous contribution as chairman of this board. We, of course, each new how toe we thought arm aircraft. Of course, we never disagree. We never agreed. And so he settled the hash of the very services and got us, um, guns that were pretty effectively.

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What years are we talking about? Oh, this must have been in the late forties when we were still, you know, arming aircraft with machine guns and such things hadn't gone to add missiles or anything. Big question was, what caliber did you want and all this sort of thing, that many arguments for him, but and we met many hours, but I always thought it was nice toe be called the task when you had the best in the left hand seat.

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Absolutely. Speaking of the best, surely one of the best aerodynamics ist was, uh, Theodore Von Karman with whom you worked at Caltech. I know a little bit about him. Well, Torre Door was one of the the one of the great trio of modern aerodynamics ISP Randall G.

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I. Taylor being the other two. And he was a course of Hungarian who's okay was a pupil of Brandel. Came to the United States 1928 to Caltech. I have to tell that being a Caltech alumnus, I worked with von Karman. He was in addition to everything.

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He received many honors and, uh, including the Medal of Science, the first medal of Science. And he was chosen for that because he was noted both as a scientist and engineer and they wanted to start it off, right? Uh, in addition to which I believe this is Oscar night or something.

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He would have certainly 11 of those two. Someone once said of Theodore von Karman, he was the only true international Kozma polite. He spoke every language with an accent, and he was simply delightful. The only professor I've ever had who could come to class with patent leather shoes and spats and striped pants and West kits and ask a ties and the boot nailed the legend, Dania.

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And he's I can't take it then that he was engaged in basic research and was not laboring in a laboratory. Uh, well, he was a very practical engineer, though, in spite of the fact that he did engage in basic research and he did it in almost all the areas of Arun.

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Aw, Ticks. I think it would be unfair to call toward or just, uh, he was not a theorist on paper, but he Oh, very good at that. Uh, in fact, many of the great things in aerodynamics. For example, the Karman Vortex Street, which is way Fortis's come off behind the cylinder or body, is due to von Karman.

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But he was also a great structures engineer. And he was great propulsion man. He probably put us in the jet propulsion business here in the United States. Although Robert Goddard was surely the father of it, it was Carmen that really made the jump to make it a practical device.

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Although Carmen didn't do much for the turbo Chad, he really was a rocket man. Let me stop you there for a moment now. Robert Goddard was the great American experimenter with rocket engines in the 19 twenties 19 twenties, and he also worked with Lindbergh. Very interesting.

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Oh, he did. I realized there was a connection between the two. Goddard was a professor at Clark College in Massachusetts, professor of physics who played with rockets on the side and wrote Very beautiful and early papers. So this was the first work in what came to be called later Jet propulsion, right?

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But the first jet propulsion aircraft were developed in England and Germany, Germany And I think the Italians had such a cold. Uh, the United States was a late comer. Why would that be? When uh, it could boast of the pioneer figure in the whole field? Was there a prejudice?

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Goddard was, Ah, a rocket man. And, of course, the type of jet propulsion you're talking about. That is the so called air breathing jet units, which were developed by Whittle in England. Of course, the first successful ones were developed in Germany under von Oh, hi, Hans von Ohio.

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Very close personal friend of mine I worked with for many years, very famous and excellent engineer. Well, I think the reason waas we made a decision about 1943 or four. Something like that. The jet Propulsion could not have an effect on the outcome of World War Two, and therefore we wouldn't worry with it.

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Uh, and by 1945 we got very worried about that decision. And I know that personally, because I was one of a group of four officers sent to England to get the technology. Really? And so we brought it back, incidentally, Wasn't much we brought back, but it was what we had.

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But by the end of the second World War, the ah first German jet fighters were flying rings around our best plane, the 51 Mustang. But you see, if I know who had flown the first jet aircraft in 1939. So we were some six years when we really began to fly these.

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But you say the technology was not much. When you brought it back to the United States of the close of the war. What did you bring? Did you bring plans, or did you bring the planes? No. We bought the engine, they brought the engine and General Electric was authorized to bill what power jets in England had developed on the whittle and oh, people like So will Hawthorne and so on.

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And we may get back Thio Jets I I hope we do. But well, it's very important to us in Florida because we have one of the great engine manufacturers of jet engines in Florida, West Palm Beach and the government products division of Pratt and Whitney is there.

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And that's very important to us. And this Florida plant manufacturers jet engines for all types of their military government products. I see. And, uh, well, it doesn't manufacture as much as the main design operations there. They have some 1700 design engineers. They make a little of it.

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But most of us still made in Hartford the actual manufacturing. You mentioned that von Karman was responsible for defining the mechanics of vortices which come off cylindrical bodies. Uh, I hope I'm not making ah large number of mistakes in, uh in talking your language. But, uh, is this the same phenomenon that one experiences in so called clean aircraft such as jet aircraft, which leaves behind four dis ease off the wing tips that, uh, it's very dangerous turbulence for any aircraft that especially a small aircraft that comes behind it and persistent, too.

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No, it's not exactly the same thing. That's the horseshoe vortices, which would do to the finite wingspan and lift. And they're curling this way and you get caught on them with one due to von Karman. We call the Karman Vortex Street, or the voices which come off of us say, a circular cylinder and they're spaced here.

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I have to be an Italian here, here, here and here on what Von Karman first showed is the ratio of the horizontal to the vertical distance is fixed for stability. And these things looked like the drawings oven architect for putting streets trees down the street. So he picked up the name the Karman Vortex Street.

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And that's one of the famous stories in aeronautics, too. This was first photograph by the French physicists Ari Bernard and of course, Bernard wanted to know why they called it after Carmen, since he'd photographed it first. So Carmen, in a famous exchange, told him what they call the common Vortex Street in New York and London and the commission Verbal Strawser in Berlin.

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You now have my permission to call the Boulevard to Bernard in Paris. Chris, how did he photograph vortices? Smoke, smoke, uh, partially burned car asean trick we still used today. What was the practical application of this discovery? Well, if it feeds back to the body, you get vibrations, for example, that we think of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

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You remember the famous galloping Gertie? We believe that was called by the interaction of the Karman Vortex Street and the bridge. And it could be very serious, of course. You know, you hand got all the properties oven airfoil or anything else use lodged by integrating the behavior of the wait cough of it.

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This courses all due to separation and all sorts of things, but, well, I have no familiarity with those vortices, but I surely do with the other which come off the wingtips of jet aircraft, Uh, on landing or taking off or even in flight. I remember one time flying over Tampa Bay, having taken off from ST Petersburg and coming below and somewhat behind a jet making ah landing approach to Tampa International.

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And I hit the vortices and it was like being hit with an antiaircraft shell. It just charred. That could be unbelievably dangerous. I know. Well, I stay away. I keep a healthy Thio. You were head of the Air Force office of scientific Research in the early 19 sixties, and that was the time when the United States, under the leadership of President Kennedy, was first beginning to think in terms of space travel to the moon.

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Uh, what was it like? Those must have been heady and adventurous days. Well, I really had very little to do with the Apollo business, the moon business, my business. I've been chief scientist of the Air Force Missile Development Center and largely responsible for the development of air to air missiles and air to ground missiles.

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And then I was like the lieutenant that complained so much about the food they may mess. Officer, if you do that, I complained so about the research, they put me in charge of it. Then that'll teach you to keep your mouth shut. But it was very interesting.

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We of course, the military were prohibited from talking space until the Russians put the first satellite up in 57. In fact, I remember talking to a secretary of the Air Force. I'll leave nameless who wanted me to really assure him that a satellite would stay up there.

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Mm. Caused by Newton's laws has to. But he didn't exactly believe it. And then the decision was made on political grounds to go into it. I really contributed very little to that. But I did hear a great deal of the talk about it and all. I went to one of the first briefings at the White House about it.

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Geri Wisner was, of course, Kennedy's science advisor. And I've never forgotten the projector wouldn't work. And I sort of thought to myself, My God, how are we gonna put this man on the moon when we can't even get the projector toe work? But we did it by redundancy and repeated testing, you know, incident.

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I think we're in trouble now with the space shuttle because we haven't done all that testing and redundancy, and we'll patch it up. But I think it's gonna be a while now. By redundancy. Do you mean backup systems? Back up systems test test test. Back it up.

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So on. And that is the reason you think why we are experiencing all these delays with the shuttle. We're trying to do it once and do it the right way, and that's difficult. You just can't foresee the little difficulty says You probably know an airplane is a result of 10 million little decisions, any one of which could be I'll bring it to a screeching halt.

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Uh, let's not talk about it. Oh, uh, let's talk about such things as critical wings. What is a critical wing? Well, we call them supercritical wings, and, as you probably know, a PSA pilot. I'm sure you went through in your early days power on and power off stalls and felt the feeling of losing this powers You.

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I mean lift as you increase your angle of attack and then fell out until you've experienced that, you could hardly believe it. But it's usually caused by separation. That is, the airflow does not stick to the wing. In a certain sense, the major flow. Of course, the air has to stick to the wing, but it jumps suddenly and this disturbs the whole flow.

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Now, making a super critical thing. We just design it to take care of that. It comes up to a place and still so we can oh, Bill super lift lift devices were putting these on new oak, small aircraft, big ones. I think you're also going to see another interesting thing.

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Not only supercritical wings, but I think you'll see winglets winglet Stop winglets. What is the wings? Well, as you know, you were talking about these Border sees coming off the airplane. And of course, then the design of an aircraft, the finite span. You have to get the air off at the wing tip and therefore, the important thing and aerodynamic design of wings of finite span is to get this air off in the best possible way.

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And the tip of wing is very critical in the design. So one of the ways we can get it off smoother and better and so on is toe make a little winglet up. And you've seen these on birds. We're still learning things from birds as the Wright Brothers dead and so on.

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Ah, that's good idea. You'll see them on the new generation of private airplanes. I'm sure, are. Perhaps this is an unfair question. But are most of the advances in today's aircraft in the area of airfoil design or engine efficiency? Well, you're asking me to predict the future on.

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You know, H L. Mencken said that there two things. Only people of absolute genius do write a fugue or predict the future. I've written a few. It sounded awful s so I'm not sure about the future. But I suspect that our biggest advances will be made in engines in the next few years because we've not made them very effective because fuel was cheap.

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And I think we'll improve that. In fact, there's a tremendous program on now called the Cube Program Effect Energy effective engine development. Alright, but you're talking about hydrogen, perhaps? Oh, yes. You see, uh, the fuel costs about to eat us out of house and home and aeronautics thes days, as you know, from being a pilot.

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And moreover, just the shortage of fossil fuels and something we've always had in the back of our mind is using hydrogen. It would be nice and clean. Just give you water. Environmentalists wouldn't worry about it. There's plenty of it, plenty of it. But you have to get it into hydrogen that takes one a large amount of energy.

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And but if we lose fossil fuels and you don't have enough of them. Maybe we could afford to make it. And then we learned the tremendous about amount about hydrogen technology and the, you know, space program we might be able to apply. For example, I've always run some calculations and I get something about three times the size of a 7.

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47 is necessary. But mhm. People like Kelly Johnson of a few people like that say they believe they could do it with a 707 with a little extended few Slavs, and they can have become nice. Are there already in existence working hydrogen engines? Oh, yes. In fact, the first turbojet engine Jews Tatra gin because they had so much difficulty igniting the fossil fuels, they did the development with hydrogen Fano Heinz original engines were run with hydrogen.

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And so we know we can do that. The real question is, can you the technology of handling the fuel, What is its bookie? The the fuel containers bookie. Enormous. And of course, has to be cryogenic because we want to carry it. Is liquid hydrogen cryogenic? That means it must be below freezing.

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All right, Speaking of cold on, this is going to be quite a switch for me here. Senator Mansfield of Montana, now ambassador to Japan, ambassador to Japan at one time, was very insulted. I'm told by the allegation of some scientists from some unnamed universities that senators and congressmen were not very intelligent, not very knowledgeable about scientific matters.

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And that led to what some called the Mansfield Amendment, which was rather punitive in character. When if you tell the background to that because that happened when you were in Washington, I believe it happened afterwards. Fortunately, alright. He put on this amendment that said that any mission, any basic research the Department of Defense did had the mission oriented.

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That means you had to tie it to a an aircraft or something. If the Air Force did it, for example, I know Senator Mansfield. I was rather fonder of him. He was Montana. I think he'd been a professor of political science at my minister s Well, I think any scientist or any memory that the executive office that insults in any way the majority leader of the Senate has made a mistake, although, you know the Mansfield amendment really wasn't so bad because von Karman said the same thing.

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The Air Force shouldn't support research. That wasn't applicability to the goals of the Air Force. Do you believe that? I understand that there is a widespread Well, I couldn't believe it or disbelieve. And the reason I could do that is I don't think anybody ever knows what research is useful to the Air Force chemistry of Berry.

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Um, that produced fishing. Um, well, Lord, rarely analyzing lofting of a tennis ball, gave us the modern theory of lift on an airfoil. That's where we learned about circulation. Well, you would say the Air Force shouldn't support the game of tennis, But if Lord really place it, perhaps we should Perhaps we should.

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And so I don't worry too much about that. Although I do worry some about it because if you don't support, I believe that the military potential of of a country such as ours is dependent upon its scientific, the status of its scientific research, including basic research that is not necessarily mission oriented.

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That's right. And, uh yet, on the other hand, if the military, for example, were the only people supporting research, I don't think that would be very good either. so I like concepts like the National Science Foundation, which are responsible for the general health. You mentioned tennis balls and that reminded me of golf balls.

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And of the only other aerodynamics ist that I've met, I suppose in my lifetime. Nikolai Nikolai Aids. Yes, yes, I met him and talked with him one day, and he told me about the golf ball that he devised where he arranged the indentations irregularly rather than regularly as they had previously been imprinted on the surface of the golf ball and the irregular in, uh, impressions gave a much longer flight to the ball.

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I've heard this. I hope it's successful because I'd like one of my members of my fraternity enjoying the good life. I know if I played golf, I would hope for something better. I really don't see it's It's all that improvement. This man Nicolaides was fascinating. Oh, yes, he was into everything.

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I think he still is, although he for many years was head of the Department of Notre Dame. He's left there and he's gone to the West Coast. I believe he's a Cal Poly now, although I'm not sure, and he's trying to develop ah Wing. I don't know what it's called, but well, I should just drop it there.

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But he's heavily into air foils. Oh, I know, and it's I don't exactly know what he's doing there, but I have heard a little bit about it. He manages toe get on TV frequently. 60 minutes. I see him on occasion on. I don't know what he talks about.

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Well, knocks. What are you doing now? We've only got a couple of minutes left, but, uh, teaching statics. All right, now what? What statics? Well, it's the fundamental subject in engineering. You want to know what the loads and members are when the problem is static and you know, very few buildings fly and they shouldn't flap too much in the breeze.

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Or if they do, we should know the loads. So it's the fundamental subject. Its application of Newtonian mechanics toe the loads and conditions under which a body usually rigid or slightly so or in most elastic Oh, I guess plastic to ours in, uh, static equilibrium. And it's a fundamental subject we make all engineers take it, and I'm teaching it now.

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Although I had the pleasure of teaching compressible fluids last quarter. I like that. Compressible fluids? Yes. I well be an example of air Air PV equals rt perfect knew that It just slipped my mind there for a minute. And that's great fun. I had a wonderful class and I enjoyed it.

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Although compressible fluids or not, my feel, I always want to teach viscous fluids. But somebody up that doesn't like me and makes me teach compressive. May I make a guess that viscous fluids are swanky? Sticky oil? Yes, but there's, you know, even at a fighter going at 1000 miles an hour, 1000 knots.

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The air molecule sticks to the airfoil. It has to because other, well, otherwise have left or anything. Otherwise you couldn't have left. I get that. I get the basic logic behind that. Balls forces. All right, I'll take your course some one of these years. Thank you very much.

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Knocks my guest on conversation. Knocks Millsaps, professor and chairman of Engineering Sciences in the University of Florida. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah,