True story, about 15 years old or so. Read it first in the pages of
Aviation Week & Space Technology....
John Marlow wrote:
>
> Urban legend? I dunno. I know the Air Force has these things, so it
> seems perfectly credible (not to mention damned funny). Subject
> mine; text from Somewhere Out There...
>
> john marlow
>
> Sometimes it DOES take a Rocket Scientist....
> Scientists at NASA have developed a gun built specifically to
> launch dead chickens at the windshields of airliners, military jets
> and the space shuttle. These traveling collisions with airborne
> fowl are used to test the strength of windshields. British
> engineers heard about the gun and were eager to test it on the
> windshield of their new high- speed trains. Arrangements were
> made to borrow the gun. But when the gun was fired, the
> engineers stood shocked as the chicken hurtled out of the
> barrel, crashed into the shatterproof shield, smashed it into
> smithereens, crashed through the control console, snapped the
> engineer's backrest in two, and embedded itself in the back wall of
> the cabin.
>
> Horrified, Britain sent NASA the disastrous results of the
> experiment, along with the designs of the windshield, and begged
> the U.S. scientists for suggestions. NASA's response was just
> one sentence:
>
> "Thaw the chicken."
>
> John Marlow
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:59:44 MDT