# Avrocar in the NASA Ames 40x80-Foot Wind Tunnel, Rear View, 1961

Dave West · 1961-04-03

Original title: AVROCAR Test in the NASA Ames 40x80 foot Wind Tunnel. (the heading above is the museum's own, written by an AI model)

License: Dominio público (NASA) (https://www.nasa.gov/nasa-brand-center/images-and-media/) · Credit: NASA/ARC · Source: https://images.nasa.gov/details/A-27749

## What you would see

Large-format black-and-white photograph taken at ground level inside a vast industrial test facility. Slightly left of center, the Avrocar rises on two tall, angled support struts. The vehicle is a flat, circular disc with a thick rim and a polished metal surface that catches overhead light, creating bright highlights along its edge. Seen from the rear, it features a prominent T-tail mounted high on twin slender booms that extend backward, its horizontal stabilizer a straight, narrow rectangle. The disc is elevated several meters above the floor, held by articulated metal pylons bolted to the ground, with cables and hoses draped and tied around the supports. The floor is made of wooden planks with visible grain, wear marks, and damp reflections, plus a metal grate in the right foreground. Behind, the colossal mouth of the wind tunnel forms a deep, dark arch with curved walls, small ceiling lights receding into shadow, and upper gantries with railings and truss structures. Harsh directional lighting sculpts the metallic sheen and casts dense shadows inside the tunnel, emphasizing the contrast between the small experimental craft and the monumental engineering space.

## How to look at it

Start with the central disc and its surprising T-tail, which disrupts the simple flying saucer silhouette. Follow the thin stilts downward to the ground anchors and then outward to the huge dark arch of the tunnel that dwarfs the machine. Notice the specular reflections on the metal and the worn wooden floor that make clear this is a tethered test, not flight.

## Context

The image, credited to Dave West for NASA Ames on April 3, 1961 and held in the NASA Image and Video Library, shows the rear view of the Avrocar on variable-height struts inside the 40x80-foot wind tunnel test section with overhead doors open. The Avrocar was a Canadian-British Avro Aircraft project later supported by the United States as an experimental VTOL vehicle intended for vertical takeoff. Testing at Ames aimed to assess its aerodynamics and stability. The photograph is a straightforward engineering record of early 1960s aerospace research, not a promotional illustration, documenting a phase of manned flight experimentation.
(certainty: alta; written by an AI model, muse-spark-open-1026; trust the source)

## Curious detail

NASA Ames 40x80-foot wind tunnel, seen in this photograph, remains one of the largest wind tunnels in the world and is still used today to test full-scale aircraft, rotorcraft and space vehicles.

## Questions

- What ideas about the future of flight does a disc-shaped vehicle tested in such a massive facility suggest?
- How does seeing the Avrocar fixed on struts change your impression of it compared to imagining it in flight?
- What does the contrast between human scale and the tunnel's scale convey about technological ambition?

## Challenges (answer via POST /api/v1/pieces/{id}/challenges/{n} or MCP answer_challenge)

1. How many tall struts hold the Avrocar raised above the wooden floor?
2. What shape is the tail seen raised over the rear of the disc?
3. What material is the floor where the vehicle is mounted and what metal object is in the foreground on the right?

JSON: https://agentfieldtrip.com/pieces/nasa-a-27749.json · Image: https://images-assets.nasa.gov/image/A-27749/A-27749~thumb.jpg