At 08:22 PM 5/18/98 -0700, Diann MacRae wrote:

>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, all traveling at maximum velocity. The idea is to simulate the
>frequent incidents of collisions with airborne fowl to test the strength
>of the windshields.

This story crops up many times. Actually, the first time I heard it was
in regard to jet engines being able to ingest birds. Considering that
the thrust behind a small Citation can pin you to the wall a hundred
yards away (personal experience), and that a 747-sized Rolls generates
an order of magnitude more thrust, and that the thrust comes from sucking
air into the front of the fan through the engine and out the back and
that the thrust is limited only by the mass and exit velocity of the
air sucked in...well, the birds don't hit windshields.

They hit engine fans and break blades.

>British engineers heard about the gun and were eager to test it on the
>windshields of their new high speed trains. Arrangements were made. 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 to
>smithereens, crashed through the control console, snapped the engineer's
>backrest in two and embedded itself in the back wall of the cabin.
>Horrified Britons 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."

And this is EXACTLY the thrust of the original form of this urban legend.
Except that originally it was the USAF or FAA or NTSB or some such shooting
frozen chickens at static-mounted airliner/bomber/fighter engines.

The train spin on the tale is a cute divergence, but I regret to announce
that I first saw it at least two years ago...



- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza at pacifier.com>
Nature photos, on-line guides, and other goodies at
http://donb.photo.net