you
plum Brook a field station of the Lewis
research center is located about 50
miles west of Lewis on sixty four
hundred acres of land this vast acreage
provides the required clear zones needed
for safely conducting potentially
dangerous aerospace tests several large
unique aerospace test facilities are
located at plum Brook these facilities
are available to support major national
aerospace test programs one of these
facilities the space power facility is
the world's largest space environment
simulation chamber 100 feet in diameter
x 122 feet high in this chamber large
space bound hardware can be ground
tested in a severe environment similar
to that encountered in space the chamber
air can be removed to simulate the
vacuum conditions of space up to an
altitude of about 145 statute miles
charged argon gas can be added to the
chamber while it's at vacuum to simulate
the actual space plasma environment of
low-earth orbit the very cold
temperatures of space can be duplicated
by means of a cryogenic cold wall the
very hot temperatures by means of a
quartz lamp heater even the actual
sunlight experienced in space can be
simulated with an existing 400 kilowatt
arc lamp in 1989 under a cooperative
agreement between the General Dynamics
Corporation and NASA this chamber
supported payload fairing separation
tests for a new generation of atlas 1
launch vehicles a few months after
testing at plum Brook the newly designed
fairing successfully protected the
combined release and radiation effects
satellite as it was launched into
low-earth orbit on board the atlas sent
our vehicle in 1990 the space power
facility qualified expensive flight
hardware for the SDI program here you
see a 100 kilowatt power
why being processed in a class 10,000
clean room located inside the huge
vacuum chamber ground testing of this
power supply simulated performance in a
high altitude space plasma environment
more recently this chamber supported
jettison testing of the eighty six foot
tall 16-foot diameter titan for payload
fairing under a cooperative agreement
between the US air force the martin
marietta company and nasa this fairing
the largest ever tested in a vacuum
chamber had internal payload space
dimensions approximating the Space
Shuttle Orbiter Bay here you see the ten
thousand pound titan four fairing being
jettisoned under vacuum conditions in
the test chamber at plum brook scheduled
for nineteen ninety-three is the Erion
five payload fairing separation test for
the european space agency and for 1994
and ninety-five the Space Station
freedom electric power generation system
test for the NASA Lewis research center
and the Space Station freedom laboratory
module radiator test for the Johnson
Space Center not only is the space power
facility the world's largest space
environment testing chamber it is also
the world's only large vacuum chamber
capable of handling the highly
radioactive tests that would be needed
to develop space nuclear electric power
generation systems this is possible
because the chamber walls are made of
aluminum which has a low Neutron capture
cross section this keeps the chamber
walls from becoming highly radioactive
if a space nuclear power reactor is
operated inside the aluminum chamber is
contained within a second vacuum chamber
that has eight foot thick concrete walls
which serve as a radiation shield
adjacent to the chamber is a large
disassembly area which also has eight
foot thick concrete walls this building
can be used for remote control
disassembly of large radioactive
hardware
after tests are complete although the
space power facility has not yet been
used for nuclear testing it stands ready
to support such space power supply
development programs another of plum
brooks world-class facilities is the
spacecraft propulsion research facility
here large upper stage rocket vehicles
can be hot fired in a simulated space
environment a 38-foot diameter by 55
foot high stainless steel vacuum chamber
is capable of simulating pressures of 1
times 10 to the minus 6 tour or about
115 statute miles altitude a full-sized
launch vehicle up to 100,000 pound
thrust capability can be loaded in the
chamber through the top hatch and
secured to the bed plate a cryogenic
cold wall simulates the cold
temperatures of space a quartz lamp
heater array simulates the heat from the
Sun the facility was designed and built
to safely handle the large quantities of
liquid hydrogen and oxygen carried on a
fully fueled centaur vehicle in test
firings of fueled vehicles conducted by
remote control from a blockhouse a half
mile away vehicles experience an
environment similar to that in space at
the moment of firing an 11 foot diameter
high vacuum valve springs open at the
bottom of this diffuser tube and
releases the rocket exhaust products to
the spray chamber below the 150 foot
deep spray chamber is filled with a
chilled water spray that is used to cool
down the exhaust from the rocket at the
same time huge steam ejectors pump out
the exhaust products from the firing and
maintain a high altitude condition
throughout the tests in 1987 the vacuum
chamber portion of this facility
supported testing of flight hardware for
the SDI program
ground testing of high-voltage power
supplies in a simulated space plasma
environment determined flight
performance in advance this facility may
be fully reactivated to support advanced
upper stage launch vehicle development
for programs such as the space
exploration initiative to Mars the third
space environment chamber at plum Brook
the 25 foot diameter cryogenic
propellant tank facility is being used
to develop the technology for storing
and transferring liquid hydrogen in
space recently an 800-gallon slush
hydrogen batch production plant the
nation's first was constructed at the
site to support development testing for
the national aerospace plane here you
see liquid hydrogen being converted to
slush using the freeze-thaw method in
the generator at plum Brook previously
slush hydrogen had been produced only in
leader sized quantities in the
laboratory in addition to its three
large space environment chambers plum
Brook also has a large hypersonic wind
tunnel capable of performing flow tests
at Mach 5 6 or 7 high-pressure nitrogen
gas stored in a high volume tank
adjacent to the facility is released and
flows through a three megawatt
electrical heater that raises its
temperatures to nearly 2,500 Kelvin then
sufficient oxygen is added to the hot
nitrogen to produce an heir composition
the heated air flows through a
hypersonic flow nozzle and passed the
model a large steam ejector also pulls a
vacuum on the test chamber to help
establish the flow pattern and
assimilate a high altitude condition the
hypersonic tunnel facility was last used
in 1974 to test a hypersonic research
engine at Mach 7 conditions under a
joint program between the garrett
corporation
and NASA currently it's being
reactivated by NASA to support generic
hypersonic research and is expected to
be operational by mid nineteen ninety
three the four major facilities at plum
Brook together with the surrounding
clear zone land the infrastructure and
the train staff provide a significant
national test capability available to
NASA other government agencies and the
private sector