That is definitely WAY COOL...
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My cousin, also the keyboard player in my first band, is currently Founder and President of the Olin College of Engineering. He graduated from MIT and soon after began work for JPL, and NASA.
His job was on the design team where they built things to 'fold'... your having seen the landing gear retraction on the C-5 I'm sure helps you appreciated how technical this can be.
They worked on many projects... the solar panels used on the Space Station, antenna deployment in space, lots of things. He told me the simple way to look it was like this: You figure out how to fold 'anything' into the smallest possible configuration. For research purposes he described some 'thing'... it wasn't anything useful it was simply a contraption to research folding technique using readily available components... (not things they couldn't use or would be impractical for space purposes like 'quantum mechanics'.. although today I'm sure those ARE used. I can't remember how big the 'contraption' was they configured but I remember it was HUGE... like a 5 story house or something... and then 'folded' into a a cube the size of a shoebox, or something like that.
Which brings to mind... is it as incredible to you as it is to me to think about the 'innovation' that was created in just a very short span of time during WWII? My WORD but people can do amazing things when they have to.
His job was on the design team where they built things to 'fold'... your having seen the landing gear retraction on the C-5 I'm sure helps you appreciated how technical this can be.
They worked on many projects... the solar panels used on the Space Station, antenna deployment in space, lots of things. He told me the simple way to look it was like this: You figure out how to fold 'anything' into the smallest possible configuration. For research purposes he described some 'thing'... it wasn't anything useful it was simply a contraption to research folding technique using readily available components... (not things they couldn't use or would be impractical for space purposes like 'quantum mechanics'.. although today I'm sure those ARE used. I can't remember how big the 'contraption' was they configured but I remember it was HUGE... like a 5 story house or something... and then 'folded' into a a cube the size of a shoebox, or something like that.
Which brings to mind... is it as incredible to you as it is to me to think about the 'innovation' that was created in just a very short span of time during WWII? My WORD but people can do amazing things when they have to.
