ODD FACILITY 3 -- THE SLED
A. further provides:
Note that
http://mfnl.xjtu.edu.cn/gov-doe-sandia/afsec/afsec.htm
has links to the rocket
sled track and other Sandia things in the vicinity.
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A. provides:
ABQjournal: Sandia's Rocket Sled Delivers High-Speed Crash Test
Albuquerque Journal
Friday, April 18, 2003
Sandia's Rocket Sled Delivers High-Speed Crash Test
By John Fleck
Journal Staff Writer
From rocket ignition to crash, the whole thing was over in about the time
it took you
to read this sentence. The sled blasted down the track so fast that it slammed
into its
target before the sound -- the roar of a rocket and a sonic boom -- reached
observers
watching from a tower 920 feet from the track.
In a world where torture testing is the norm, the 10,000-foot sled track
might be the
ultimate.
The men and women at Sandia National Laboratories' Area 3 specialize in slamming,
spinning, shaking, dropping and burning things, adding exquisite meaning
to the words
"worst-case scenario." Their goal is to help ensure that all manner of
technology, from
military equipment to nuclear reactor containment vessels, will work under
some pretty
demanding conditions.
Want to build a nuclear waste container tough enough to survive a fuel fire?
How about
a concrete wall able to take a hit from a fighter jet? U.S. nuclear weapon
parts are spun
on centrifuges here to make sure they can withstand the G forces of a rocket
launch.
But for the connoisseur of destructive testing, nothing beats the rocket
sled.
Some U.S. nuclear weapons have to hit the ground and still be able to detonate.
The
men and women at Area 3 just need to know how fast it will hit, and they
can create a
test for a mock nuclear weapon that simulates the real-world environment
it might face.
The phrase "rocket sled" has become a cliché to describe something
exceptionally fast,
and the real thing lived up to its billing in a recent test.
Duane Patrick hovered over the 6-foot, 91/2-inch sled, carefully adding
reflective tape.
Patrick and his colleagues built the sled to test a laser tracking system
developed at Sandia.
Historically, experienced camera operators with high-speed film cameras would
stand on
an observation tower, following the action by hand. That relatively low-tech
approach is
still used. For this particular test, two cameramen were on the observation
tower filming.
But the truck-sized laser tracking system provides more precise data.
Bouncing a laser off the reflective tape or mirrors mounted on the rocket,
the tracker controls
cameras that follow the sled down the track. It also can provide precise
data on the speed
and position of the sled.
Once Patrick had the tape affixed to the rocket, he and the other members
of the crew cleared
out, heading for their various observation posts, and a safety crew
double-checked to make
sure the test area was clear.
The 10,000-foot track Patrick was using for his test and an older 2,000-foot
track cross open
desert land near the southern edge of Kirtland Air Force Base, southeast
of the Albuquerque
airport's runways. At one end, rocket sleds are mounted to the rails and
fired on their way.
At the other, batteries of sophisticated cameras record the sometimes dramatic
results as the
sled slams into its target. The action is measured in milliseconds. "Things
happen really fast
in our world," said Tim Brown, one of the sled track's field test engineers.
The end result is
usually a pile of rubble, but the cameras capture the action in excruciating
detail, at rates of
up to 10,000 frames per second.
That allows the scientists to slow things down and figure out what happened,
explained Jack
Reed, one of the camera experts. "To the human eye, it's just a blink," Reed
said.
Sandia's most dramatic and famous sled track test was done in the spring
of 1988. An F4
Phantom fighter jet was mounted on a sled and slammed into a concrete wall
to simulate an
airplane crashing into a nuclear reactor containment vessel. The plane was
obliterated. The
wall survived.
Sandia's first rocket sled track, the 2,000-foot one, was built in 1951.
The section track was
built 5,000 feet long in 1966, then lengthened in 1985.
Patrick's laser tracker test was a relatively small one by sled track standards.
The sled was
designed to run on just one of the track's two rails. All that awaited it
at the end of the track
was a piece of thick steel and a pile of dirt.
On a radioed countdown from the test control center, three small explosives
along the length
of the track were set off, noisemakers to scare away birds that like to sit
on the rails.
"With a supersonic sled, the birds can't hear it coming," said Steve
Heffelfinger, who manages
the test site.
The rocket was electronically fired, and with a flash and a cloud of smoke
it shot down the
track, accelerating rapidly before disappearing into the dirt pile at the
end of the track. An
analysis of the data afterward showed that it took just 3.47 seconds to make
the 6,000-foot trip.
Its top speed, 2 seconds into the trip, was 2,700 feet per second, according
to data reconstructed
by Patrick's laser tracker.
In his office afterward, Patrick showed the laser tracker videotape of the
test, slowing it down
to look, frame by frame, at the way his system had performed. As the sled
rocketed down the
track, shock waves could be seen blasting away through the air -- visual
evidence of the sonic
boom.
The excitement over, the scientists turned to their real work -- analyzing
the data they collected.
"This is the heart of our business," Heffelfinger explained, as he looked
over Patrick's shoulder
at the video image. "People think it's the wham-bam stuff, but this is it."
Copyright 2003 Albuquerque Journal
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This tracked facility appears to have a sled or other tracked device on it.
| USGS Coordinates of Photograph |
| Southwest (Bottom Left) Corner |
Northeast (Top Right) Corner |
| 34.985931 N, 106.546438 W |
34.992983 N, 106.539623 W |
 |
