A Rocket Scientist

[dede]

True Story
>>
>> Scientists at NASA built a gun specifically to launch standard 4

>> pound 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.



British engineers heard about the gun and were eager to test it on the
>> Windshields of their new high speed trains. Arrangements were made, and a
>> gun was sent to the British engineers. When the gun was fired, the
>> engineers stood shocked as the chicken hurled out of the barrel, crashed
>> into the shatterproof shield, smashed it to smither eens, blasted through
>> the control console, snapped the engineer's back-rest in two, and
>> embedded itself in the back wall of the cabin, like an arrow shot from a bow. The horrified
>> Brits sent NASA the disastrous results of the experiment, along with the
>> designs of the windshield and begged the US scientists for suggestions.
>>
>> You're going to love this...







>> NASA responded with a one-line memo -- "Defrost the chicken." (True
>> Story)

[LD8242]

zzz old joke and it's the other way around

[Captain_Obvious]

zzz old joke and it's the other way around

It's neither.
http://www.snopes.com/science/cannon.htm

"Variations:

Depending upon whom you hear the story from, the FAA, NASA, the Air Force, or "an American aircraft company" lends its chicken gun to engineers in another country.

The most common telling says those engineers were British, but other versions of the story say they were French or American. Likewise, what's being tested varies, with train windows, jet engines, and cockpit canopies mentioned.

In my favorite version, a cat sneaks into the barrel of the gun and is helping itself to a cold chicken dinner when the contraption is fired. (Then again, I just like saying "catapoultry.") "



"Not everyone fires thawed birds: before switching to fake birds, the U.S. Air Force traditionally launched frozen ones. (Sensitive to the concerns of animal-rights activists, they now fling birds made of clay and plastic at canopies and engines.) The way the Air Force had it figured, if a canopy could survive an impact with a frozen bird, it would certainly live through a chance introduction to one that could still fly under its own power. They further believed cold chickens provided a better simulation of a bird that had tensed to prepare for the impact.

That at least one high profile group of chicken flingers has used frozen poultry in its cannonizations puts this legend's punch line ? and thus the legend itself ? into the realm of lore, not that of reality. Clearly, it's not all that intuitive to use thawed poultry in these tests. Just as clearly, firing a frosted pullet bullet at something to be impact-tested isn't all that unreasonable an action to take.

The legend's appeal lies in its aura of smug superiority that "we" are smarter than "them." We, says the legend, would have known to use thawed birds. Moreover, when the other country screwed up, its engineers couldn't figure out the error on their own. We thus earned even more of a mental pat on the back in that it was our engineers who had to explain the "obvious" to these brainless foreigners."