Rocket Science

[bigyetiman]

E mailed this to marigold and she asked me to post it on the forum.

Sometimes it does take a Rocket Scientist:

Scientists at Rolls Royce built a gun specifically to fire dead chickens at the windshields of airlines and military jets all travelling at maximum velocity.
To simulate the frequent incidents of collisions with airborne fowl, to test the strengths of the windshields.

American Engineers heard about the gun and were eager to test it on their high speed trains.

Arrangements were made and a gun sent to the American engineers.

When the gun was fired the engineers stood shocked as the chicken hurled out of the barrel, crashed through the shatterproof shield smashing it to smithereens, blasted through the control console, snapped the engineers backrest in half and embedded itself in the back wall of the cabin like an arrow shot from a bow.

The horrified Yanks sent Rolls Royce the disastrous results of the experiment along with the designs of the windshield and begged the British scientists for suggestions

Rolls Royce responded with a one line memo

"Defrost the Chicken"

 

[rick]

It reminds me of my dad's favourite story, apart from the one he used to tell about having to pay the farmer at Ansty compensation for lost milk yields whenever they tested the Pegasus - that the Americans sent them a microscopically tiny tube to show how small they could make them and they sent it back with congratulations and a tube inside!
Those must have been exciting times! Everything was a anything-might-happen prototype and, apparently, there was a bus timetable above the lathe as the vibration would wreck the bearing finish.

 

[Margaid]

When they were building Concorde the French sent Rolls Royce a needle with a hole drilled in it. Rolls Royce sent it back with the hole tapped (that is an internal thread) with a nut and bolt through it.

 

[LadyA]

Brilliant stories! I wonder will scientists of the future have funny stories about their experiments? Tbh, I doubt it, because so much now is done by computer simulation!

 

[rick]

I cant remember who said:
'To err is human. To really mess things up requires a computer.'