Day 2- Thursday, May 9

On Thursday Mr. Melzak set up a conference call for me with a person on the Research and Design team for the actuator that Mr. Melzak was helping to design. Part of the team is based in South Carolina where there is another section of the Parker Aerospace division. He went over the design of the new actuator and how it works with me. An actuator is a type of motor that is used to control some mechanism. In this case, the actuator would be used to control the flow of fuel through the nozzle into the engine. The actuators would make sure the fuel was injected into the engine evenly, as described in my previous post. The designing of the this actuator is funded by the US. government for the use in  military planes in the future. It is a second generation technology meaning it is only at the start of the development process and will not be put into use for a while. This actuator does not actually have a specific plane that it will be used in yet. There are different steps in the implementation of new technology. There is technology that is used now which is changed slightly overtime to improve it. Then there is the technology that is about to go into use in the next 5 to 10 years. That technology is being tested and already has a specific application. The actuator Mr. Melzak is helping to design is the next step past that. It does not have a specific application yet, just a general idea of where it would be used. The actuator will probably not go into use for another 30 years at least, if not longer.