Tuesday 27th July  DLR German Aerospace Centre

The German Aerospace centre is located in Stuttgart in Germany and consists of five research institutes.  
Web link http://www.dlr.de/en/
The morning took us into the research laboratories of the Institute of Structures and Design, Institute of Vehicle concepts, Institute of Technical Physics, Institute of Thermal dynamics and Institute of Combustion technology. 

                                Vulcain engine in the firing test.

This picture is from the website http://www.dlr.de/ra/en/DesktopDefault.aspx/tabid-4035/6382_read-9158/

The afternoon after a chaotic lunch at the university of Stuttgart was spent touring the DLR  research facilities both in Stuttgart and just outside the city at the Institute of Space Propulsion which houses a number of rocket test stands.  During our introductory presentation, we were lucky enough to experience the sound and feel of a rocket engine test. After the presentation we visited the test stands located accross the 45 hectare site which was founded in 1959.  This site holds the Arianne 5 rocket test stand for the main stage Vulcain engines (pictured above)   
Accross the site, test stands P8 through to P1 were visited by groups of about 20 students. 

Test stand image from www.dlr.de/ra/en
After a very interesting day of visits, we all collapsed onto the bus and slept for the 3 hour journey back to Strasbourg and back to our student residence, the FEC.  We were all so tired, there was a break from the usual custom here of taking embarrasing photos of sleeping people!