The Stratosphere at Brooklands Museum

A wonderful trip at the weekend to Brooklands Museum of British Motorsport and Aviation. The Stratosphere shown here, was designed by Barnes Wallis and built to recreate conditions of high altitude and extreme weather to test the performance of airplanes and other vessels. This is the refrigeration/vacuum plant room....I assume that this is where air was either pumped into or out of the pressurised testing chanber. Barnes Wallis was a technical 'visionary' who predicted against current opinion that jet engines were the future for long distance flights and canvassed to have this facility built to develop engines and craft that could fly at high altitudes and low temperatures. Without this there wouldn't be the air travel that we have today.