Aeronautics Innovation NASA's Challenges and Opportunities (2006) / Chapter Skim
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1 National Aviation Needs and the Federal Role
1 National Aviation Needs and the Federal Role
Pages 9-40
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2-1. 5 National Research Council, Review of NASA's Aerospace Technology Enterprise: An Assessment of NASA's Aeronautics Technology Programs (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2004)
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In its final report, the Aerospace Commission stated that "the critical underpinnings of this nation's aerospace industry are showing signs of faltering" and warned bluntly, "We stand dangerously close to squandering the advantage bequeathed to us by prior generations of aerospace leaders."8 Most recently, 250 members and affiliates of the National Aerospace Institute, in a report commissioned by Congress, declared the center of technical and market leadership to be "shifting outside the United States" to Europe, with a loss of high-paying jobs and intellectual capital to the detriment of U.S. economic well-being.9 A consensus emerges in these reports that the United States must overcome a series of major challenges -- to the capacity of its air transportation 6 Charles W
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From page 11... ...
The air traffic management system, although generally judged to be safe, reliable, and capable on the whole of handling today's traffic flow, relies on 1960s technology and operational concepts and is resistant to innovation.13 Along with other factors, such as airport runway capacity, it is a severe constraint on expansion in the future. In a 2003 report, a National Academies' committee was emphatic: "Business as usual, in the form of continued, evolutionary improvements to existing technologies, aircraft, air traffic control systems, and operational concepts, is unlikely to meet the challenge of greatly increased demand over the next 25 to 50 years."14 Increasing competition in commercial aircraft.
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"Jobs are going overseas."18 Although advanced aircraft and air traffic management systems could be procured from foreign suppliers if U.S. manufacturers fail to remain competitive, according to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers that could mean forfeiting the "important national security and economic benefits" that "the supremacy of the U.S.
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From page 13... ...
Some of the technologies identified have application primarily in one of the four major areas of challenge: modernizing the air transportation system, improving aircraft performance, curtailing environmental impacts, or enhancing safety and security. Others, crucial in more than one area, may be seen as playing an enabling role across the board.
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The National Academies' Committee for the Review of NASA's Revolutionize Aviation Program, in assessing NASA's efforts on aviation safety, described human factors as critical and in need of more support.27 With specific reference to designing supersonic aircraft, studying the human response to shaped waves was judged necessary, both to assist vehicle design research and to validate new regulatory standards.28 Describing a future that "will involve much more automation" at the levels of both the individual aircraft and the total air transportation system, the Academies' Committee for Aeronautics Research and Technology for Vision 2050 called for a focus on efforts to design synergistic partnerships between humans and automation that result in better performance in all operating conditions than either could achieve alone.29 The Aerospace Commission, concurring that human factors research could help "enhance performance and situational awareness .
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"New integrated air, space and ground networks will enable us to acquire large volumes of data, process that data and then make it available to decision makers anywhere in the world, in near-real time," the Aerospace Commission stated, envisioning applications from cyber security to military logistics to vehicle design.32 To this end, the Academies' Committee for the Review of NASA's Revolutionize Aviation Program recommended exploration of "revolutionary concepts" related to distributed air-ground airspace systems, including the distribution of decision making between the cockpit and ground systems and reorganization of how aircraft are routed, with significant implications for airspace usage and airport capacity.33 The Academies' Committee on Aeronautics Research and Technology for Vision 2050, recommending research targeting such "[g] eographically distributed activities," named a variety of specific requirements with multiple applications and benefits.34 Examples of specific technological requirements identified by the panels are shown in Box 1-1.
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, the Transportation Security Agency of the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) , and the National Oceanographic
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When it was established by the Space Act of 1958, NASA 35As we observe again at the end of this chapter, coordination of aeronautics R&D has been a recurrent theme of the reports discussed above. The most elaborate proposal, by the
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to coordinate private and public aeronautics research. According to NSF surveys of federal agencies' basic and applied research spending, NASA accounted for 56 percent of the federal investment in aeronautical engineering in 2001.36 The Scope and Quality of NASA's R&D Program NASA has a broader portfolio of R&D activity than any of the other agencies with projects in each of the four areas described above -- air traffic management, aircraft and propulsion, emissions and noise reduction, and safety and security.37 The National Academies' Committee to Review NASA's Revolutionize Aviation Program in 2003 enumerated 15 major projects encompassing 51 subprojects and a total of 231 tasks.
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Moreover, despite declining resources that are discussed later in this chapter, the current program has been judged to have relatively high technical merit. The National Academies' 2003 evaluation of the program ranked over four-fifths of the 172 tasks under the vehicle systems program as either "world class" or "good" and only 17 percent as "marginal" or "poor."38 NASA's Management Challenges NASA's accomplishments in aeronautics technology development are even more impressive in light of the many challenges faced by the program's managers, currently titled the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD)
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Some arenas of activity -- air traffic control and emissions and noise reduction are examples -- are generally identified as public or quasi-public goods.41 Were it not for NASA or some other for three other centers performing aeronautics R&D: Langley Research Center in Virginia, Glenn Research Center in Ohio, and Dryden Research Center, also in southern California. Before the transfer of Ames, ARMD had 40 percent of NASA's entire civil service complement.
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Having access to expertise and test facilities on a continuing basis is an asset to its mission in many respects and a sine qua non in some respects, but maintaining them consumes a large share of R&D resources and limits managers' flexibility. · Finally, NASA aeronautics is overshadowed in resources, managerial attention, and political support by the agency's mission of space exploration and discovery.
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NASA aeronautics has frequently been the object of proposals for organizational change to relieve some of the constraints and, presumably, facilitate innovation, primarily by giving managers of the program greater flexibility, especially in source selection and staffing of projects.43 A core assumption of the recent public and private study commissions and panels is that aeronautics R&D activities are fragmented and would benefit from better cross-agency coordination, perhaps by a new organization. From time to time it is proposed more boldly to separate aeronautics from the space program or to raise its status and increase its independence within NASA.
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For example, DARPA makes liberal use of Other Transactions Authority, enabling managers to circumvent some traditional federal procurement constraints. In contrast, NASA maintains a large, fixed infrastructure of laboratories and other experimental facilities with civil service and contractor personnel.
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RESOURCES AND NATIONAL POLICY The contrast between the case articulated by the private sector and the budget reality was dramatically underscored in 2005. At congressional request the National Aerospace Institute engaged more than 250 industrial representatives, academics, and other experts in a very detailed review of the NASA aeronautics R&D portfolio.
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25 Submit Submit et et Submit Submit Congressional Congressional et 2004 et Budg Budg Congressional Congressional 1998 1999 Budg Budg 2000 Submit 1997 2003 et Congressional Budg 2002 1996 Submit 2001 et Congressional Budg 1995 2000 1999 1998 1990-2000. Year et 1997 Actual Budg Fiscal budgets, 1996 actual and Submit 1995 et Congressional requests Budg 1994 1994 Submit et budget Congressional Budg 1993 Submit 1993 et R&D Congressional Budg 1992 Submit 1992 et Congressional Submit aeronautics Budg et 1991 1991 Congressional Budg NASA 1990 1990 NASA.
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Figure 1-2 shows the decline continuing through 2003.47 It is apparent to our committee that the private experts and stakeholders have not yet articulated a strategic vision for the federal role in aeronautics research and development that has gained the support of both the White House and Congress. In the past several years, nearly a dozen independent nonpartisan bodies have tried in both general and specific terms to make a case for a stabilized or increased NASA aeronautics budget, but all of them apparently have failed to impress the ultimate decision makers.
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J Victor Lebacqz, oral testimony before the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics of the House Science Committee, U.S.
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. PROGRAM FOCUS AND PRIORITIZATION Even if NASA aeronautics program expenditures were stabilized, ARMD management faces severe constraints on its discretion.
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29 Budget Budget Personnel, FY10 06 0264 0362 0604 1,230 FY10 06 0242 0216 0450 0908 . Center Budget Budget ch Contractor FY09 06 0285 0385 0647 1,317 FY09 06 0242 0230 0506 0978 Resear and Service Budget Budget Langley FY08 06 0295 0404 0690 1,389 FY08 06 0243 0233 0563 = 1,039 C 'Civil ,LR Budget Budget Center ch Centers FY07 06 0293 0429 0764 1,486 FY07 06 0228 0235 0743 1,206 ch Resear Resear Budget FY06 06 0408 0647 Budget 1,004 2,059 FY06 06 0255 0267 0594 Glenn 1,116 = C ,GR Aeronautics Budget 424 790 Budget Center FY05 06 00 00 1,327 2,541 FY05 06 0299 0295 0990 1,584 2006.
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Certain fixed administrative costs incurred by the agency arise from its responsibilities as defined in the Space Act, obligating NASA to maintain certain national facilities and core competencies in certain areas of aeronautics. G&A costs are normally determined for each center and applied as a percentage of labor cost involved in the program at that center.
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It is only if these projects can be justified as strategically central that 51Review of NASA's Aerospace Technology Enterprise, p.
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As its technology and marketing organizations focus on the same general domain through successes, partial successes, and failures, they learn ever more about the technology and markets in that domain; they also accumulate ever more expertise and talent, a situation that in turn increases the odds of successful innovation in that domain. Thus, the history of technological innovation in the most highly innovative firms appears in hindsight to consist of a succession of development projects -- some successful, some partially successful, some unsuccessful -- with each project building on its predecessor and all projects exploring promising opportunities within the firm's strategic focus.55 Although innovative firms demonstrate a striking pattern of technology push, that push evolves within a widely shared strategic framework that guides effort in certain directions and not others.
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A third impact of sharply declining budgets is on core technical competencies. Insufficient attention to core competencies was a concern of the National Academies' 2004 Review of NASA's Aerospace Technology Enterprise, which concluded that the Vehicle Systems Program (VSP)
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Because "NASA has not reduced the scope of [its existing] core competencies or research focus areas even in the face of changing market needs and reduced budgets," some of its research activities -- here, the panel was referring specifically to those within the VSP -- "find themselves on budgetary `life support.'"58 The panels that reviewed the two other programs under aeronautics research, the Aviation Safety Program (AvSP)
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From page 35... ...
ome FAA users" the opinion that "this view of success leads NASA to focus too much on implementation issues, which NASA may not be qualified to address given its limited operational experience," the panel declared: "Success of NASA applied research tasks should not be defined solely in terms of implementation." Review of NASA's Aerospace Technology Enterprise, pp.
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The committee thinks that unless NASA aeronautics R&D managers narrow their mission focus and align programs with available resources, the advice we offer with respect to management techniques to facilitate innovation will be largely ineffectual. Recommendation 2: ARMD's first order of business in promoting aeronautics innovation is to translate a national aeronautics policy into a strategic or mission focus that is in better alignment with the resources available to it -- its budget, its personnel, and its technical capabilities.
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SAE 11-15. The National Academies' report, Review of NASA's Aerospace Technology Enterprise, lamented the last prospect, saying that "research in civil applications of rotorcraft will not be conducted elsewhere in government or industry and .
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J Victor Lebacqz, associate administrator for aeronautics research, NASA, before the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, Committee on Science, U.S.
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In the end, both a new NASA administrator and congressional authorizing and appropriating committees turned aside the VSP revision and restored the status quo, including the budget level, underscoring our overriding concern that a national policy, a strategic agency focus, and a set of program priorities need to be articulated and agreed on. This process needs to involve ARMD management, but it exceeds the grasp even of NASA's leadership.
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