NASA BLOGS
Dashboard |  Welcome: guest |
Dryden Flight Research Center
1 - 7 of 43 posts. Total pages: 7     Go To
Behind the Scenes @NASADryden
 Posted on May 01, 2012 06:24:39 PM | Kevin J Rohrer
 0 Comments | | Poor Fair Average Good Excellent


Photo of David McBride, Director, NASA Dryden Flight Research Center     Photo of Patrick Stoliker, Deputy Director, NASA Dryden Flight Research Center

By David McBride, Center Director and Patrick Stoliker, Deputy Director 

NASA Dryden Flight Research Center

This Friday, May 4, will mark another first for NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center.

Unlike so many other firsts at Dryden, the focus will not be on our aircraft, engineers, pilots, technicians, research projects or missions, or even our business support functions. This Friday, our attention will be on sharing what we do with more than 50 people who follow us on our social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ as we host our first NASA Social.

We experimented with including social media users at a press conference for the SOFIA airborne observatory we held at the Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale last year. For that event, we invited about 10 Twitter users, and found it was a great way to communicate directly with our social media constituency, and indirectly with their followers.

We have a busy day planned for our guests this Friday – tours of a few of our facilities, some background briefings, some networking time, but most importantly, time to interact with the public. For those who were not lucky enough to be selected, you can follow us on Twitter @NASADryden or #DrydenSocial and on our Facebook page. 

We plan to stop by and chat with some of our social media followers or perhaps walk along for part of the tour, as we are always interested in your thoughts on what we do for the agency, the nation and the public at large.



Spring Means Unpredictability and Budgets
 Posted on Apr 14, 2012 01:27:23 PM | Kevin J Rohrer
3 Comments | | Poor Fair Average Good Excellent

Photo of Patrick StolikerBy Patrick C. Stoliker

Deputy Director of NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center

It’s springtime again at Dryden. You can tell by the wild fluctuations in weather: cold and dreary, gale force winds, or sunny and balmy -  sometimes all in one day! The wild flowers start blooming, sometimes spectacularly; but this year not so much. I was at the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve, west of Lancaster, two weeks ago and the poppies were few and far between. 

Another principal indicator of springtime is the leap into the Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution (PPBE) cycle for the Agency's budget. For those not familiar with the process, let me explain.

We start off with PPBE guidance trickling out of Washington (stamped Draft, of course). This is followed by Strategic Program Guidance (SPG) – Draft 2. These documents provide the ground rules for each of the Centers and the Agency Mission Directorates to input their budget information into various databases. The budget information includes workforce numbers, procurement expenses and travel. It provides a top-level description of the Agency's activities for the next five years. Why is this important? Because it helps set the strategic direction and constraints in which we must complete our research priorities.

This is followed by the Program and Resource Guidance (PRG) from each Mission Directorate. The PRG is a more detailed description of the work the Mission Directorates plan to accomplish. We spend the rest of early spring revising inputs based on project plans, getting revised instructions, and revising timelines.

Image of SOFIA aircraftIn reality this is a critical effort. What are the staffing and resource requirements for the Center to successfully operate the SOFIA aircraft for 1,000 hours of science flights? What are the implementation plans for the Aeronautics Research Directorate and how do we utilize our workforce to accomplish them? What is the schedule and what are the appropriate resources to support launch abort system testing for MPCV? Working with all the organizations at the Center, we will develop our best answers to these questions, and effectively use the resources to execute these missions.

All the while we are using a very blurry crystal ball to extend this guidance five years into the future. So these are the things keeping us busy: building spreadsheets, attending Budget Control Boards, and chasing shifting time lines every spring.

For me, one of the best parts of spring is driving onto the Center at sunrise after the time change and Hangar 4802 is lit up and lined with airplanes. That sight never disappoints me.

Two days ago it started bright and sunny, a week ago I shoveled a foot of snow off my driveway, and another storm is coming in this weekend. I’m certain it is going to snow, my apple trees all started blooming this week…it’s springtime at Dryden again.


With Help From the Angel on the Christmas Tree
 Posted on Oct 21, 2011 04:17:49 PM | Kevin J Rohrer
 0 Comments | | Poor Fair Average Good Excellent
By Joseph Lapierre
Former Dryden Engineer
I worked at Dryden back in the sixties. For a while I was research project engineer on X-15-3. As I was looking through the Dryden Web pages the other day for a way to contact a test pilot, I got distracted by the research aircraft photo gallery. I searched through it to find aircraft I remembered and found a T-33 in the list. When I looked at the cockpit view I noticed a small white ball in the upper right corner of the instrument panel. I was shocked! I remember why that ball was there - because I'm the one who put it there.

Back in 1962, [Dryden engineer] Roger Winblade was touring the country on a hiring tour. He stopped at St. Mary's University in San Antonio, where I was about to graduate. I first found out he was there when a classmate told me Roger wanted to see me in the cafeteria. Roger explained to me he had found out from the dean of the physics department that I had been a pilot and wanted to hire me. He was head of the display section in the research division. He had a problem convincing test pilots to accept heads-up displays. He anticipated that, my being a pilot, I could help him get through to them.

When I arrived at the test center he quickly introduced me to Joe Walker. And Joe quickly let it be known he wasn't too pleased, but he told me, "'See that big guy sitting at that desk over there?' I said, 'yes.' 'Well, he can't fly a straight final [approach] in an F-104 to save his ass.' He told me that if I could come up with something to straighten out his final approaches, then I would be hired. I borrowed the Styrofoam head off of our Christmas tree angel, ran fishing string through it then ran the string through holes in the air-conditioning tubing around the top of the panel and to the back seat. I expected to be able to fly the back seat and work the ball from side to side as the pilot flew the final. Regs being regs, I did have to get checked out in the altitude chamber first.

When the ball was full right, it meant the pilot was flying 5 knots too fast on the approach, and full left meant 5 knots too slow. By the third final, Jack McKay was flying a straight final. I ran up to Joe's office to give him the news, but he already knew because he was watching us from the roof with binoculars.

So, I was hired. I had a great relationship with Joe, Jack, Milt [Thompson] and the others. Fred Haise took me on a F-104 ride. He let me fly through Mach 1 then demonstrated a zero-G profile but overshot the altitude to 66,000 feet - with us wearing only flight coveralls!** I also changed the color of the X-15 panel from black to a pale green - but that's another great story.

**above 50,000 feet, full-pressure suits were ordinarily required


Birds, TEDx, and the Mind's Boxes
 Posted on Sep 07, 2011 04:19:02 PM | Kevin J Rohrer
1 Comments | | Poor Fair Average Good Excellent
Watch Al's TEDxNASA presentation, "Toward More Bird-Like Flight: Thinking Outside the Box," here.

By Al Bowers
Associate Director for Research
NASA Dryden Flight Research Center
It's been a couple of weeks since the TEDxNASA@SiliconValley event now. I've had a little time to decompress and reflect. I have some thoughts to share...

An incredible amount of work was done by the NASA Ames folks putting on their first TEDx event, and the NASA Langley TEDx crew did an equally incredible amount of work in support of the event, helping out and getting everything spooled up. There were a number of NASA Dryden folks helping out as well; many kudos and thanks to everyone who was doing a lot more than pulling their own share.

Image left: Al Bowers takes the stage for his 8 minutes of fame at the recent TEDxNASA event in San Francisco. Image courtesy Michael Porterfield.

Wow, TEDxNASA. What an event. In the lecture/conference world, the TED name (stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design) has huge gravitas. And it is well deserved. Some of the most mind-blowing ideas have been presented in a public forum at TED, and to put all those great ideas together in one place like TED does is simply amazing beyond words. TEDx is the way TED shares their ideas worth spreading with a broader audience. Bravo!

So I knew what TED was before I was asked to be a TEDxNASA speaker. And when the question came up of who should speak for NASA Dryden, the fact that my name got mentioned was a huge compliment and honor. To be honest, I view myself as a pretty regular person. Not very noteworthy, and having little to add to a thought or conversation. But once in a great while, a few times in my life, I've had these glimpses of incredible insight. I could see connections between GREAT ideas from the great thinkers that I've read about, and thought about their ideas. And suddenly I can see how these amazing ideas work in the vision of my mind.

So TEDxNASA was an opportunity to share one of the really big ideas that I was able to grasp. I chose the last paper by Ludwig Prandtl on the spanload of wings. Prandtl was the founding father of the science of aeronautics. His formulas were the first practical tools by which we could calculate lift, induced drag, and spanload - the distribution of load across a wingspan. John Anderson, the great professor of aeronautics and noted historian, speaks of how Prandtl should have won the Nobel Prize for Physics because of his contributions to aeronautics. And I completely agree. Prandtl's last paper on spanload and induced drag has languished, almost completely unnoticed, and would be not even a footnote were it not for two brothers who used his idea to build a few wooden gliders and sailplanes. These two brothers, Reimar and Walter Horten, built some of the most beautiful man-made aircraft to ever fly - pure flying wings. The Hortens had to integrate all the components of flight into a single unit, and eliminate everything that did not contribute to their singular idea. Prandtl's last paper on spanload was the germ of that idea.

Image right: The Horten H VI sailplane, built by Reimar Horten. Image courtesy Doug Bullard.

Many years ago, I had the great honor to listen to Bob Hoey, the retired Edwards Air Force Base engineer. Bob had been studying the flight of birds. And Bob was talking about the spanload of birds and how, if you got it wrong, nothing worked, but if you got it right, everything worked. Bob didn't know about Prandtl's last paper, or details of the Hortens' work. But I did. And suddenly I connected the dots between them, realizing how Prandtl's idea could solve the three great problems of aircraft in a single integrated solution: maximum performance (that is, minimum drag for maximum efficiency), minimum structure (if you're limited in structure, what is the wing that is optimum?), and controlled coordinated flight (minimizing the added clutter of control surfaces we take for granted). And I could see the connection between Prandtl with his ideas, the Hortens with their sailplanes, and Hoey with his birds, and everything came together.

Graphic at left: The elliptical spanload (dashed line) and the bell spanload (solid line), with the centerline at the left and the wingtip at the right. At the top are the spanloads, and at the bottom are the induced drag curves (note the bell spanload induced drag goes negative at the wingtip).

TEDxNASA gave me only a few minutes to get my idea across. Normally, it takes me a full 40 minutes to develop the background of how we got to where we are (mostly developed by the Wright brothers and Prandtl), but this was unacceptable for TEDxNASA. Enter the person who could distill the entire talk to what it needed to be, Hayley Foster. Hayley is a Langley person, and her job is speech coach. I've never had a speech coach before. Man, was she good, and wow, did I need it! Hayley was not exactly an aero person (she knew some of the jargon and the background), and she could see the germ of the idea I had. And when she edited my first draft, I think there was more red than there was white left on the page! There were seven complete rewrites, and many dozens of edits in there. But it came out. And it fit in the time slot. Hayley is a miracle worker; thank God for her...

TEDxNASA@SiliconValley was in San Francisco, near Moscone Center. It was tagged on the end of the IT Summit, so there was a certain amount of teardown activity for the summit and buildup for TEDxNASA going on. We had our pre-meeting for the speakers, and that was our first walk-through of the venue and familiarization with where the Green Room was, when we needed to be where, the final details on the schedule, and the real indoctrination of what it means to be a TEDx speaker. All the folks doing the prep were running around in these cool black TEDxNASA shirts. All of us speakers were sort of milling around in the middle of this huge hubbub of people running to make things happen. And then, it started.

The first few speakers gave their talks. Things were going pretty well. We had the usual GLITCHes (GLITCH = gremlins living in the computer hardware), but the presentation was moving very well. It was time for me to get ready. Now, I have a confession to make. The worst time for me, for any talk I give, is the last five minutes before I walk out to start talking. I am a total nervous breakdown, train-wreck of stomach-churning, introverted, hands-shaking nerves. I know none of you believe that of me, but it's true. And then I walk out on stage, and I start, and suddenly...the moment flows. I can connect with people; I can open their mind's eye to new ideas, to concepts that are really the secret truths of the universe. For a moment, this frail, failing, human mind of mine can do that with others.

"Assumptions are a fact of life..." I begin to share what I have learned. The boxes our minds live inside of...the flight of birds...the Wrights and their success...Prandtl thinking the great thoughts...explaining induced drag...Horten figuring out the implementation...and my stumbling into the implementation (with help!)...my disbelief of the analysis, and Mike Allen's unwavering belief that it MUST work...how much we could reduce the carbon footprint of aircraft (about 40%). All of this because of the flight of birds. I glanced at the clock twice, right at the last quarter of my talk (1:24 to go), and again just before the summation with 0:24. "When we distill an idea down to its minimum, it is simple and elegant. Prandtl had to rethink his assumptions to find superior solutions. We, too, must rethink our assumptions to solve the problems of today. And I believe this is an idea worth spreading. Thank you."

Wow. It's over. Is it really over? Did I get all my ideas in? Was it okay? Faces are coming up to me to shake my hand and congratulate me. Friends are giving me the thumbs-up, slapping me on the back and saying how great I did. Really? Did I do that? Everyone smiles at me. I sit down again and listen to the other speakers. Ilan Kroo (Stanford professor) comes up, says I need to present the derivation to his graduate students. (Wow! Really?) My wife walks me back to our hotel room. I'm in too much of a daze to do anything; it's a good thing I didn't have to drive.

The days pass. Life returns to "normal." The video is posted now. The talk is not perfect (not by a long shot). But it's good. I'm glad the idea - Prandtl's idea - is being talked about.

Yesterday afternoon I was working out in the yard, clearing some branches. The sun was hot, and the afternoon breeze was blowing. I watched a raven slope, soaring as he flew by. His tip feathers stretched out against the afternoon's azure sky...

Friendly Solano Skies - and Crowds
 Posted on Aug 15, 2011 05:21:36 PM | Kevin J Rohrer
1 Comments | | Poor Fair Average Good Excellent
By Mark Pestana
NASA Research Pilot
Against a backdrop of blustery winds from the San Francisco Bay area and beautiful, cloudless skies, an estimated daily crowd of 100,000 gathered at Travis Air Force Base, Calif., to see the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds put on their trademark spectacular air shows at the “Skies Over Solano” Air Power Expo July 30-31.

Fellow NASA research pilot Hernan Posada and I were invited to represent NASA at the event, near Fairfield, Calif. We flew one of Dryden's Beechcraft B-200 Super King Airs on a route that led us from our home base at Edwards over the snow-covered Sierra Nevada range and into California’s agriculture-rich Sacramento/San Joaquin valleys. Upon arrival Friday afternoon, the ramp was filling with a wide assortment of civilian and military aircraft, classic and current, as we met other pilots and aircrews from around the country.

Our hosts, the 60th Air Mobility Wing, commanded by Col. James Vechery, held an evening BBQ mixer for performers and exhibiters at the wing’s air museum. Along with the terrific welcome – and appropriate safety advisories – Col. Vechery advised us that the proper response to hearing someone mention “Team Travis” was a loud, unanimous cry of “air power!!!” The 60th AMW operates three different types of aircraft: cargo-carrying C-5s and C-17s as well as KC-10 aerial refueling tankers.

Image: Dryden pilots Hernan Posada, left, and Mark Pestana took the center's Beechcraft B-200 to Travis Air Force Base for a meet-and-greet with thousands of show-goers, many of whom the pair found were avid NASA fans.

The next two days were filled with awesome exhibitions of aerial skills, ranging from gut-wrenching civilian aerobatics to ear-splitting military aircraft fly-bys. Even the U.S. Air Force Academy Parachute Team managed to maneuver to pinpoint landings in the gusty winds.

Personally, our greatest thrills came from the visiting public, who eagerly greeted us with enthusiasm and excitement over the fact that NASA was there. Initial questions from the public centered mainly on the future of human space exploration. We reminded most that humans are living in space as we speak, and will continue to do so as we expect further developments in space exploration in the coming years. We also mentioned the proliferation of robotic planetary exploration that is continuing. Of course, our primary messages were about that first “A” in NASA, and how we’re heavily engaged in using aircraft for two primary NASA missions: research in aeronautics and in Earth science. In particular, our B200 display board showed how these aircraft are used for vital research, from testing a cave-detection sensor destined for a Mars orbiter to wildfire location missions.

The most rewarding part of all of this was that 100% of the public’s response is that they are diehard NASA fans and want to see more and greater accomplishments in the future. Oh yeah – and handing out those NASA stickers and pins is always a crowd pleaser, too!


Seeing Stars
 Posted on Aug 02, 2011 04:23:24 PM | Kevin J Rohrer
 0 Comments | | Poor Fair Average Good Excellent
By Jill Pestana
NASA Dryden Student Intern
We were screeching down the runway, engines blasting, accelerating until the shuddering giant leapt off the ground into flight. SOFIA was in the air. The thought of flying on board an airplane that has a hole in its side and carries a 17-ton telescope was a little disconcerting, but after several weeks on the SOFIA project as an intern, learning all about the effort it took to make the aircraft operational, I trusted that we would return to Palmdale safely.
 
Image right: Cal State-Long Beach student intern Jill Pestana has a big thumbs-up for her experience on a night flight aboard NASA's airborne observatory, the SOFIA.

Within the first few minutes of the flight, fellow intern Stephanie Sodergren and I were giggling with excitement from our seats in what used to be the modified 747's first-class cabin. We quickly hung a picture of the predicted flight pattern, planning to highlight the path as we traveled overnight. We got out our NASA "meatball" tattoos and stuck them to our biceps. "It's only been thirty minutes and we've done so much! We still have nine and a half more hours of flight to go!"
 
It was a clear and calm night over the Pacific Ocean. I gazed through the cockpit windows on the upper deck at the billions of stars visible, and thought solemnly that this may be the closest I will ever be to the stars. I pretended I was in space, gazing down at clouds I imagined to be the continents of Earth. Below, on the lower deck, the scientists and flight crew were looking through the telescope at pinpoints in this vast, unknown universe.
 
Sitting at the conference table on the passenger deck, I gave myself a fast lesson in the basics of star formation, using a textbook written by Dana Backman, SOFIA education and public outreach director. Relating the information to my college course material and my knowledge of the GREAT - German Receiver for Astronomy at Terahertz Frequencies - instrument mounted on the SOFIA telescope, I gained a deeper understanding of how complex technologies are used to "look" through the cocoons of dust to see stars forming. Two astrophysicists sat across from me, receiving the GREAT's real-time data output. "Here, come look at this!" they would say to me over the audio distribution system's headsets. They turned their laptop screen around so I could see the fresh data on newborn "cocooned" stars in the giant gas nebula known as the Elephant Trunk formation. When it was announced that we were flying at 45,000 feet, the highest altitude flown on a SOFIA science mission, the scientists and I exchanged excited glances.

Several hours later, we were nearing the end of the journey home. I was the last of the five interns awake, eating cookies with the astrophysicists as they showed me their compiled data. It was a successful science mission, and everyone was in a good mood. A faint glow began coming from the horizon, so I headed back up to the cockpit for the landing. As the light from stars shining across the heavens was overcome by our own star's light, I felt a twinge of sadness about my SOFIA flight coming to an end. I was exhausted, but part of me wanted to go right back up to the stratosphere. As I was listening in on the headset in the cockpit, I could hear an Australian airline on approach to California. Land was now in sight as mountains began to emerge beneath snowy clouds. I estimated we were flying right over California State University, Long Beach - my college!

With the desert approaching in the distance, I felt such a sense of pride for what had been accomplished overnight. All the effort by engineers, technicians, scientists and managers, German and American, had congealed to produce scientific data from a world incomprehensibly far from our own island of life. I had never felt our species' innate aspiration to explore and discover more strongly than at that moment. Humbled by the vastness of space, I was beaming with pride and confidence in mankind.
 
I can only describe my experience of flying on SOFIA as beautiful. From the bright stars to the flight crew's camaraderie to the notion of such a small speck of humanity - me - gazing out into the limitless unknown, I had learned so much besides the basics of star formation that night. I was ecstatic, thinking about the universe we live in. With so much effort being put into each mission by everyone in the SOFIA program, I had to pause and reflect on the words of J.F. Kennedy as he initiated our quest to the moon: NASA does what it does not because it is easy, but because it is hard.
 
My 10-week internship experience has been fantastic. I have met so many great, smart people who have helped me learn all about NASA, SOFIA, science, program management, astronomy, and much more. I had the best summer working with my mentor, Stephen Jensen, and fellow interns at NASA. I'm looking forward to applying what I learned and sharing my experiences back at school, hopefully inspiring others to pursue similar experiences. Because of this internship, I was able to secure a job working with SOFIA's education and public outreach department, and will be working with Stephanie Sodergren on the department's website during the next school year.
 
Thank you, NASA, for giving me this opportunity, and for showing the world what humans are capable of achieving.
 

It Could Happen...It DID Happen!
 Posted on Jul 08, 2011 06:43:03 PM | Kevin J Rohrer
3 Comments | | Poor Fair Average Good Excellent

By Kevin Rohrer
Team Lead
NASA Dryden Public Affairs
They say history is made every day. Most of us read about it on the Web, watch it on the news or recall it years later when reading it in books. Today, I had the privilege of witnessing a truly historic event that will be talked about for many years to come. I saw the space shuttle Atlantis launch from the Kennedy Space Center.

I was there to support the Kennedy public affairs staff as they handled the crush of press interest. I was in good company; representatives from several other NASA centers were also on hand to help facilitate interviews with over 1,000 media representatives reporting on the event. I am told that up to a million people made the pilgrimage to Florida’s Space Coast in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the orbiter ascending from the launch pad and into orbit. Young and old, enthusiasm was high.

Image right: Media from around the world were gathered at the Kennedy Space Center press site for Atlantis' final launch.

I don’t think anyone can say exactly where everyone came from. I do know that there were at least two people from New Zealand who made the journey. They shared their excitement with me on my plane ride from Los Angeles to Orlando. "Do you have friends or family that you're here to see?" "No,” they said, “we just wanted to be part of history." They asked me about the weather situation. I told them that reports from NASA meteorologists called for a 70 percent chance of a "no-go" based on weather conditions. Not the best odds. But, I told them, “It could happen.”

As I sat on the balcony of my hotel Thursday evening, a gentleman and his son said hi from the adjoining balcony. They had traveled from western Florida to watch the launch–their first. As we watched the rain pour down on the cars parked below, they asked me if it would go. “It could happen,” I replied.

When I arrived at the Kennedy press center early Friday morning, weather was still an issue. The clouds were thick, with remnants of an overnight rain still visible along the roads. It was surprising to hear the optimism among the staff and media present. Hey, it could still happen, right? Then as the morning flew by, the clouds began to weaken. At the T-9 minute hold in the launch, the sun began peeking through a few of the clouds. Maybe it could happen!

The countdown clock began ticking once the planned hold was lifted, and the press center was the emptiest it had been all day. I joined the media on the lawn near the infamous countdown clock. As it ticked past the one-minute mark, camera shutters began clicking, broadcast media narrated the unfolding events…and then the clock mysteriously stopped at 31 seconds. People looked around, searching for an explanation. Did they scrub the launch attempt due to bad weather? I started heading back into the media center to see what was going on. Maybe it wasn’t going to happen, I thought quietly to myself.

But just as quickly as the clock had stopped, it started again. The crowd was abuzz; it IS going to happen! Three, two, one…liftoff! I had just witnessed history, the last liftoff of the last mission for the space shuttle.

On my way back to the hotel, it was sad to think that this era of U.S. human space exploration was coming to an end. As I sat in traffic, I saw five kids posing for pictures on a small replica of the space shuttle in front of a City of Port Canaveral building. They were hanging onto the wings and taking turns sitting on top of the space shuttle, no doubt pretending they too were making history as their imaginations took them to space. Maybe they will be the next astronauts going to Mars or to destinations beyond.

Yep, I thought to myself. It could happen.
 
 

1 - 7 of 43 posts. Total pages: 7     Go To
Search Blogs
 
Browse by Author