ARMSTRONG IS A BIG PART OF THE PRESIDENT’S PLANS

David D. McBride
Director, NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center

mcbride_2012_226LFive years ago, President Obama offered a vision to the American people for NASA and the space program’s plans for improving life here on Earth while also enabling our journey to Mars and beyond. The Armstrong Flight Research Center and the people of Antelope Valley are a big part of it.

From researching and validating new technologies that make general and commercial aviation aircraft safer and more environmentally friendly, or working with our neighbors at the Mojave Air and Spaceport to create sustainable American commercial access to space, NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center is with you when you fly.

Aviation is a critically important sector in a time when our nation’s economy needs a robust commercial aviation industrial base. Aviation generates more $1.5 trillion in U.S. economic activity each year, as well as supports more than 11.5 million direct and indirect jobs and transports 17.7 billion tons of freight each year.

To sustain and grow America’s global leadership in aeronautics and commercial aircraft production, NASA is committed to transforming aviation by dramatically reducing its environmental impact, maintaining and improving safety in more crowded skies, enabling safe access for UAS unmanned aircraft systems into the National Airspace System, and paving the way to revolutionary aircraft shapes and propulsion.

NASA Armstrong is the agency’s center of excellence for atmospheric flight research, working with American and international partners to test and corroborate new technologies and alternative fuels that will make aircraft operations more environmentally friendly and fuel efficient.

NASA Armstrong employees bring California’s motto to life – our researchers and engineers have “Eureka” moments regularly, which is one reason NASA is consistently voted the best place to work in the federal government. At NASA, we understand that only through innovation and moving our boundaries forward will we be able to keep our momentum and the American aerospace economic advantage alive.

In addition to our sustained investment in aeronautics research and development, NASA Armstrong manages a space technology program that partners technology payloads from researchers, scientists and innovators with test flights to the edge of space on commercial, reusable platforms – rockets made by companies like Masten, Virgin Galactic and Up Aerospace.

The NASA/DLR Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy airborne telescope is now conducting regular science operations out of California investigating NASA’s strategic goals in astrophysics, which are to discover the origin, structure, evolution and destiny of the Universe and search for Earth-like planets.

The global Earth system is changing. NASA is conducting Earth Science research from California studying the entire planet to better understand its health. We are not just working to understand what is happening, but why it is happening. Our plant is changing and we are on it.

NASA today finds solutions to challenges facing the aerospace and science communities that help the nation reach for new heights and reveal the unknown for the benefit of humankind. Thanks to the great work of the NASA Armstrong team, America’s aerospace program is more than just alive in California, it is thriving.

As the President stated in his speech five years ago this month, “for pennies on the dollar, the space program has fueled jobs and entire industries. For pennies on the dollar, the space program has improved our lives, advanced our society, strengthened our economy, and inspired generations of Americans.” This return on investment continues here on Earth, right now. Technology drives exploration and California is the innovation engine our new high-tech economy. Together, NASA and California will continue to lead the nation in Eureka moments.

Reflections on National & Aerospace Milestones – Some Pretty Amazing History

By Patrick C. Stoliker
Deputy Director
NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center

As the summer vacation season rolls to a close, I find myself reflecting on some of the historic places in our country I have had the opportunity to visit. While at work, many see me as an engineer or manager, but another passion I have is history, and I’ve been fortunate to visit some amazing places.Pat_Stoliker

The recent 45th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing made me think of the first practical flight of the Wright Brothers and my visit to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Standing on Kill Devil Hills and pacing off the distance for each of the four flights was a sobering experience as I considered the routine nature of air travel today and how much I do of it.

I took my son to the Gettysburg battlefield when he was 10 and was entranced by the knowledge of the events he had accurately learned in school. The experience of walking the ground where Pickett’s charge took place brought to life Abraham Lincoln’s words, “The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.”

Visits to Plymouth Rock, Williamsburg, and Jamestown have given me an opportunity to reflect on the colonists as they settled New England. And similarly, stops at the missions in California tell the story of west coast exploration. The Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York was an oddly patriotic experience, as the game has been a part of American lifestyle for most of the existence of our Nation.

Visiting the launch pads at Kennedy Space Center brought back childhood memories of watching the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions and the awe of watching Neil Armstrong take the first step on the moon (on a black and white TV!). I had the opportunity to watch the last launch of Atlantis at that facility.

And I realized I take for granted a historic place I visit on a daily basis, NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center, Edwards Air Force Base, and Rogers Dry Lake. As I drive in to work each morning, I look out onto the lakebed where supersonic flight was born. The ramps behind my building have been host to the X-15 aircraft that took humans to edge of our atmosphere at nearly seven times the speed of sound. Neil Armstrong flew that vehicle before going to the moon, as well as flying the LLRV as a precursor to the moon landing.

As a child, I remember airshows and seeing the variety of lifting bodies that were towed over and then flown to landings on the lakebed. The M2F1, M2F2, HL-10, X-24A, and X-24B were all precursors validating the concept that enabled the space shuttle. As a student engineer, I watched the approach and landing tests of the Enterprise and the first landing of Columbia. The lifting body flights continued with the X-38 and X-40. I drive by the F-8 Digital Fly-By-Wire aircraft and the X-1E every day.

I hope I get to see many more historic flights, such as the upcoming flights of the X-56 Multi-Use Technology Test bed (MUTT) and Dream Chaser when it returns this fall. When I arrive early in the morning as the sun is just coming up over the nearby mountains and the hangar doors are wide open as preparations are under way for the latest flight test, I realize that I don’t have to go far to see some pretty amazing history.

NASA Armstrong air show exhibit spawns enthusiasm, inspiration

By Jay Levine
Editor, The X-Press
NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center

The roar of the engines, the contrails in the sky and the awe I feel watching aircraft fly inspire me. My heart races, my blood pressure rises and I can feel the adrenalin pump as I watch a flight.

TT28814 Jay Levine

However, the reason I remain enthusiastic about aeronautics – specifically NASA aeronautics – is the people who work at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center. I am an optimist and a dreamer, but I understand the constraints and realities. However, my enthusiasm is reignited like an afterburner nearly every time I talk with Armstrong employees. They love what they do and many will happily tell you about their work if you ask.

We may take NASA aeronautics for granted because we work at NASA Armstrong, but we have front row seats to the latest ideas in aeronautics. The people who are trying to bring that future to us are some of the best at what they do. They are our colleagues and friends and we are fortunate to see them reach new milestones.

It was with pride that I watched as Tim Williams wowed the crowd at the Los Angeles County Air Show with fantastic flybys in the ER-2 high-altitude research aircraft on Friday, March 21. Dean Neeley put on a similar ER-2 demonstration the following day. The Dodge Charger used to keep an eye on the high-flier for takeoffs and landings also was on display at the show.

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A number of Armstrong pilots, flight-test engineers and employees signed autographs for lines of fans at the show that attracted as many as 100,000 people. All in all about 100 volunteers from the center contributed to the exhibit.

When NASA Armstrong research test pilot Frank Batteas talks about his job he explains, “I can’t imagine doing anything else.” After you talk with him for a few minutes you would probably understand why.

“There were some high school kids here yesterday who wanted to know how to get into flying,” Batteas explained. “The younger generation is really enthusiastic about airplanes. They also were enthusiastic about the projects I told them about and it was a great opportunity to give them insight into the aeronautics and science parts of NASA.”

The Blue Angels were one of the biggest draws of the two-day event. Ironically, NASA Armstrong’s F/A-18 No. 846, which was on display at the event, was formerly an aircraft flown by the Blue Angels.

ED14-0088-084 NASA exhibit visitors

I talked with a number of people who visited the NASA Armstrong exhibit and saw the row of five models in a display case that represent NASA aeronautics officials’ vision for the future. Young people were in awe of the concepts representing ideas like a supersonic business jet to ideas for more fuel efficient and environmentally friendly fliers. More experienced visitors shared that enthusiasm, adding that they hoped to see these concepts fly.

Al Bowers, newly selected as Armstrong’s chief scientist, talked to people at the exhibit about the use of subscale aircraft. He himself was inspired by an airshow that his father took him to at Point Mugu, Calif. He said he wasn’t even in kindergarten then, but his enthusiasm remains pure.

“When you are the very first person to ever see that data (from a flight) in the history of the universe, that is just the coolest thing,” Bowers said. “To see these data and figure something out that has never been seen or understood before is what it’s all about.”

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The impact of Armstrong, formerly known as the Dryden Flight Research Center, was seen in the wide eyes of Brandon Darus, age 9. He checked out the F/A-18 at the NASA Armstrong exhibit and then spoke to Batteas. Batteas told the boy about the aircraft and signed a photo that no doubt will be added to Brandon’s collection of rocket and space shuttle models.

Ironically, his parents – Peter and Diana Darus – met at Dryden. Peter was a controls engineer of the F/A-18 HARV and Diana was a cooperative education employee.

No doubt there are challenges in aviation and NASA aeronautics. However, the people at NASA Armstrong are looking to develop the technology and tools to push the frontiers of aviation – and by virtue of the application to space systems –space flight as well. Don’t be surprised if when you meet some of us that you learn something you didn’t know about NASA and gain a touch of our enthusiasm.

View NASA Armstrong air show video at: http://bit.ly/1jVwlor

A Time For Change

 

By David McBride,
Director, NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center

David McBrideNow is a time for change. It also is an opportunity to recommit to our existing vision, mission and values.

President Barack Obama signed congressional resolution H.R. 667 on Jan. 16, 2014, changing the name of the Hugh L. Dryden Flight Research Center to the Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center. The name change became official on March 1, 2014.

This change is an immense honor for our center. Neil Armstrong was the first man to stand on the moon – he was also an engineer and a research test pilot at this center.

While we are changing our name, we will continue to celebrate Hugh Dryden’s legacy. The center’s Western Aeronautical Test Range has been renamed in his honor. Dryden was the director of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics from 1949 through 1958, and then served as the first deputy administrator for NASA until his death in 1965.

Dryden, when asked about the value of flight research with respect to the X-15 program, stated that the purpose is, “to separate the real from the imagined and make known the overlooked and unexpected.” To that end, our vision will remain – to separate the real from the imagined through flight. And our mission will remain – advancing technology and science through flight.

We will recommit to our core values of safety, excellence, teamwork and integrity in all that we do.

Throughout our history with the NACA and NASA, our ties to the agency and our sources of funding have changed and evolved over time. But throughout all of the changes the work that we do has remained constant as we fulfill a national need with our capabilities and competencies. Our role throughout our history is in the integration of complex flight systems and their safe test and flight operations.

Though we have diversified from our core aeronautics base, the work we continue to do in science and space exploration utilizes our ability to understand problems and the connection to flight, to understand the vehicle and to safely clear the flight envelope.

\We, as the Dryden ­– and now the Armstrong – team, have the ability to make complex flight systems work safely. That will not change.

Golden Era of Aeronautics, Part Two

Patrick Stoliker  – Deputy Director
NASA Dryden Flight Research CenterPat_Stoliker

I left off begging a question in my last blog: despite 60 years of modernity that include six trips to the moon and back, the advent of the internet, and in the field of medicine things like magnetic resonance imaging and nano technology, not to mention Voyager leaving our solar system, we are still flying at virtually the same speed and altitude as did passengers on the first commercial jet service in 1952. Why? Has aeronautical technology peaked? Is aerospace a“mature technology” the same way that dirigibles are? Are there no more questions to ask in this field? Or are we on the cusp of the next golden era of aircraft development.

When the Germans asked General Anthony McAuliffe to surrender at the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, he reportedly said:“Nuts!” That’s my answer to the rhetorical question I posed.

First of all, there are plenty of aeronautical questions left to ask and answer, which is why, after more than 60years, we’re still here at the same desert outpost those 13 people came to in1946.

 Here’s some questions: can we make aircraft fly supersonically—over land—and suppress the shock wave that goes with it enough so that the noise is acceptable to the people on the ground? Can we do this and also improve the fuel efficiency of the same aircraft?

Here’s another question: can we actually reduce the cost of putting a pound of something—anything—into space? It’s run close to $10,000 per pound since I’ve been alive, and since I’ve been alive the quest has been to reduce that figure. There have been different plans, and Dryden has been involved in several of them, and we’re involved in another as I write this now. This is especially relevant since NASA’s mission has shifted from delivering goods to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to exploring deep space; now the delivery job is going to private industry and our job—NASA’s job—is to nurture industry in this new venture. Finding ways to reduce the cost of access to space is serious business, not pie-in-the-sky stuff. These are questions that need answers.

Meanwhile, we at Dryden haven’t been sitting still these past 60 years, even if it might seem that way because we’re still traveling at the same speed as the folks who flew on Yoke Peter. While there are more of us in an airliner fuselage then ever, the range of the aircraft has increased dramatically and fuel consumption improved. That’s because the engines have become more efficient. They are also far quieter than before. If you don’t believe me, go find a Boeing 737-200 and get close to it when it takesImage of KC-135 Stratotanker with winglets attached flying over the San Gabriel mountains near Edwards AFB. off; when–and if–your hearing comes back we’ll go find a Boeing 737-800 and compare its takeoff noise level. On top of that, you can watch the -200 for a long, long time after it flies away because of its exhaust plume; the current crop of jet engines operate more efficiently and leave far less pollution in the atmosphere than did the previous generation.These are improvements most people tend not to notice—they’re qualitative not quantitative jumps—but NASA has had a hand in all this. Every time passengers get on an airliner that has winglets they should think two things: better fuel efficiency and NASA. (Think: Whitcomb and a KC-135 flown here at Dryden)

The seats passengers sit in, the way they are anchored to the floor, the fabric the seats are made of, the lighting on the floor that leads to an exit–these things and more are safety features that NASA Dryden has directly affected but which passengers are completely unaware of while they sip their sodas at 35,000 feet—they can’t even get snacks anymore—and don’t think about messing with your electronic device on the runway!! (Remember the Boeing 720 and the Controlled Impact Demonstration?) Life is better because of the continued questions we ask here.

Photograph of F-8 Supercritical wing aircraft flying over NASA DrydenThere was a brief moment when it looked like we were all going to fly a bit faster as airline passengers. In 1972 engineers at Dryden began flying a Vought F-8 Crusader with a new wing on it. Designed by Richard Whitcomb of NASA Langley, the Supercritical Wing was expected to delay the onset of pre-Mach buffet and the dramatic jump in drag that accompanies an aircraft as it approaches Mach. Whitcomb’s radical new wing design did both,and the airlines were keen on getting planes with the new airfoil so they could fly faster. It would take a while for the manufacturers to get a plane to the market—it always does, but the airlines would be ready; and then the first gas peace time gas crisis in American history hit (ca. 1974-). After that the airlines still wanted the supercritical wing—and they got them—but they never flew any faster then they ever did.

We continue to make incremental improvements in all classes of aircraft from micro-UAVS through general aviation,commercial, and high performance. But we still seem to be living in the shadow of the last golden age of aeronautics development.

So when you look around and say “we aren’t going any faster,” you could be saying “we are going the same as we did but doing it so much more cleanly, so much more quietly, so much more efficiently,so much more safely, at far less risk than ever before, and NASA and Dryden has had an enormous role in all of this, every step of the way!”

I’ll finish one more question, “What is going to trigger the next golden era of aeronautics?”

Golden Era of Aeronautics, Part One

Image of Patrick Stoliker, Deputy Director of NASA Dryden Flight Research CenterPatrick Stoliker

Deputy Director 
NASA Dryden Flight Research Center

On May 2, 1952—virtually 60 years ago—36 people boarded BOAC’s De Havilland Comet DH 106, known as “Yoke Peter” to its crew for last letters of its registration G-ALYP, took their seats and readied for a long journey. These were the first paying passengers of the modern jet age, departing London for a 7,000-mile trip to Johannesburg, South Africa. Powered by four Ghost jet engines (also made by De Havilland) and with a cruise speed listed at about 500 mph, the passengers rode in pressurized comfort. About the only significant difference between that day and now was the legroom and the ratio of passengers to fight attendants. But if we pay too much attention to the similarities we’ll miss what is remarkable about the span of time involved. It’s been 60 years since the first passengers rode on a jet airliner and we’re still flying at the same speeds and the same altitudes.

There was a brief interval during which the wealthy could travel at Mach 2 on the Concorde (slightly faster if they wanted to fly the Soviet Tu-144), but neither airplane was ever a commercial success: both were just items of national prestige.

If it seems as though little has changed in the last 60 years—I said seems—consider how much changed between 1903 and 1952: call it the first 50 years of flight. It was on a wintry day in 1903 that two brothers from Dayton, Ohio, succeeded where no one else had, on the sand dunes of Kill Devil, North Carolina. Wilbur and Orville Wright were hardly the only ones trying to figure out flight at that time; there were quite a few in the US and in Europe, and most were further along than the two brothers. Even worse for the brothers, their competitors seemed to be better educated or better funded, as in the case of Samuel P. Langley of the Smithsonian Institution, or at least further along in the quest. 

The brothers made up for this with an intellect that the made their lack of a high school diplomas irrelevant. They learned the value of a wind tunnel by building their own, and they were smart enough to figure out that everyone before them had been wrong about the relationship of lift, wing area, and velocity, to say nothing of airfoils shapes. They had that rarest of talents, what Eugene Ferguson called “engineering in the mind’s eye,” the ability to move back and forth between the abstract and the concrete when trying to solve an engineering problem. They recognized propellers as rotating wings in the process. They understood wing warping and, more importantly, figured out the vertical stabilizer as the solution to adverse yaw, which they encountered on their glider, and they managed to do so largely because of how they mingled the abstract and the concrete. With Charlie Taylor, they put together a 180 pound, 12 horsepower engine with a good enough thrust to weight ratio to fly. It was an ungainly airplane, unstable in all axes, and I’m certain that only the hours of practice with the gliders gave them the skills needed to control the airplane. Then again, the same goes for riding a bicycle: it too, is unstable and takes time to learn how to ride, but you are then rewarded with a contraption that is nimble as can be, as opposed to a four-wheeled wagon. Progress came quickly. Although canard configurations have returned, the Wright’s pursued their original aircraft configuration until 1909, when they added an elevator and larger vertical tails. The 1910 Wright Model B had no canard and engines with 28-42 hp (with a production run of about 100 airplanes).

Their competitors settled into the more conventional wing/rudder/elevator configurations and everywhere advancements in capabilities and performance quickly followed (ditching wing warping in favor of ailerons was a way to control the airplane and try and avoid the Wright’s patent). Aircraft manufacturers proliferated across Europe and the United States. Although we think of this as the era of the biplanes (and triplanes), monoplanes like the Nieuport 2 were being built by 1910! The Loughead Brothers (later Lockheed) formed their first aircraft company in 1912 in Santa Barbara. The first aviation meet in America was held in Los Angeles (Dominguez Hills) January 1910 and airplanes were still so relatively new enough that dirigibles were a huge draw even then.

The speed with which aeronautical technology developed is astonishing and I consider this first decade one of the golden eras of aeronautics. We made big steps from the first ‘practicable’ airplane to modern aircraft. War had much to do with this, as it often does–in this case it was WWI. That war brought the first monococque fuselage, the interrupter gear, vastly improved flight instruments, the first UAV (the Kettering Aerial Torpedo, whose flight was made possible by Lawrence Sperry’s autopilot of 1914), the first all metal aircraft (Junkers J1, J2, and finally, the truly functional J4), just to name a few. The rapidity of the developments and their dramatic appearances likely makes us think war is the prime driver in such changes. But if we look at the bigger picture, this seems to be less the case.

After all, the Wrights achieved flight in a period of peace and were themselves not driven by any war, even if their first customer was the US Army Signal Corps. The first four-engine aircraft, Igor Sikorsky’s Ilya Mourometz appeared in 1914 in Russia, before The War. It was during the interwar years, the period between WWI and WWII, that NASA’s predecessor agency, the NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) developed or assisted in developing some of the most fundamental changes to aeronautics, including retractable landing gear, the variable pitch propeller, deicing boots, engine cowlings, and the world famous NACA airfoils. It was in this same era that the first superchargers were developed to allow piston engines to gain higher altitudes (and speeds), and we saw the first genuine pressurized fuselages. It was in 1928—long before WWII began—that Englishman Frank Whittle conceived of the turbojet, and still before WWII that German Hans von Ohain succeeded in flying the world’s first turbojet, developed independently of Whittle. And while people first paid to travel by air before the War, it was in the interwar years that commercial aviation actually took off, so to speak.

Image of X-1WWII drove more aeronautical developments, of course, one of the subtler ones being the abandonment of seaplanes as the preferred way to carry passengers on long routes. The war resulted in plenty of new runways all over the world as well as an abundance of multi-engine aircraft with long range, making the big seaplanes a dying breed. It also helped that long-range navigation and radar approaches were improved and created, respectively, because of WWII. Piston engine/propeller aircraft had been having trouble with the transonic realm before WWII; figuring out supersonic flight was the next big challenge, and while folks in the Army Air Corps and the NACA expected it to be a big challenge, I don’t think they realized just how big the leap into the unknown would be. Getting to Mach 1 could be done with a turbojet engine, but if you were in a hurry to do it—and the AAF was—you were going to need a rocket plane. Jet engines of the era simply weren’t powerful or reliable enough to do the job-yet. This led to the Bell X-1, two X-1s actually, and the quest for supersonic flight. This was dawn of the golden age of flight research and X-planes, of almost infinite questions and purpose-designed aircraft like the X-3, the X-4, and the X-5.

Change came fast.

In 1961 TWA introduced in-flight movies on its Boeing 707s. By 1964 we had gone Mach 3 in a jet powered aircraft (A-12/SR-71), faster in rocket planes; we’d been to space and back in capsules and a space plane (the X-15), and supersonic flight was routine, at least for the military. In 1970 Boeing introduced first the “jumbo” airliner, the 747, and we’ve been packing in more and more passengers ever since. Yet we’re still flying at virtually the same speed and altitude as those 36 passengers on “Yoke Peter” in 1952. Have things really not changed? Are we in the doldrums, and if so, why?

Aerodynamic Trucks Make Me Smile

Image of David McBride, Director, Dryden Flight Research Center By David McBride

Director, NASA Dryden Flight Research Center

Over the last several months, I have read many news stories and web accounts about rising and falling fuel prices and how some companies are rediscovering efficiencies by making trucks more aerodynamically efficient. These make me smile as it reminds me of the early aerodynamic truck studies conducted almost 40 years ago at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center on Edwards Air Force Base. Fuel efficiency in long haul trucks was never much of an issue until the first peacetime gas crisis, in the early 1970s. In 1973 an aeronautical engineer at NASA Dryden began musing over ways to cut the aerodynamic drag of over-the-road trucks. He led a small team of researchers whose results had an extraordinary, if little recognized, impact.

The center’s first experiment involved a passenger van modified into a driving laboratory. We attached an aluminum rectangular box to the vehicle—hence the nickname Shoebox—and over successive experiments, changed elements of the box.We rounded the vertical and horizontal corners, sealed the entire under body including the wheel wells, and even added a “boat tail” to the rear of the vehicle, finding out what benefits each had on the overall aerodynamic drag. Road tests of the Shoebox, with rounded vertical and horizontal corners front and back, lowered the vehicle’s aerodynamic drag by 54percent. Sealing the van’s under body and wheel wells reduced drag another 15percent. Road test showed a mileage increase of between 15 and 25%. Mileage may vary, of course, depending on conditions and styles, which is why Dryden’s engineers were fond of testing outside of wind tunnels.

Image at right: 1970s van fitted with square corners, top image, and round corners bottom. Tufts of yarn attached to the sides of the van indicate air flow around the vehicle.

Our second experiment was conducted on a cab-over-engine tractor-trailer, again modified by rounding all of its front corners and edges. In addition, technicians attached sheet metal fairings over the cab’s roof and sides, reaching as far back as the trailer;this completely closed the open space between the cab and trailer. While still looking like a tractor-trailer, it was a radical departure from anything on theroad in the 1970s. Researchers found that in highway driving at 55 miles perhour, these changes resulted in 20 to 24 percent lower fuel consumption over an identical but unmodified tractor-trailer they tested against it.

At the time of NASA Dryden’s research, which extended off-and-on until 1982, the majority of long-haul tractors were cab-overs. This was because the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 – formally known as the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways Act – placed a limit on the length on the total vehicle.

Image to the left: As depicted by this 1975 image, sheet metal is attached to a heavy haul truck rounding the front corners of the truck and adding a fairing between the cab and the trailer of the truck.

The Surface Transportation Assistance Act (1982), which came primarily in response to the impact of thegas crisis on the trucking industry, required states to permit trucks withtrailers as long as 48 feet on both interstate and intrastate highways, and effectively ignored the tractor altogether. This small detail of the bill was responsible for the shift from cab-overs to conventional engine-in-front tractors, a much more fuel-efficient design because of its shape.

In 1985 Kenworth introduced the T600, the first tractor manufactured with factory-built fairings that reflected the empirical research done at NASA Dryden. It is encouraging to see the continuing improvements to the shapes of both tractors and trailers today, all of which reflect research conducted at Dryden at the time or performed at three universities under Dryden’s guidance.

Hence, when you see fairings that narrow the gap between tractor and trailer, side skirts on the trailer, or boat tails on the back of trailers, you’re looking at the results, in part, of NASA and NASA-sponsored empirical research whose benefits have a tangible impact on our daily lives. It is especially gratifying when I think of the very real increases in fuel efficiency these trucks have realized, and the benefits we all derive as a result

Spring Means Unpredictability and Budgets

Photo of Patrick StolikerBy Patrick C. Stoliker

Deputy Director of NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center

It’s springtime again at Dryden. You cantell 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 litup 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

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

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…