aerospace america june 2016

2016·11.2 MB·English

June 2016
Ambition: Europa
NASA might find more than
life in this moon’s ocean.
It could find a new
strategy for exploring
other worlds.
Page 22
Oklahoma’s Bridenstine
on climate, term limits/8
20 years of Design/Build/Fly/30
Smart bombs for wildfires/38
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DEPARTMENTS
Page 16
EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK 2
Congress’s dynamic aerospace duo
IN BRIEF 4
3D-printed drone; status change at Ames? smart repair manuals;
Page 34
subscale aircraft
CONVERSATION 8
Change agent for aerospace
CASE STUDY 12
Preventing more MH370s
ENGINEERING NOTEBOOK 16
Making a money saver
OUT OF THE PAST 46
Page 4
CAREER OPPORTUNITIES 48
FEATURES
AMBITION: EUROPA 22
Jupiter’s moon Europa could have life in the ocean under
its shell. NASA came up with a step-by-step plan to find out.
Then, along came a congressman from Texas.
by Debra Werner
Page 38
DESIGNING A WINNER 30
AIAA’s Design/Build/Fly contest gives college students a chance
to pit their engineering smarts against international competitors
in a remote-controlled aircraft flyoff. This year’s event was arguably
one of the most challenging.
by Joe Stumpe
VIEWPOINT: STATISTICS MATTER NOW, MORE THAN EVER 34
University aerospace engineering curriculums are packed with foundational
Page 12
courses, but statistics is not typically one of them. It’s time to fix that.
by Dave Finkleman
SMART WEAPONS FOR FIGHTING FIRES 38
Massive wildfires have become almost a summer ritual in the U.S.
But airtankers, the air cavalry of forest fires, are in short supply.
by Michael Peck
BULLETIN
AIAA Meeting Schedule B2
Page 30
AIAA News B5
AIAA Propulsion and Energy Event Preview B12
AIAA Courses and Training Program B15
ON THE COVER
An artist’s rendering of Europa’s surface.
Credit: NASA
Aerospace America (ISSN 0740-722X) is published monthly by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc., at 12700 Sunrise Valley Drive, Suite 200 Reston, VA 20191-5807 [703/264-7500].
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Editor’s Notebook
is a publication of the American Institute
of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Ben Iannotta
Editor-in-Chief
Kyung M. Song
Congress’s dynamic aerospace duo
Associate Editor
Greg Wilson
Production Editor
We spent some time in this edition talking with U.S. Reps. John Culberson, R-Texas,
Jerry Grey
and Jim Bridenstine, R-Oklahoma. Inevitably, not everyone will agree with them
Editor-at-Large
Christine Williams on some core issues, from their doubts about the human role in climate change
Editor AIAA Bulletin to Culberson’s push to increase funding for exploring Europa. But the two are a
dynamic duo when it comes to injecting fresh thinking about matters of aerospace
Contributing Writers into lawmaking. They are not merely overseeing plans put forth by the White
Keith Button, Henry Canaday, House, NASA and NOAA. They are determined to direct them and inspire them.
Michael Peck, Joe Stumpe,
The ideas they propose can sound outlandish, but even outlandish concepts have
Robert van der Linden, Debra Werner,
a way of forcing change that can be rational in its final form. At least, that’s the hope.
Frank H. Winter
Bridenstine is a big advocate for the companies that plan to gather and sell
Jane Fitzgerald weather forecasting data by encircling Earth with cubesats to receive GPS signals
Art Direction and Design and measure how far they bend as they cross though the atmosphere along the
curve of the Earth. The concept might sound hokey when you first hear it, but
James F. Albaugh, President
James “Jim” Maser, President-Elect NOAA forecasters don’t think Bridenstine is crazy. From the data they’ve received
Sandra H. Magnus, Publisher so far, they’d like more of this GPS radio occultation data, as long as that doesn’t
Craig Byl, Manufacturing and Distribution come at the expense of NOAA’s weather satellites. Culberson addresses that concern
in our interview on page 8.
STEERING COMMITTEE
The other half of the dynamic duo, Culberson, has inserted himself into NASA
John Evans, Lockheed Martin; Steven E.
exploration planning in something of a Kennedy-like way. John F. Kennedy gave
Gorrell, Brigham Young University; Frank Lu,
University of Texas at Arlington; David R. Riley, NASA before the end of the 1960s to land humans on the moon. Under language
Boeing; Mary L. Snitch, Lockheed Martin; Culberson shepherded into law in December, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is
Annalisa Weigel, Fairmont Consulting Group supposed to launch a robotic orbiter and a lander toward Europa by 2022. The
Kennedy comparison shouldn’t be taken too far. JFK was president of a nation
EDITORIAL BOARD
Ned Allen, Jean-Michel Contant, of 180 million people. Culberson has 770,000 people in his Houston district. But
L.S. “Skip” Fletcher, Michael Francis, members of Congress are allowed to put bold ideas on the table, too.
Cam Martin, Don Richardson, I don’t know that Culberson’s timeline or vision will prove realistic in the end,
Douglas Yazell but I do know that his passion for Europa has experts at JPL working in overdrive
ADVERTISING to find out. If you’re an advocate of space exploration, perhaps that’s not a bad
Joan Daly, 703-938-5907 process to see set in motion.
[email protected] Near the end of my conversation with Bridenstine, I mentioned that the nuance
in his views about weather forecasting and climate change surprised me.
Pat Walker, 415-387-7593
[email protected] “That’s the way politics is. Everybody wants to create a picture of who they
think you are and not who you really are,” he said.
LETTERS AND CORRESPONDENCE One of the values of Aerospace America is that we go beyond personalities
Ben Iannotta, [email protected] to dig into the logic underlying debates over such issues as the role of privately
operated weather satellites, Europa exploration and climate change. We will
QUESTIONS AND ADDRESS CHANGES
continue to do that.
[email protected]
ADVERTISING MATERIALS Ben Iannotta
Craig Byl, [email protected]
Editor-in-Chief
June 2016, Vol. 54, No. 6
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In Brief
Printing a quadcopter out of plastic
Specialized missions require spe- about 46 meters. When it receives an custom aircraft. The quadcopter could
cialized aircraft, and designing a cus- acoustic signal, a launch container re- have been bigger or smaller, faster or
tom unmanned aircraft can be ex- leases the quadcopter, which floats to slower, weaponized or unarmed, de-
pensive and time consuming. the surface and lifts off, reaching a pending on the requirements.
Engineers at the John Hopkins speed of 30 kph. “Gone are the days when you
University Applied Physics Labora- A smaller version, the 3-kilogram have to buy an expensive UAV and
tory are working to solve that prob- Mini-CRACUNS, will be compact shove your 10-pound payload into its
lem by 3-D printing aircraft to meet enough to be launched from an un- one-pound volume,” says CRACUNS
customers’ needs. manned underwater vehicle, but will project manager Tom Murdock. Us-
APL engineers demonstrated the require some fiberglass parts that ing off-the-shelf parts and additive
technique by additively manufactur- can’t be additively manufactured. printing shows how “you can create
ing an unmanned aircraft out of plas- CRACUNS was built almost en- an airframe specific to your mission
tic and flying it in an unusual way. tirely out of plastic, the exception be- much faster and much more cheaply
The 6-kilogram Corrosion Resistant ing some metal fasteners and engine than buying a commercial off the
Aerial Covert Unmanned Nautical parts. A pressure vessel made of plas- shelf UAV and retrofitting it.”
System, or CRACUNS, rose from the tic protects electronic components The CRACUNS team estimates
bottom of a flooded quarry, and took from corrosion, while the craft’s mo- that if the 15.2-centimeter-diameter
off, carrying a GoPro camera to dem- tors are sheathed in commercially pressure vessel were cast out of
onstrate low-altitude surveillance. available protective coatings. metal, that part alone would have
CRACUNS is designed to be sta- The APL team says it took the air- cost $50,000 and taken 10 weeks to
tioned on the bottom in shallow wa- craft from concept to flight in four build. The team would not disclose
ter for months down to a depth of months, which is unusually fast for a the cost of CRACUNS, noting that
any figure would have to
include research as well
as materials, but they did
The 3D manufactured underwater drone Corrosion Resistant Aerial Covert Unmanned
Nautical System is made almost entirely out of plastic, except for metal fasteners say the materials part of
and some engine parts. the project cost in the
thousands of dollars.
The success of CRA-
CUNS does not mean
that hobbyists can just
start developing custom
unmanned aircraft off
their home 3-D printers,
Murdock cautions.
“The craft’s underwa-
ter and aerial capabilities
reflect the expertise and
experience of its design-
ers. More important, CRA-
CUNS is a demonstration
of rapid prototyping rather
than cheap manufactur-
ing,” Murdock says; until
industrial 3-D printing
costs come down, the
process isn’t economical
for mass production.
Michael Peck
[email protected]
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
@Mipeck1
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Former directors chime in
on private management for NASA Ames
Rising housing costs
in the San Francisco
Bay Area make it
hard for NASA Ames
Research Center to
attract and retain
top scientists and
engineers, because
the federal pay
scales require NASA
to follow hard caps.
U.S. Rep. John
Culberson, R-Texas,
the chairman of the
House subcommit-
tee that sets NASA’s
annual budget, is
Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas,is pushing
the latest to raise
to turn operating control of NASA’s
the possibility of
Ames Research Center over to a
involving local uni- university, partly in order to lift salary
versities in running caps to better attract talent. NASA
Ames, and possibly
other NASA cen-
ters, in a manner similar to the way those of two of his predecessors, idea. It should have been done long
the California Institute of Technol- Hans Mark and William Ballhaus, Jr., ago,” he says.
ogy manages NASA’s Jet Propulsion failed for two main reasons: It is il- Hubbard would go further and
Laboratory in Pasadena, California. legal for a government employee to turn all NASA centers into FFRDCs.
JPL is a Federally Funded Research leave his or her job and take the That “would make more sense ...
and Development Center, or same job as a private contractor. than doing it piecemeal,” he says.
FFRDC, operated for NASA by And even if Congress were to pass NASA headquarters appears
Caltech. The FFRDC arrangement legislation waiving the criminal stat- cool to the idea, possibly because of
gives JPL freedom to establish a ute for a group of NASA employees, the independence that FFRDCs like
competitive pay scale. a local university or corporation JPL can at times exhibit. At a March
The question is whether the lat- would have to agree to manage hearing, Culberson said he was
est discussion about management of Ames, which employs 2,480 people “keenly interested” in the idea of
Ames will meet the fate of efforts and has an annual budget of about converting Ames and possibly other
during the tenures of three previous $900 million. centers, but NASA Administrator
directors to change the structure. I Ballhaus, who directed Ames Charles Bolden responded that he
wasn’t able to get anyone at NASA from 1984 to 1989, says it’s worth ap- was “leery,” although open to study-
Ames to weigh in, but I spoke to two proaching universities again about ing the idea.
of those past directors. running the center. As an FFRDC, Bolden explained that when the
“I was able to recruit some of the Ames would be free from civil-service time comes to plan a mission, he
best and brightest who thought work- employment rules. When Ballhaus likes to “bring all the center directors
ing on space stuff was beyond cool,” wanted to establish Ames as a super together and hear all the dissenting
says Scott Hubbard who directed computing center in the 1980s, the opinion.” Then, he said, “I make a
Ames from 2002 to 2006 and is now a civil service system didn’t have a cat- decision and we all go in that direc-
professor at Stanford University. “But egory for computer scientists. The tion. The Journey to Mars, for exam-
when they started to have kids and only related category was payroll pro- ple, you could not do that with a
buy a house, they went to work for cessors, whose salaries were far too bunch of FFRDCs.”
Google or Microsoft.” low for computer scientists. Debra Werner
Hubbard’s conversion effort and Conversion is “a really good [email protected]
AEROSPACE AMERICA/JUNE 2016 5
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In Brief
Repair manuals get smart
For aircraft mechanics,especially for relevant data has been ingested like a book index, but specific to the
less experienced ones, finding the and a Google-like search capability maintenance domain. The NLP algo-
right information to address the has been implemented. Next comes rithms were chosen from an open-
problem in front of them can be ex- the ability for mechanics to type in source library and were then opti-
tremely challenging. Digital manuals questions and receive answers. mized for speed and the specific
or other documents are stored, orga- Siri-like speech recognition may be maintenance task.
nized and updated in ways much dif- added someday. A mechanic who types in “hy-
ferent than the way most people Airbus Chief Engineer Greg Myer draulic power control” might be
think, speak or read. says his shop now performs 12 to 18 asked to choose from a list of ob-
served faults or errors.
Selecting one would
generate several possi-
ble corrective actions,
as well as probabilities
of success. The me-
chanic tries each fix
and then reports what
worked.
Machine learning
applies statistical tech-
niques to retain and
build on the knowl-
edge from users. If
mechanics consistently
select a particular fix
to a problem, then that
solution will be rated
the highest.
In addition to add-
ing the question-and-
answer capability, Air-
Airbus
bus and 1Ansah will
Airbus Helicopters Chief Engineer Greg Myer holds a binder of maintenance documents at Airbus Civil Helicopter facilities add illustrations to
in Sydney, Australia. Airbus has digitized most of these documents and is now making the data more easily accessible parts catalogues.
to mechanics with natural-language software.
1Ansah CEO An-
The maintenance-software scheduled heavy maintenance visits ant Sahay says his toughest chal-
company 1Ansah of Sidney has a year, with increasing modifications lenges were finding enough people
taken on that problem. The com- and customizations. Airbus digitized with the right NLP skills. Apart from
pany has devised natural-language its maintenance data six years ago, Stanford, few universities teach NLP.
processing software, or NLP, that well before 1Ansah’s involvement. The specialty is in high demand due
ingests digital maintenance manu- Even so, Myer says, “it is hard to find to consumer applications, and work-
als and related documents and then information in the same place in the ers command high salaries and fees.
applies artificial intelligence and manual and hard to communicate “These people are not cheap.”
machine learning to iteratively subtle differences in document logic Sahay has worked with other
learn from past search results. A to other people. This hurts turn- maintenance aids but says the short-
mechanic working on a plane will around time and has real effects on coming of those tools is that they as-
type in search terms or a question, efficiency.” sume they know all the questions
and the appropriate information NLP first ingests digital mainte- that can be asked.
will be displayed. nance manuals, component manuals, “We had to tinker if there was a
The software is not yet fully service bulletins, airworthiness di- new problem. These systems cannot
operational, but 1Ansah is collabo- rectives and fault-isolation manuals retain new knowledge, and we are
rating with Airbus Group Australia into its memory. NLP then breaks trying to move beyond them.”
Pacific to apply it to the company’s down related sentences and analyzes Henry Canaday
helicopter maintenance. To date, their grammar. It creates an index, [email protected]
6 AEROSPACE AMERICA/JUNE 2016
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Up next for NASA’s mini-airliner
The best way to test new aviation Center in Virginia needed a subscale propel NASA’s X-48 and X-56 subscale
technology is to actually fly it. But aircraft that resembled a regional jet, test aircraft. The PTERA’s engines can
testing on an aircraft, especially had a T-tail empennage and a rear be mounted above or below the wing,
larger ones, is expensive and time- engine mount. or on the tail. Or, other types of en-
consuming. As it turned out, Area-I’s prototype gines can be mounted on the aircraft
Unless the testbed is a NASA could be modified to fit both needs. So for a particular research project.
mini-aircraft that looks and flies just in 2014, the company built two “For example, distributed electric
like a full-sized airliner. The Proto- PTERAs: The Armstrong aircraft has a propulsion could be studied by in-
type-Technology Evaluation
Research Aircraft, or PTERA, a-I
is an unmanned, subscale Are
aircraft that resembles a
twin-engined passenger jet,
except that it’s one-tenth the
size. Built by the aviation
technology company Area-I
of Kennesaw, Georgia,
NASA’s 59-kilogram PTERA
is 3.4 meters long and has a
span of 3 meters. It can fly at
220 kph with landing gear
extended, has a ceiling of
3,000 meters, and can carry
a 27-kilogram payload.
PTERA is helping NASA
get at some of aviation’s
thorniest challenges, such as
a project by a team of NASA,
Boeing and Area-I to de-
velop adaptive wings, made
of shape-memory alloy, that
would change their shape
during flight. Initially testing
NASA’s Armstrong Research Center is using a Prototype-Technology Evaluation Research Aircraft,
such technologies on a sub-
a subscale model that resembles a twin-engine jetliner, to research drag. In the rear is a NASA F-18 Hornet.
scale aircraft is quicker and
cheaper than with a full-
sized plane, while generat-
ing more insight into aircraft stall cross-shaped tail that can be made stalling several electric motors in
and flight characteristics than with a smaller to conduct drag reduction re- PTERA’s wing,” Cogan says.
wind tunnel model. search, while the Langley model has a So far, PTERA has been conduct-
PTERA was conceived in 2006, T-tail to examine loss of control issues ing test flights to establish the air-
when NASA put out a research pro- with that tail configuration. craft’s baseline performance. But
posal for a subscale aircraft that could Bruce Cogan, NASA’s PTERA NASA has already tested a surface
test circulation control wing technol- project manager, says the little air- airflow sensor on PTERA’s wing.
ogy in which streams of high pres- craft is extremely configurable. NASA, Boeing and Area-I are also
sure generate more lift. But by the “Wing trailing and leading edges developing a shape adaptive wing in
time Area-I had built a prototype in are non-structural, allowing evalua- which the outer wing panels, made
2011, the focus of NASA researchers tion of almost any high lift device of shape memory alloy, change their
had shifted away from circulation concept,” Cogan says. “The wing is shape to control the aircraft. The
control wings. Still, NASA’s Armstrong also completely reconfigurable to technology could reduce or eliminate
Research Center in California wanted provide testing of many advanced aircraft rudders.
a medium-range, narrow-body, twin- aerodynamical technologies.” Michael Peck
jet airliner for aerodynamics research, PTERA is fitted with two Jet Cat [email protected]
while the agency’s Langley Research micro-turbine engines, which also @Mipeck1
AEROSPACE AMERICA/JUNE 2016 7
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Conversation
Change agent for aerospace
U.S. Rep. Jim Bridenstine, R-Oklahoma
Jim Bridenstine is unusual for a U.S.
congressman. References to
aerospace technologies and the
companies that build them flow
easily and accurately from him,
perhaps because of his history as
a Navy pilot and now an Oklahoma
Air National Guard pilot.
Bridenstine is not ruffled when
pressed on his skepticism about
human-induced climate change, and
he relishes making his cases that
NOAA should make more use of
weather data from privately owned
satellites, and that the U.S.
is financing Russian military programs.
Bridenstine came to office in
2013 determined to lift the U.S.
from what he sees as its declining
stature as a space power and to
make Oklahoma safer from the
tornadoes that ravage the state
every year. He may get only 2 ½ more
years to do that, because he believes
members of Congress should serve
no more than three terms. He says
this November’s election will be his
last race for Congress.
Bridenstine spoke with
Ben Iannotta by phone from his
U.S. Rep. Jim Bridenstine, R-Oklahoma, introduces his American Space Renaissance Act
office in Oklahoma.
in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in April.
Space Foundation/Tom Kimmel
8 AEROSPACE AMERICA/JUNE 2016
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