the years ahead

Who can know the future better than those who are creating it?

• future air traffic
By J. Victor Lebacqz and Robert Pearce

J. Victor Lebacqz is acting associate administrator for aerospace technology at NASA. Robert Pearce is director for strategy, communications, and program integration in NASA's Office of Aerospace Technology.

Affordable, reliable air travel supports growth and expands options for where we live, work, and play. Air superiority and the ability to deploy our forces globally are vital to the national interest.

The current aviation system structure must be transformed, however, to permit continued long-term growth. The thousands of airports across this country are true national assets that should be tapped. Airspace, one of the nation's most valuable resources, remains underused.

Future airspace architecture must increase the capacity of major airports, tie them all into a distributed system, and create the freedom to fly anywhere in a safe, controlled environment.

Markets will continue to drive the air transportation system. Any future architecture must respond to various transportation possibilities. Airlines need to have the flexibility to alter operations as demand shifts. This is the highest principle for the future air traffic management system.

The next tier of system requirements are robustness and scalability. One way to achieve a scalable air traffic management system is to build it into the aircraft. As aircraft are added to the fleet, the ATM system would expand automatically to accommodate them.

Air traffic management will be built on global systems, such as the global positioning system, or GPS, and allow precise landings without needing expensive, ground-based instrument landing systems and the like. Timely, precise, and accurate weather forecasts, terrain maps, and traffic locations will form the heart of the future system and promote high-capacity operations in any weather.

Information deficit will not constrain future operations. However, the global communication, navigation, surveillance, and integrated information systems must tolerate multiple failures and still be safe, a significant challenge.

The knowledge of position and trajectory for every aircraft will move flying away from predetermined corridors. Flight paths will be determined in advance and adjusted en route for weather and other traffic. This fundamental shift will allow the precision approach to every airport in the U.S. and a generation of smart, efficient small aircraft.

Every aircraft will have full knowledge of all other aircraft in its area and will be able to coordinate with them directly. The pilot will be able to look at the flight path at different scales—from a strategic view of the entire route to a tactical view showing the immediate surroundings. Advanced sensors, digital terrain databases, accurate geo-positioning, and digital processing—synthetic vision—will provide a 3-D picture of terrain, obstacles, runways, and traffic.

By using aircraft capabilities more fully, the system will change the role of the air traffic controller to that of an airspace manager who oversees traffic flow and system demand.

Intelligent systems will support decision making. Real-time airspace redesign will be uplinked to aircraft to recompute flight trajectories. Systems will also manage allocation of runways and other scarce resources when there are conflicts that cannot be resolved between aircraft directly. Eventually, the entire system will be fully monitored for faults.

Revolutionary in scope and performance, the future system must also be implemented in a mode that allows continuous safe operation, even during unpredicted events—an extremely complex problem. This challenge must be met by government, industry, and academia. The national and global transportation system, the economy, and our society depend on it.

• the lever of technology
By Dan Mooney

Dan Mooney is vice president for product development at Boeing Commercial Airplanes in Seattle.

For 86 years, Boeing has played an integral role in weaving the fabric that is today's aerospace industry.

In that time, we have learned that technology for its own sake is often something that our customers don't find appealing and aren't willing to fund. While difficult for technologists to accept, it's led us to believe that technology must earn its way into our products.

As we look to the 21st century, our success in building commercial airplanes will hinge on being able to leverage technology rapidly into success for our customers and industry partners. It's all about the passenger, who drives the airlines' strategies that, in turn, drive our product development efforts.

Passengers want safe, reliable service, low fares, and comfortable surroundings. They prefer point-to-point, nonstop service with greater frequencies.

Over the years, we've become better at listeningÐto passengers, customers, and our industry. We know we'll succeed only if our customers do, which means our product strategy must enable airlines to meet passenger needs and wants.

To fully leverage success for our customers, we are relying on six key areas.

Configuration: Techniques such as computational fluid dynamics allow us to evaluate and develop aerodynamic flow much quicker and more accurately than in the past.

Propulsion: Today's engines are more reliable and fuel efficient, quieter, and lower in emissions and maintenance costs. Advances are being pursued in aerodynamics as well as in advanced materials and coatings.

Manufacturing: Reductions in manufacturing times are being made every day, with airplanes being made on "moving" assembly lines, cutting build times by 40 percent on our 737, for example. Tomorrow, advanced simulation and modeling will further improve factory flow.

Flight Deck: We are working with airlines, suppliers, and regulators on new cockpit technologies that will be crucial to improve safety and efficiency in the coming years.

Materials: New advanced alloys and composites are earning their way into our products. The new 7E7 will be the first commercial jet ever to have the majority of its primary structure made of advanced composite materials.

Systems: Advanced flight controls reduce the size of control surfaces and hydraulics, improving airplane economics. Through "e-enabling," airplanes will be better linked to global transport systems. Innovations in cabins will improve the passenger experience.

The soon-to-be-launched Boeing 7E7 represents our first 21st-century opportunity to meet the high expectations of our customers in terms of performance and efficiency.

What about the next 100 years? Only time will tell. Perhaps super or hypersonic airplanes will fly on the edge of space carrying intercontinental business flyers. New manufacturing technologies likely will allow airplanes to be built without the thousands of fasteners currently used.

Concern for the environment will remain a high priority. Fuel cells offer tremendous potential as a more Earth-friendly power source, as does increasing use of electricity aboard airplanes.

Airplane structure itself could morph "on the fly" to improve aerodynamics during various flight phases.

Just as the Wright brothers couldn't envision what a century of innovation would do to their creation, we modern aerospace pioneers face a similar challenge. Here's hoping that we remain guided by their inventive spirit and grounded in the reality that our success truly comes only along with that of others.

• a 21st century model for flight
By Mal O'Neill

Mal O'Neill is vice president and chief technical officer for the Lockheed Martin Corp.

We learned during the first century of flight that four basic forces determine an airframe's performance: Thrust powers it forward; lift increases its altitude; air resistance, or drag, holds it back; gravity pulls it down.

These four forces constitute what might be called the "20th-century model for flight." Today, we have conquered these forces. Computer modeling tells us how an aircraft will perform before the first rivet hole is drilled. We now understand that the development of a new aircraft is determined largely by four forces unrelated
to aeronautical factors: investment, innovation, risk, and inertia. They make up the "21st-century model for flight"—and how well we understand this model will determine what the future of flight will look like.

Let's consider each of these four forces, using the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as an example.

Investment obviously provides the thrust for any new aircraft project. The increasing complexity of modern aircraft places extraordinary demands on budgeting authorities, whether public or private. In the case of JSF, a unique funding agreement was reached among the United States and eight allied governments, sharing the cost of developing this highly advanced aircraft.

Innovation produces the lift needed to get a new aircraft program into production. With many aircraft flying beyond their original design lives, a new aircraft must offer significant technological advances to make it worthwhile to develop. For the first time, JSF offers short takeoff, supersonic flight, and vertical landing—as well as fourth-generation stealth.

Risk—primarily the risk of significant cost increases—is the drag on new aircraft development. In addition to numerous structural commonalities across three airframe variants, the JSF program simultaneously carried out rigorous testing programs in materials and technology demonstrations, radar cross-section testing, and large scale-model testing of such key components as the "lift fan" concept.

By eliminating uncertainties and emphasizing repeatable processes, JSF will thus be able to adhere to a rigorously controlled cost structure.

Wernher von Braun once observed: "Our two greatest problems are gravity and paperwork. We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming."

For decades, there have been complaints—from all sides—about the inertia resulting from a cumbersome federal procurement process. In recent years, we have seen inspired leadership within the Department of Defense incorporating greater efficiency into the procurement process. For example, the Joint Strike Fighter is being developed along a "spiral development" model. That approach will encourage the introduction of the aircraft into the field more rapidly, while at the same time reducing the number of unknowns. Over the long term, this approach will be beneficial for the taxpayer, the aerospace community, and, most importantly, America's fighting forces.

It is important to understand the realities of the 21st-century model for flight because it is vital that the U.S. maintain the aeronautical leadership that began with the Wright brothers a century ago.

What drives the awesome U.S. economy is our demonstrated ability to "out-invent" the world, in terms of applying new technologies in real-world applications—and America's powerful aerospace industry is at the very center of this technology-generating machine.

Sir Richard Evans, chairman of BAE Systems, recently observed: "Ownership of technology changes the balance between the provider and the market. Those with the technology ... create a market around them, instead of asking the market what it wants. Countries that [create] advances in technology retain control, create the employment, and get the related profits and tax revenue."

In short, America has a very real interest in continuing to lead the world in aviation. Just how well we understand the new 21st-century model for flight—and can execute that model—will determine not only the health of our industry, but the health of our overall economy well into the future.

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