New Strategic Vision for Aeronautics Research
NASA Announces New Strategic Vision for Aeronautics Research [Watch], NASA
“Nearly every aircraft flying and air traffic management system now in use includes NASA-supported technologies that improve efficiency and safety,” said Bolden. “This new vision will expand on that by fully integrating into aviation advances in other industries and parts of the economy to meet the future demands for global mobility in ways we can only begin to imagine today.”
The new strategic vision greatly expands the relevancy of NASA’s research and is based on three themes: understanding emerging global trends, using those trends to drive research directions and then organizing NASA’s aeronautical research work in response to those drivers.
– Charles Bolden Speech (PDF)
– Aeronautics Research Strategic Vision (PDF)
Marc’s note: It appears few media outlets deemed it necessary to cover this announcement. Other than publishing the press release there’s scant coverage of it.
Full video of Administrator Bolden’s presentation and Q&A:
http://www.livestream.com/a…
Space vs. Aeronautics, where should funding priorities be? Let’s see, how many people ride in spaceships? How many people ride in airplanes? Just asking…
I’m wondering if the Dodge Brothers asked the same thing of Henry Ford before they invested in Ford Motor Company over a century ago. What do you think he would say?
Alternative propulsions: cue Elon’s electric “jet,” which seems similar to an interesting USAF proposal from years past.
Anyone else despairing over the cliche’-infested managementspeak that oozes out of every sentence in that speech and the ‘Strategic Vision’ document?
Perhaps it’s just his speaking style and vocabulary that you don’t like? Because I don’t think there was anything he said with respect to aeronautics that isn’t true. NASA seems to have a handle on the things in aeronautics that need to be done in the near future (with a very limited budget), and I would say that’s what counts. If Bolden is not a first-rate public speaker, I can’t hold that against him because the reality is that most people are not good public speakers.
It would appear that NASA is quite willing to listen to the aeronautics industry (their customers) for both definition of requirements and problems and for possible solutions. And that, I think, is the ideal situation. The NASA aeronautics people have shown in the past that they can work with multiple companies without compromising anyone’s intellectual property, and without making anyone pay through the nose for public domain (NASA) data and knowledge.
I wish all of NASA could get their acts together the way that the aeronautics group has always appeared to. Listening to a boilerplate speech from the Administrator is a small price to pay for the reassurance that aeronautics is still important and on track at NASA.
“Perhaps it’s just his speaking style and vocabulary that you don’t like?”
I didn’t listen to his speech, I read the two linked documents. They are chock full of the formulaic, chirpy rhetoric one sees in airport “Get yer Exec. MBA here” ads and annual glorious 5 year plans created by the people that go to such courses and then return inflict this stuff on their colleagues. “Top Gun” for the soulless ladder climber.
Emerging trends, (mega-)drivers, converging thrusts, challenges, and transformation. Yep, all there.
“Politics and the English Language” called it.
There are some aeronautics programs in which NASA and industry are working closely together, but others in which they are not. Some areas of R&D are being picked up by FAA, partly because NASA isn’t as active as it once was.
There are hundreds of researchers at several NASA centers who already have useful ideas for aeronautics research. The innovative work at Langely on using infrasound to track wingtip vortices is just one example. It could save billions by allowing airliners to safely take off and land at shorter intervals.
But if researchers run out of ideas, they can ask ….. their customers in industry! Like NACA used to do. What a concept. The last thing they need is a pretentious “strategic vision” imposed by management that every proposal has to match in just the right ways. We could easily end up spending 80% of our time writing internal proposals.
Well it sounds good to me, from the blurb here. It would be nice if a little more media picked it up since everyone is flying on these NASA supported techs and improvements can have massive impact.