ARC Response To Science Crosscut Team's Questions

Question 1. What is the non-workforce infrastructure at your Center?
SCIENTISTS: See Enclosure A for this information as related to our Space, Life, and Earth scientists facilities.
AERONAUTICAL RESEARCHERS: All of the aeronautical facilities at Ames are considered national assets and are heavily used by the aeronautical and aerospace products industry. As such, they are critical to the successful development of new products in these industries. These facilities (e.g. Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel (UPWT), National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex (NFAC), 12-ft Pressure Wind Tunnel, Vertical Motion Simulator (VMS), Crew-Vehicle Systems Research Facility (CVSRF), and Numerical Aerodynamic Simulation Facility (NAS)) would continue to be fully used if all aeronautical researchers left Ames.

Question 2. Please give assessment of what constitutes the “Others” in your science deployment: what roles/capacities do these people serve?
SCIENTISTS: The majority of those included in the “others” category work as Principal Investigators or CoI’s on peer-review grants or as NRC’s doing research in selected areas, supporting science requirements definition, conducting technology development, and/or collaborate with Ames civil service scientists.
AERONAUTICAL RESEARCHERS: There were no Ames aeronautical researchers identified in this “Others” category.
Question 3. List your multidisciplinary science effort of note.
SCIENTISTS: See Enclosure B for this information for our Scientists.
AERONAUTICAL RESEARCHERS: Ames has, throughout its history, emphasized multidisciplinary research to further the NASA mission, from the origination of the blunt-body concept by our aero-thermodynamicists, that made manned space flight possible, to the thousands of hours of wind tunnel testing provided to the space shuttle program. A present example is:
Integration of Numerical and Experimental Wind Tunnels (IofNEWT): This activity combines production wind tunnel testing, advances in instrumentation and test techniques, contributions from the computational sciences, and provision of advanced information systems technologies including network services, computation facilities, and signal processing techniques to provide better products faster to our aeronautical customers in the area of developmental aerodynamics.
Question 4. Regarding support contractors, please give a more detailed breakdown of what these folks do, by broad category.
SCIENTISTS: The Ames support contractors work as members of multidisciplinary project or technical teams. They supplement civil service research in selected areas, develop algorithm/models, provide data analysis support, develop software, work with outside scientists selected for life science flights to assure a productive experiment operation, and evaluate science results.
AERONAUTICAL RESEARCHERS: The support contractors are used to support the civil service workforce in specific technical research areas (e.g., rotorcraft research, aeroacoustics research, computational methods development and validation, and advanced cockpit and air traffic control integration).
Question 5. What fraction of your civil service (also support contractors) workforce builds s/c? builds instruments?
SCIENTISTS: While none of our civil service scientists build s/c (except what might be considered part of their function as a Project Scientist for a flight mission), the fraction that build instruments varies with the discipline. In Space Science, about 15% build instruments for space or airborne missions, In Earth Science, about 50% build airborne instruments. In Space Technology and Life Science none of our scientists build instruments. None or our support contractor scientists build s/c or instruments. In the cases of the civil service scientists who do build instruments, that work is done in-house at Ames.
AERONAUTICAL RESEARCHERS: None of the aeronautical researchers, identified by Ames, are involved in the building of spacecraft or spacecraft instruments.
Question 6. What percentage of your civil servants (also support contractors) gets funding on peer-review grants?
SCIENTISTS: Essentially 100% of our civil service scientists in the areas of Earth, Life and Space receive most of their research funding support via the peer-review process. A similar level of peer-review funding exists for our support contractor scientists in Earth and Space science. Our life science support contractor scientists are not funded via the peer-review process.
AERONAUTICAL RESEARCHERS: None of the aeronautical research at Ames is funded via the peer-review process. However, five of the Ames aeronautical researchers are partially supported by peer-review grants in the area of space-related human factors. This is in addition to their on-going aeronautical research tasks.
Question 7. Now that you have deployed your folks into the four elements of the Science R&D Matrix, please use that matrix to detail the kind of work done in each element.
SCIENTISTS:
Fundamental-Basic: The work in this area is primarily directed at understanding the mechanisms at work in atmosphere and terrestrial ecosystems, mechanisms of formation of organics in meteorites, chemical and physical properties of PAH’s, etc. Our civil service and support contractor scientists do the same type of work, but on different problems or aspects of a problem.
Fundamental-Applied: Examples of the type of work by civil service scientists includes: Applying signal processing techniques to digital mammography, developing new sensors for astronomy and atmosphere studies, and increasing the sensitivity of laser-based techniques for volatile analysis. Support contractor work is mainly in the areas of advance life support technologies and biogeochemistry applications.
Strategic-Basic: Civil service scientists conduct research directed toward understanding the requirements for support of long-term life in space; understanding stratospheric ozone loss, stratospheric chemistry, tropospheric chemistry, the earth’s radiation budget, and the ecosystem interactions; develop methodology for planetary detection and geological research with rovers; simulations of problems in combustion (HSRP); reentry physics; thermal protection material properties; and developing new camera concepts for airborne instruments. Support contractor scientists work principally in support of the above atmospheric studies.
Strategic-Applied: Our civil service scientist develop instruments for specific missions, support projects such as GRAPES, develop computer models of gas radiation for application to TPS, the impact of aircraft on stratospheric chemistry, and develop regenerative life support prototypes. Our support contractor scientist primarily enable intra/extra-mural scientist to fly experiments on the Shuttle/Spacelab/Mir.
AERONAUTICAL RESEARCHERS: All Ames aeronautical researchers are in the element of Strategic-Applied. The work includes: aerodynamics, propulsion and power, materials and structures, guidance and control, human factors, flights systems, and systems analysis.