Page 3 - Aerotech News and Review, Sept. 7 2018

NASA administrator visits Mojave Air & Space Port
by Cathy Hansen
special to Aerotech News
James ‘Jim’ Bridenstine, newly ap- pointed NASA administrator, spent a full morning and early afternoon tour- ing facilities at the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center, located at Ed- wards Air Force Base Aug. 28.
Later in the afternoon, he stopped by Scaled Composites hangar at Mojave Air & Spaceport for a media advisory.
When asked about programs that are underway at NASA, Bridenstine said, “We’re working on a new generation of X-planes at NASA, especially at the Armstrong Flight Research Center.
“A couple of these X-planes are behind me. The X-57 Maxwell is the world’s first all-electric airplane, and is on the brink of being able to fly,” he said.
The X-57 is a modified Italian Tec- nam P2006T General Aviation aircraft. The wing has been removed and re- placed with a high-aspect ratio exper- imental wing with 12 small high-lift electric motors mounted on the leading edges of the wings, six on each wing and two larger electric ‘cruise’ motors mounted with wingtip nacelles.
“The high-lift motors and propel- lers are designed to start, along with the wingtip cruise motors, for takeoff. When the plane levels out for cruise mode, the 12 high-lift motors will shut down and the propellers on the small motors will stop and fold into the nacelles,” said Sean Clarke, Prin- cipal Investigator on the project. “This would prevent unwanted drag, while the two wingtip cruise motors maintain altitude during flight.”
“When landing, the 12 small motors would start again, and centrifugal force would cause the propeller blades to un- fold and create the appropriate lift for approach and landing,” he concluded.
Urban air mobility
When Bridenstine talked about uses for all-electric aircraft, he said, “One area that I think is important for the transformational capabilities for our country, economically, is urban air mobility.
“The idea that we could fly from one side of the city to another side of the city, in essence, like a taxi. Make it autonomous, so it’s not piloted, be- ginning with moving cargo or package delivery, before carrying passengers.
“We want to develop all these tech- nologies and abilities and make these activities available to the public, so that ultimately commercial industry can take the technology that we de- velop and commercialize it.”
X-59 QueSST
A model of the Lockheed X-59 QueSST (Quiet Supersonic Technol- ogy) being developed for NASA’s Low-Boom Flight Demonstrator pro- gram was on display.
“We want to fly across the United States in half the amount of time that it normally takes,” Bridenstine said. “In order to do that, we have to fly faster than the speed of sound,” he said. “The sonic boom created by exceeding the speed of sound is a challenge, because it is prohibited across the U.S. and
September 7, 2018
over most of the world.
“If we can make that boom, maybe
more like a rumble or almost imper- ceptible to folks on the ground, we want to do that.”
An upcoming NASA sonic boom test will take place over Galveston, Texas, utilizing an their F-18 Hornet in a super-sonic, inverted flight pro- file over the town. “Most of the sonic boom will go out over the ocean,” Bridenstine said. “But a portion of that sonic boom will go over the town of Galveston and we are going to as- sess, from people taking surveys on the ground in Galveston, how disruptive that sonic boom was.”
That data will then be used in de- veloping the technology to fly the en- tire United States at supersonic speed. “It’s not just good for NASA,” he explained, “but good for America’s commerce in general, so it’s really exciting.”
Mojave Air & Spaceport and Commercial Space Flight
A question was asked about Mojave Air & Spaceport being used for com- mercial space flights and Bridenstine said, “We want, not only sub-orbital space flight to be commercialized, we want orbital space flight to be com- mercialized.
“We want people to be able to fly in low-Earth orbit for commercial pur- poses. It could be tourism, it could be research, it could be manufacturing, or it could be a whole host of different capabilities. It could be the develop- ment of pharmaceuticals, for example.
“We want it to be commercialized because when low-Earth orbit and sub-orbital flight are commercialized, NASA then can use its resources to do more than we have ever done before.
“We can take our resources and go backtothemoonandwecangoonto Mars and we can create architectures
hotograph by Cathy Hansen
During his visit to the Mojave Air and Space Port, NASA Administrator James Bridenstine received a briefing on the X-57 Maxwell.
that enable us to get back and forth to the moon in a sustainable way.
“So, that really is our objective, so we fully support and do everything we can to help commercial industry to be able to create the business case for low-Earth orbit. Of course, a lot of the companies that are engaged in that activity are right here in Mojave.” There are numerous space companies operating at Mojave Air & Spaceport, including: Masten Space Systems; Virgin Galactic/The Spaceship Com- pany; Northrop-Grumman Innovation Systems (formerly Orbital A TK); and Scaled Composites StratoLaunch Sys- tems.
Space-based medical research
Bridenstine told of exciting medical breakthrough programs that are being
explored in space by NASA now that will save lives on Earth, including 3D printed human organs. “Capability we cannot do in a gravity mode like Earth, but we can do it in micro-gravity or zero gravity environment like the In- ternational Space Station.”
“When we think about all of these capabilities, the answer is we believe there is a future for low-Earth orbit that could be commercialized in its en- tirety. NASA would be one customer of many customers and of course, we would have multiple providers, each of those providers competing on cost and competing on innovation that would enable NASA to do more than it’s ever done before. This is a big part of our objective.”
NASA has positive support
When asked about support of Con- gress for NASA, the response was very pro-active. “We are actually seeing more bi-partisan support for NASA than we have for a long time and that’s very positive. So, NASA is very healthy.” A recent increase in the agency’s budget demonstrated support from Congress and the White House.
NASA’s launch capability — Go to moon within 10 years
“It’s been a long time since we’ve flown American astronauts on Ameri- can rockets from American soil. In fact, the last time we did that was in 2011, with the final flight of the space shuttle,” said Bridenstine. “Here we are almost eight years later and we still haven’t flown any of our rockets. The challenge was we retired the space shuttle without replacing it.
“We have made this mistake before in our history,” he said. “We look at the end of the Apollo era. We ended the Apollo program without a replace- ment for Apollo and we had an eight year gap before we got to the space shuttle. And now we ended the shuttle program without a replacement. But now we are finally getting to the point where we are on the brink of launch- ing American astronauts on American rockets on American soil and the best
part of this is that the government isn’t going to purchase, own and operate the rockets themselves. We are buying the service. So, what we are doing is buy- ing access to space as one customer of many customers, with multiple providers all competing on innovation and cost.
“That’s the vision, that’s the model and we are almost ready to do that with two providers, one being Boeing, with a launch provider being ULA and the other being SpaceX,” he continued. “That will be transformational for the United States yet again, to have our own access to low-Earth orbit. But, I think another important point to make is, we don’t want to repeat this same challenge that we’ve had with the launch capability for the International Space Station.
Bridenstine expressed the need to plan ahead now to be ready when the ISS becomes unsustainable. He posed the questions of how to have non-government companies achieve low-Earth orbit now and have com- mercial habitats in space or space sta- tions in orbit for commercialized space customers, like NASA, rather than be owner-operators, thereby driving down the costs, which would enable NASA’s resources to go further.
“We will go to the moon within ten years! But, we have to do a couple of things first — we need to utilize com- mercial space partners,” he said.
He expressed his vision of seeing space stations orbiting around the moon that can be used not only by the U.S., but other nations as well. “Next — Mars!”
Pushing boundaries
When asked about the risks and change that are undertaken by NASA with new ideas, like an all-electric airplane, Bridenstine replied, “That’s what NASA does. We push the very edge of the envelope, not just on tech- nology, but on capability. When you look at the history of NASA, we have been making determinations on risk
See NASA, Page 4
James Bridenstine, NASA administrator (center), was accompanied by Brandon Eden (left), special assistant to the administrator, and Rep. Steve Knight, R-Calif., during his visit to the Mojave Air and Space Port.
Photograph by Cathy Hansen
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