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A Compact Prototype of an Optical Pattern Recognition System

In the Technology 2006 Case Studies/Success Stories presentation, we will describe and demonstrate a prototype of a compact optical pattern recognition system as an example of a successful technology transfer and continuuing development of state-of-the-art know-how by the close collaboration among government, academia, and small business via the NASA SBIR program. The prototype consists of a complete set of optical pattern recognition hardware with multi-channel storage and retrieval capability that is compactly configured inside a portable 1'X 2'X 3' aluminum case.

MSF↗

Evolving software reengineering technology for the emerging innovative-competitive era

This paper reports on a multi-tool commercial/military environment combining software Domain Analysis techniques with Reusable Software and Reengineering of Legacy Software. It is based on the development of a military version for the Department of Defense (DOD). The integrated tools in the military version are: Software Specification Assistant (SSA) and Software Reengineering Environment (SRE), developed by Computer Command and Control Company (CCCC) for Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) and Joint Logistics Commanders (JLC), and the Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) STARS Software Engineering Environment (SEE) developed by Boeing for NAVAIR PMA 205. The paper describes transitioning these integrated tools to commercial use. There is a critical need for the transition for the following reasons: First, to date, 70 percent of programmers' time is applied to software maintenance. The work of these users has not been facilitated by existing tools. The addition of Software Reengineering will also facilitate software maintenance and upgrading. In fact, the integrated tools will support the entire software life cycle. Second, the integrated tools are essential to Business Process Reengineering, which seeks radical process innovations to achieve breakthrough results. Done well, process reengineering delivers extraordinary gains in process speed, productivity and profitability. Most importantly, it discovers new opportunities for products and services in collaboration with other organizations. Legacy computer software must be changed rapidly to support innovative business processes. The integrated tools will provide commercial organizations important competitive advantages. This, in turn, will increase employment by creating new business opportunities. Third, the integrated system will produce much higher quality software than use of the tools separately. The reason for this is that producing or upgrading software requires keen understanding of extremely complex applications which is facilitated by the integrated tools. The radical savings in the time and cost associated with software, due to use of CASE tools that support combined Reuse of Software and Reengineering of Legacy Code, will add an important impetus to improving the automation of enterprises. This will be reflected in continuing operations, as well as in innovating new business processes. The proposed multi-tool software development is based on state of the art technology, which will be further advanced through the use of open systems for adding new tools and experience in their use.

Hwang, Phillip Q.↗

History of the American Geophysical Union Atmospheric and Space Electricity Section

Atmospheric and Space Electricity (ASE) has been a part of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) since its initial founding and organization in 1919. John Fleming, who invented the vacuum tube, was the first Secretary of the AGU Terrestrial Magnetism and Atmospheric Electricity Section, and today has an AGU medal named after him. ASE played an important role in the post-World War II era of AGU, as a locus for scientific discussions regarding major ASE-related events, such as the Thunderstorm Project (1946–1949) and the 1969 Apollo 12 lightning incident. By the 1970s and 1980s, the ASE community was represented by the Committee on ASE (CASE) within the Atmospheric Sciences Section. CASE was able to bridge the gap between the fields of aeronomy and atmospheric science by sponsoring its own sessions and nominating AGU Fellow awardees. ASE business meetings at the AGU Fall and Spring Meetings lasted for hours, with anyone from the community presenting scientific ideas, field campaigns, and more - practically turning the business meeting into an ad hoc AGU session!

Lang, Timothy↗

2011 NASA Range Safety Annual Report

Welcome to the 2011 edition of the NASA Range Safety Annual Report. Funded by NASA Headquarters, this report provides a NASA Range Safety overview for current and potential range users. As is typical with odd year editions, this is an abbreviated Range Safety Annual Report providing updates and links to full articles from the previous year's report. It also provides more complete articles covering new subject areas, summaries of various NASA Range Safety Program activities conducted during the past year, and information on several projects that may have a profound impact on the way business will be done in the future. Specific topics discussed and updated in the 2011 NASA Range Safety Annual Report include a program overview and 2011 highlights; Range Safety Training; Range Safety Policy revision; Independent Assessments; Support to Program Operations at all ranges conducting NASA launch/flight operations; a continuing overview of emerging range safety-related technologies; and status reports from all of the NASA Centers that have Range Safety responsibilities. Every effort has been made to include the most current information available. We recommend this report be used only for guidance and that the validity and accuracy of all articles be verified for updates. Once again the web-based format was used to present the annual report. We continually receive positive feedback on the web-based edition and hope you enjoy this year's product as well. As is the case each year, contributors to this report are too numerous to mention, but we thank individuals from the NASA Centers, the Department of Defense, and civilian organizations for their contributions. In conclusion, it has been a busy and productive year. I'd like to extend a personal Thank You to everyone who contributed to make this year a successful one, and I look forward to working with all of you in the upcoming year.

Dumont, Alan G.↗

The Missing Economic Risks in Assessments of Climate Change Impacts

Economic assessments of the potential future risks of climate change have been omitting or grossly underestimating many of the most serious consequences for lives and livelihoods because these risks are difficult to quantify precisely and lie outside of human experience. Political and business leaders need to understand the scale of these ‘missing risks’ because they could have drastic and potentially catastrophic impacts on citizens, communities and companies. Scientists are growing in confidence about the evidence for the largest potential impacts of climate change and the rising probability that major thresholds in the Earth’s climate system will be breached as global mean surface temperature rises, particularly if warming exceeds 2°C above the pre-industrial level. These impacts include: (1) Destabilisation of ice sheets and glaciers and consequent sea level rise. (2) Stronger tropical cyclones. (3) Extreme heat impacts. (4) More frequent and intense floods and droughts. (5) Disruptions to oceanic and atmospheric circulation. (6) Destruction of biodiversity and collapse of ecosystems. Many of these impacts will grow and occur concurrently across the world as global temperature climbs. Some of these impacts involve thresholds in the climate system beyond which major impacts accelerate, or become irreversible and unstoppable. When a threshold is breached, it might cause one or more other thresholds to be exceeded as well, leading to a cascade of impacts. Many of these impacts could exceed the capacity of human populations to adapt, and would significantly affect and disrupt the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people worldwide. These impacts would also undermine economic growth and development, exacerbate poverty and destabilise communities. Economic assessments fail to take account of the potential for large concurrent impacts across the world that would cause mass migration, displacement and conflict, with huge loss of life. Economic assessments that are expressed solely in terms of effects on output (e.g. gross domestic product), or that only extrapolate from past experience, or that use inappropriate discounting, do not provide a clear indication of the potential risks to lives and livelihoods. It is likely that there are additional risks that we are not yet anticipating simply because scientists have not yet detected their possibility, as we have entered a period of climate change that is unprecedented in human history. Some advances are being made in improving economic assessments of climate change impacts but much more progress is required if assessments are to offer reliable guidance for political and business leaders on the biggest risks. The lack of firm quantifications is not a reason to ignore these risks, and when the missing risks are taken into account, the case for strong and urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions becomes even more compelling.

DeFries, Ruth↗

Integration of Advanced Concepts and Vehicles Into the Next Generation Air Transportation System: Introduction, Key Messages, and Vehicle Attributes - Volume 1

Raytheon, in partnership with NASA, is leading the way in ensuring that the future air transportation continues to be a key driver of economic growth and stability and that this system provides an environmentally friendly, safe, and effective means of moving people and goods. A Raytheon-led team of industry and academic experts, under NASA contract NNA08BA47C, looked at the potential issues and impact of introducing four new classes of advanced aircraft into the next generation air transportation system -- known as NextGen. The study will help determine where NASA should further invest in research to support the safe introduction of these new air vehicles. Small uncrewed or unmanned aerial systems (SUAS), super heavy transports (SHT) including hybrid wing body versions (HWB), very light jets (VLJ), and supersonic business jets (SSBJ) are the four classes of aircraft that we studied. Understanding each vehicle's business purpose and strategy is critical to assessing the feasibility of new aircraft operations and their impact on NextGen's architecture. The Raytheon team used scenarios created by aviation experts that depict vehicles in year 2025 operations along with scripts or use cases to understand the issues presented by these new types of vehicles. The information was then mapped into the Joint Planning and Development Office's (JPDO s) Enterprise Architecture to show how the vehicles will fit into NextGen's Concept of Operations. The team also identified significant changes to the JPDO's Integrated Work Plan (IWP) to optimize the NextGen vision for these vehicles. Using a proven enterprise architecture approach and the JPDO s Joint Planning Environment (JPE) web site helped make the leap from architecture to planning efficient, manageable and achievable. Very Light Jets flying into busy hub airports -- Supersonic Business Jets needing to climb and descend rapidly to achieve the necessary altitude Super-heavy cargo planes requiring the shortest common flight path -- are just a few of the potential new operations in the future National Airspace System. To assess the impact of these new scenarios on overall national airspace operations, the Raytheon team used the capabilities of a suite of tools such as NASA's Airspace Concepts Evaluation System (ACES), the Flight Optimization System (FLOPS), FAA's Aviation Environmental Design Tool (AEDT), Intelligent Automations Kinematic Trajectory Generator (KTG) and the Aviation Safety Risk Model (ASRM). Detailed metroplex modeling, surface delay models for super heavy transports, prioritized routing and corridors for supersonics business jets, and VLJ demand models are some of the models developed by the Raytheon team to study the effect of operating these new vehicles in the future NAS. Using this suite of models, several trade studies were conducted to evaluate these effects in terms of delays, equity in access, safety, and the environment. Looking at the impact of each vehicle, a number of critical issues were identified. The Raytheon team concluded that strict compliance to NextGen's 4-dimensional trajectory (4DT) management will be required to accommodate these vehicles unique operations and increased number of flights in the future air space system. The next section provides a discussion of this and the other key findings from our study.

Zellweger, Andres↗

Increasing processor utilization during parallel computation rundown

Some parallel processing environments provide for asynchronous execution and completion of general purpose parallel computations from a single computational phase. When all the computations from such a phase are complete, a new parallel computational phase is begun. Depending upon the granularity of the parallel computations to be performed, there may be a shortage of available work as a particular computational phase draws to a close (computational rundown). This can result in the waste of computing resources and the delay of the overall problem. In many practical instances, strict sequential ordering of phases of parallel computation is not totally required. In such cases, the beginning of one phase can be correctly computed before the end of a previous phase is completed. This allows additional work to be generated somewhat earlier to keep computing resources busy during each computational rundown. The conditions under which this can occur are identified and the frequency of occurrence of such overlapping in an actual parallel Navier-Stokes code is reported. A language construct is suggested and possible control strategies for the management of such computational phase overlapping are discussed.

Jones, W. H.↗

Increasing processor utilization during parallel computation rundown

Some parallel processing environments provide for asynchronous execution and completion of general purpose parallel computations from a single computational phase. When all the computations from such a phase are complete, a new parallel computational phase is begun. Depending upon the granularity of the parallel computations to be performed, there may be a shortage of available work as a particular computational phase draws to a close (computational rundown). This can result in the waste of computing resources and the delay of the overall problem. In many practical instances, strict sequential ordering of phases of parallel computation is not totally required. In such cases, the beginning of one phase can be correctly computed before the end of a previous phase is completed. This allows additional work to be generated somewhat earlier to keep computing resources busy during each computational rundown. The conditions under which this can occur are identified and the frequency of occurrence of such overlapping in an actual parallel Navier-Stokes code is reported. A language construct is suggested and possible control strategies for the management of such computational phase overlapping are discsused.

Jones, William H.↗

High Resolution Computed Tomography Inspection of Components Uncovers Root Causes of Vexing Failure Mysteries

During testing of actuators for fight programs, failures have occurred that required closure with an understanding of the root cause of the failure. For some InSight project actuators, intermittent changes of the winding resistance of the motors during temperature changes was extremely baffling. It was critical to determine the cause of the intermittent characteristic because the actuators were stock from a previous program and the company that provided the motors was no longer in business. Using an X-Ray Computed-Tomography (CT) method, the exact source of the intermittent failure was determined and completely understood – at dimensions of less than 20 microns. In another case, after the completion of an actuator’s life-test-to-failure, inspection was required to determine the source of the failure. The size of the actuator (10 mm diameter) required destructive means to get to the interior of the actuator for inspection, risking the loss of the source of the failure. Using CT imaging, the exact source of the failure was determined.

Johnson, Michael R.↗

Lessons Learned on the Use of Data Surfaces for Ffowcs Williams-Hawkings Calculations: Airframe Noise Applications

The use of integral solutions to the acoustic analogy-based Ffowcs Williams-Hawkings (FW-H) formulation is the defacto industrial and academic approach for assessing far-field acoustic behavior from airframe noise simulations. The methodology utilizes time-accurate flow variables obtained at arbitrary data surfaces to determine far-field spectra. The solid surface approach, where the time history of pressure is recorded on the surface of the aircraft, is generally preferred. Permeable surfaces, where pressure and velocity are recorded on a user-defined surface enclosing the aircraft, are also used. This paper seeks to share some of the valuable lessons we learned over the past several years on the limitations of the FW-H formulation and best practices for its successful application. We show results for various configurations comprising isolated landing gears, a business jet, a large commercial transport, and a generic low boom supersonic prototype, all at landing conditions. We demonstrate that the solid FW-H approach has significant accuracy limitations for most realistic cases and that the permeable FW-H approach may also fail in specific scenarios, requiring additional costly steps to extract the correct far-field noise spectra. Suggested guidelines for proper FW-H calculations are also given.

Acoustic propagation, Ffowcs Williams-Hawkings Cal↗

The Evolution of Team-X: 25 Years of Concurrent Engineering Design Experience

Established in 1995 in response to NASA’s “Faster, Better, Cheaper” era, Team-X was born from a need to perform rapid space mission design for principal investigator-led competed proposals. The success and sustainability of Team-X over the 25 years that have followed is directly attributable to the Team-X business model and its evolution over time. While dozens of organizations and institutions have emulated the Team-X design process, there are nuances to the Team-X business model that are unique to JPL, and explain why it is different than other concurrent design teams. One of the key components of a business model is the customer segments that are served. Team-X was founded to conduct the Pre-Phase A work necessary to formulate a portfolio of multiple planetary mission concepts, but has since expanded to include the capability to conduct studies for Earth science, astrophysics, and heliophysics missions as well as Human Exploration and Operations missions and space technology development. Team-X delivers value to its clients both in terms of speed and cost. Team-X has also added value by creating teams to enable the development of Instrument and SmallSat Concepts. Value has further been enhanced through a revision of its process for reviews and the addition of pre-design architecting capabilities. Other aspects of the Team-X infrastructure, in addition to study process, have enabled it to succeed for over a quarter century. From our most important resource, the people, our tools, especially for cost estimating, as well as our increasing capable IT infrastructure have contributed to our capability to meet the demands of our clients. The Team-X business model and its evolution over time, position it well for success in the decades to come.

Murphy, Jonathan↗

NASA/DOD Aerospace Knowledge Diffusion Research Project. Paper 62: The Influence of Knowledge Diffusion on Aeronautics Innovation: The Research, Development, and Production of Large Commercial Aircraft in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom

This paper focuses on how European public policies-individually and collectively - influence the diffusion of knowledge and technology. It begins with an overview of the roles played historically and currently by European governments in the research, development and production (RD&P) of large commercial aircraft (LCA). The analytical framework brings together literature from global political economy, comparative politics, business management, and science and technology policy studies. It distinguishes between the production of knowledge, on the one hand, and the dissemination of knowledge, on the other. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom serve as the analytical cases. The paper concludes with a call for additional research in this area, some tentative lessons learned, and a discussion of the consequences of national strategies and policies for the diffusion of knowledge and technology in an era of globalization.

Pinelli, Thomas E.↗

NASA/DOD Aerospace Knowledge Diffusion Research Project. Paper 62: The Influence of Knowledge Diffusion on Aeronautics Innovation: The Research, Development, and Production of Large Commercial Aircraft in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom

This paper focuses on how European public policies-individually and collectively - influence the diffusion of knowledge and technology. It begins with an overview of the roles played historically and currently by European governments in the Research, Development and Production (RD&P) of Large Commercial Aircraft (LCA). The analytical framework brings together literature from global political economy, comparative politics, business management, and science and technology policy studies. It distinguishes between the production of knowledge, on the one hand, and the dissemination of knowledge, on the other. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom serve as the analytical cases. The paper concludes with a call for additional research in this area, some tentative lessons learned, and a discussion of the consequences of national strategies and policies for the diffusion of knowledge and technology in an era of globalizaton.

Golich, Vicki L.↗

Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel

During 1997, the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) continued its safety reviews of NASA's human space flight and aeronautics programs. Efforts were focused on those areas that the Panel believed held the greatest potential to impact safety. Continuing safe Space Shuttle operations and progress in the manufacture and testing of primary components for the International Space Station (ISS) were noteworthy. The Panel has continued to monitor the safety implications of the transition of Space Shuttle operations to the United Space Alliance (USA). One area being watched closely relates to the staffing levels and skill mix in both NASA and USA. Therefore, a section of this report is devoted to personnel and other related issues that are a result of this change in NASA's way of doing business for the Space Shuttle. Attention will continue to be paid to this important topic in subsequent reports. Even though the Panel's activities for 1997 were extensive, fewer specific recommendations were formulated than has been the case in recent years. This is indicative of the current generally good state of safety of NASA programs. The Panel does, however, have several longer term concerns that have yet to develop to the level of a specific recommendation. These are covered in the introductory material for each topic area in Section 11. In another departure from past submissions, this report does not contain individual findings and recommendations for the aeronautics programs. While the Panel devoted its usual efforts to examining NASA's aeronautic centers and programs, no specific recommendations were identified for inclusion in this report. In lieu of recommendations, a summary of the Panel's observations of NASA's safety efforts in aeronautics and future Panel areas of emphasis is provided. With profound sadness the Panel notes the passing of our Chairman, Paul M. Johnstone, on December 17, 1997, and our Staff Assistant, Ms. Patricia M. Harman, on October 5, 1997. Other changes to the Panel composition during the past year were: the resignation of Mr. Dennis E. Fitch as a Consultant; the appointment of Mr. Roger D. Schaufele as a Consultant; and the assignment of Ms. Susan M. Smith as Staff Assistant.

Source record↗

The Business Change Initiative: A Novel Approach to Improved Cost and Schedule Management

Goddard Space Flight Center's Flight Projects Directorate employed a Business Change Initiative (BCI) to infuse a series of activities coordinated to drive improved cost and schedule performance across Goddard's missions. This sustaining change framework provides a platform to manage and implement cost and schedule control techniques throughout the project portfolio. The BCI concluded in December 2014, deploying over 100 cost and schedule management changes including best practices, tools, methods, training, and knowledge sharing. The new business approach has driven the portfolio to improved programmatic performance. The last eight launched GSFC missions have optimized cost, schedule, and technical performance on a sustained basis to deliver on time and within budget, returning funds in many cases. While not every future mission will boast such strong performance, improved cost and schedule tools, management practices, and ongoing comprehensive evaluations of program planning and control methods to refine and implement best practices will continue to provide a framework for sustained performance. This paper will describe the tools, techniques, and processes developed during the BCI and the utilization of collaborative content management tools to disseminate project planning and control techniques to ensure continuous collaboration and optimization of cost and schedule management in the future.

Schedule↗

New Human-Computer Interface Concepts for Mission Operations

The current climate of budget cuts has forced the space mission operations community to reconsider how it does business. Gone are the days of building one-of-kind control centers with teams of controllers working in shifts 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. Increasingly, automation is used to significantly reduce staffing needs. In some cases, missions are moving towards lights-out operations where the ground system is run semi-autonomously. On-call operators are brought in only to resolve anomalies. Some operations concepts also call for smaller operations teams to manage an entire family of spacecraft. In the not too distant future, a skeleton crew of full-time general knowledge operators will oversee the operations of large constellations of small spacecraft, while geographically distributed specialists will be assigned to emergency response teams based on their expertise. As the operations paradigms change, so too must the tools to support the mission operations team's tasks. Tools need to be built not only to automate routine tasks, but also to communicate varying types of information to the part-time, generalist, or on-call operators and specialists more effectively. Thus, the proper design of a system's user-system interface (USI) becomes even more importance than before. Also, because the users will be accessing these systems from various locations (e.g., control center, home, on the road) via different devices with varying display capabilities (e.g., workstations, home PCs, PDAS, pagers) over connections with various bandwidths (e.g., dial-up 56k, wireless 9.6k), the same software must have different USIs to support the different types of users, their equipment, and their environments. In other words, the software must now adapt to the needs of the users! This paper will focus on the needs and the challenges of designing USIs for mission operations. After providing a general discussion of these challenges, the paper will focus on the current efforts of creatin(y an effective USI for one specific suite of tools, SERS (The Spacecraft Emergency Response System), which has been built to enable lights-out operations. SERS is a Web-based collaborative environment that enables secure distributed fault management.

Fox, Jeffrey A.↗

The Conference Proceedings of the 2001 Air Transport Research Society (ATRS) of the WCTR Society

The ATRS held its 5th Annual conference at the City University of Hong Kong Campus in July 2001. The conference was a success with nearly 140 participants including 70 presenters. Titles that comprise Volume 2 include: Intelligent Airport Gate Assignment System; A Study on the Effects of the Personality Compatibility to the Job Performance; ITS/CVO Application for Air cargo Transportation in Korea; An Airport as a Logistics and Economic Hub: The Case of Incheon International Airport; The Impact Of Aviation Safety over the Consumer's Behavior; The Integration of China and Taiwan Air Networks for Direct Air Cargo Services; Quality perception and carrier choice in Civil Aviation; Future Trends in Business Travel Decision Making; Cooperation Among German Airports in Europe; Inbound and Outbound Air Passenger Traffic Forecasting between the United States and Selected Asian countries; An Evaluation of Alternative Facilities for Airport Redevelopment using Fuzzy Linguistic Approach; Economic Analysis of Airline Alliances; The Aviation Cooperation between the two Koreas Preparing for the Reunification of the Peninsula; and A Study on the Air Transport Cooperation in Northeast Asia between China, Japan and Korea.

Lee, Yeong-Heok↗

Simultaneous measurements of ozone outside and inside cabins of two B-747 airliners and a Gates Learjet business jet

Recently, passengers and crew members on long-distance commercial flights have filed complaints after suffering symptoms of ozone sickness. Studies were conducted to determine the frequency and concentration of ozone in commercial jet transports. The airliner problem with ozone prompted NASA to determine the ozone concentrations that might be encountered in the cabin of a small business jet. Simultaneous measurements of atmospheric ozone levels and ozone levels in the cabins of jet aircraft were necessary because of the wide and rapid variability of atmospheric ozone in flight. It was found that the atmospheric ozone concentrations in the case of B-747 airliners vary widely during a flight. A constant difference, or ratio, between ozone concentrations outside and inside the cabin does not exist.

Perkins, P. J.↗