NASA 1990-2007: Coping with Institutional and Resource Challenges

Over the next decade and a half, the NASA rotary wing program’s avail­able organizational and financial resources were significantly impacted by NASA and supporting Agency organizational, mission, and budget management decisions. These decisions were driven by changes in pro­gram priorities in the face of severe budget pressures and reorganization mandates seeking to improve operational efficiency. NASA leaders were being tasked with more ambitious space missions and with recovering from two Shuttle losses. In the face of these challenges, the rotary wing program, among others, was adjusted in the effort to continue to make notable research contributions. Examples of the array of real impacts on the rotary wing program over this period were: (1) termination of the NASA-DARPA RSRA-X-Wing program; (2) stopping the NASA-Army flight operations of the only XV-15 TRRA aircraft and the two RSRA vehi­cles; (3) transfer of all active NASA research aircraft to Dryden Flight Research Center, which essentially closed NASA rotary wing flight oper­ations; (4) elimination of vehicle program offices at NASA Headquarters; (5) closing the National Full-Scale Aerodynamic Complex wind tunnel at

Ames in 2003 (reopened under a lease to the United States Air Force in 2007); (6) converting to full-cost accounting, which represented a new burden on vehicle research funding allocations; and (7) the imposition of a steady and severe decline in aeronautics budget requests, staring in the late 1990s. Overshadowing this retrenching activity in the 1990s was the total reorientation, and hence complete transformation, of the Ames Research Center from an Aeronautics Research Mission Center to a Science Mission Center with the new lead in information technol­ogy (IT).[313] Responsibility for Ames’s aerodynamics and wind tunnel management was assigned to Langley Research Center. The persistent turbulence in the NASA rotary wing research community presented a growing challenge to the ability to generate research contributions. Here is where the established partnership with the United States Army and co-located laboratories at Ames, Langley, and Glenn Research Centers made it possible to maximize effectiveness by strengthening the com­bined efforts. In the case of Ames, this was done by creating a new com­bined Army-NASA Rotorcraft Division. The center of gravity of NASA rotary wing research thus gradually shifted to the Army.

The decision to ground and place in storage the only remaining XV-15 TRRA in 1994 was fortunately turned from a real setback to an unplanned contribution. Bell Helicopter, having lost the other XV-15, N702NA, in an accident in 1992, requested bailment of the Ames air­craft, N703NA, in 1994 to continue its own tilt rotor research, demon­strations, and applications evaluations in support of the ongoing (and troubled) V-22 Osprey program. The NASA and Army management agreed. As part of the extended use, on April 21, 1995, the XV-15 became the first tilt rotor to land at the world’s first operational civil vertiport at the Dallas Convention Center Heliport/Vertiport. After its long and successful operation and its retirement in 2003, this aircraft is on per­manent display at the Smithsonian Institution’s Udvar-Hazy Center at Washington Dulles International Airport, Chantilly, VA.

With the military application of proven tilt rotor technology well underway with the procurement of the V-22 Osprey by the Marine Corps and Air Force, the potential for parallel application of tilt rotor technol­ogy to civil transportation was also addressed by NASA. Early studies, funded by the FAA and NASA, indicated that the concept had potential

for worldwide application and could be economically viable.[314] In late 1992, Congress directed the Secretary of Transportation to establish a Civil Tilt Rotor Development Advisory Committee (CTRDAC) to exam­ine the technical, operational, and economic issues associated with inte­grating the civil tilt rotor (CTR) into the Nation’s transportation system. The Committee was also charged with determining the required addi­tional research and development, the regulatory changes required, and the estimated cost of the aircraft and related infrastructure develop­ment. In 1995, the Committee issued the findings. The CTR was deter­mined to be technically feasible and could be developed by the United States’ industry. It appeared that the CTR could be economically viable in heavily traveled corridors. Additional research and development and infrastructure planning were needed before industry could make a pro­duction decision. In response to this finding, elements of work suggested by the CTRDAC were included in the NASA rotorcraft program plans.

Significant advances in several technological areas would be required to enable the tilt rotor concept to be introduced into the transportation system. In 1994, researchers at Ames, Langley, and Glenn Research Centers launched the Advanced Tiltrotor Transport Technology (ATTT) program to develop the new technologies. Because of existing fund­ing limitations, initial research activity was focused on the primary concerns of noise and safety. The noise research activity included the development of refined acoustic analyses, the acquisition of wind tun­nel prop-rotor noise data to validate the analytical method, and flight tests to determine the effect of different landing approach profiles on terminal area and community noise. The safety effort was related to the need to execute approaches and departures at confined urban ver – tiports. For these situations the capability to operate safely with one – engine-inoperative in adverse weather conditions was required. This area was addressed by conducting engine design studies to enable generat­ing high levels of emergency power in OEI situations without adversely impacting weight, reliability, maintenance, or normal fuel economy. Additional operational safety investigations were carried out on the Ames Vertical Motion Simulator to assess crew station issues, control law variations, and assign advanced configurations such as the vari­able diameter tilt rotor. The principal American rotary wing airframe

and engine manufacturers participated in the noise and safety investi­gations, which assured that proper attention was given to the practical application of the new technology.[315] An initial step in civil tilt rotor air­craft development was taken by Bell Helicopter in September 1998, by teaming with Agusta Helicopter Company of Italy, to design, manufac­ture, and certify a commercial version of the XV-15 aircraft design des­ignated the BA 609.

Despite the institutional and resource turbulence overshadowing rotary wing activity, the NASA and Army researchers persisted in con­ducting base research. They continued to make contributions to advance the state of rotary wing technology applicable to civil and military needs, a typical example being the analysis of the influence of the vortex ring state (VRS) flight in rapid, steep descents, brought to the forefront by initial operating problems experienced by the V-22 Osprey.[316] The cur­rent NASA Technical Report Server (NTRS) Web site has posted over 2,200 NASA rotary wing technical reports. Of these, approximately 800 entries have been posted since 1991—the peak year, with 143 entries. These postings facilitate public access to the formal documentation of NASA contributions to rotary wing technology. The annual postings grad­ually declined after 1991. In what may be a mirror image of the state of NASA’s realigned rotary wing program, since 2001 the annual totals of posted rotary wing reports are in the 20-40 range, with an increasing percentage reflecting contributions by Army coauthors.

As the Army and NASA rotary wing research was increasingly linked in mutually supporting roles at the co-located centers, outsourcing, cooperation, and partnerships with industry and academia also grew. In 1995, the Army and NASA agreed to form the National Rotorcraft Technology Center (NRTC) occupying a dedicated facility at Ames Research Center. This jointly funded and managed organization was created to provide central coordination of rotary wing research activities of the Government, academia, and industry. Government participation included Army, NASA, Navy, and the FAA. The academic laboratories’ participation was accomplished by NRTC having acquired the responsi­bility to manage the Rotorcraft Centers of Excellence (RCOE) program

that had been in existence since 1982 under the Army Research Office. In 1996, the periodic national competition resulted in establishing Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Maryland at College Park, and Pennsylvania State University as the three RCOE sites.

The Rotorcraft Industry Technology Association (RITA), Inc., was also established in 1996. Principal members of RITA included the United States helicopter manufacturers Bell Helicopter Textron, the Boeing Company, Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation, and Kaman Aerospace Corporation. Supporting members included rotorcraft subsystem man­ufacturers and other industry entities. Associate Members included a growing number of American universities and nonprofit organizations. RITA was governed by a Board of Directors supported by a Technical Advisory Committee that guided and coordinated the performance of the research projects. This industry-led organization and NRTC signed a unique agreement to be partners in rotary wing research. The Government would share the cost of annual research projects pro­posed by RITA and approved by NRTC evaluation teams. NASA and the Army each contributed funds for 25 percent of the cost of each proj­ect—together they matched the industry-member share of 50 percent. Over the first 5 years of the Government-industry agreement, the total annual investment averaged $20 million. The RITA projects favored mid – and near-term research efforts that complemented mid – and long­term research missions of the Army and NASA. Originally, there was concern that the research staff of industry competitors would be reluc­tant to share project proposal information and pool results under the RITA banner. This concern quickly turned out to be unfounded as the research teams embarked on work addressing common technical prob­lems faced by all participants.

NRTC was not immune to the challenges posed by limited NASA budgets, which eventually caused some cutbacks in NRTC support of RITA and the RCOE program. In 2005, the name of the RITA enter­prise was changed to the Center for Rotorcraft Innovation (CRI), and the principal office was relocated from Connecticut to the Philadelphia area.[317] Accomplishments posted by RITA-CRI include cost-effective integrated helicopter design tools and improved design and manufac­turing practices for increased damage tolerance. The area of rotorcraft

operations accomplishments included incorporating developments in synthetic vision and cognitive decision-making systems to enhance the routine performance of critical piloting tasks and enabling changes in the air traffic management system that will help rotorcraft become a more-significant participant in the civil transportation system. The American Helicopter Society International recognized RITA for one of its principal areas of research effort by awarding the Health and Usage Monitoring Project Team the AHS 1998 Grover E. Bell Award for "fos­tering and encouraging research and experimentation in the important field of helicopters.”

As previously noted, in the mid-1990s, NASA Ames’s entire aircraft fleet was transferred some 300 miles south to Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, CA. This inventory included a num­ber of NASA rotary wing research aircraft that had been actively engaged since the 1970s.[318] However, the U. S. Army Aeroflightdynamics Directorate, co-located at Ames since 1970, chose to retain their research aircraft. In 1997, after several years of negotiation, NASA Headquarters signed a directive that Ames would continue to support the Army’s rotorcraft air­worthiness research using three military helicopters outfitted for special flight research investigations. The AH-1 Cobra had been configured as the Flying Laboratory for Integrated Test and Evaluation (FLITE). One UH-60 Blackhawk was configured as the Rotorcraft Aircrew Systems Concepts Airborne Laboratory (RASCAL) and remained as the focus for advanced controls and was utilized by the NASA-Army Rotorcraft Division to develop programmable, fly-by-wire controls for nap-of-the – Earth maneuvering studies. This aircraft was also used for investigat­ing noise-abatement, segmented approaches using local differential Global Positioning System (GPS) guidance. The third aircraft, another UH-60 Blackhawk, had been extensively instrumented for the conduct of the UH-60 Airloads Program. The principal focus of the program was the acquisition of detailed rotor-blade pressure distributions in a wide array of flight conditions to improve and validate advanced analytical methodology. The last NACA-NASA rotor air-loads flight program of this nature had been conducted over three decades earlier, before the advent of the modern digital data acquisition and processing revolu-

tion.[319] Again, the persistence of the NASA-Army researchers met the institutional and resource challenges and pressed on with fundamen­tal research to advance rotary wing technology.

On December 20, 2006, the White House issued Executive Order 13419 establishing the first National Aeronautics Research and Development Policy. The Executive order was accompanied by the policy statement pre­pared by the National Science and Technology Council’s Committee on Technology. This 13-page document included recommendations to clar­ify, focus, and coordinate Federal Government aeronautics R&D activi­ties. Of particular note for NASA’s rotary wing community was Section V of the policy statement: "Stable and Long-Term Foundational Research Guidelines.” The roles and responsibilities of the executive departments and agencies were addressed, noting that several executive organizations should take responsibility for specific parts of the national foundational (i. e., fundamental) aeronautical research program. Specifically, "NASA should maintain a broad foundational research effort aimed at preserv­ing the intellectual stewardship and mastery of aeronautics core compe­tencies.” In addition, "NASA should conduct research in key areas related to the development of advanced aircraft technologies and systems that support DOD, FAA, the Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO) and other executive departments and agencies.[320] NASA may also con­duct such research to benefit the broad aeronautics community in its pursuit of advanced aircraft technologies and systems. . . . ” In support­ing research benefiting the broad aeronautics community, care is to be taken "to ensure that the government is not stepping beyond its legiti­mate purpose by competing with or unfairly subsidizing commercial ven­tures.” There is a strong implication that the new policy may lead NASA’s aeronautics role in a return to the more modest, but successful, ways of NASA’s predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, with a primary focus on fundamental research, with the participation of

academia, and the cooperative research support for systems technology and experimental aircraft program investments by the DOD, the FAA, and industry. In the case of rotary wing research, since the 1990s, NASA man­agement decisions had moved the residual effort in this direction under the pressure of limited resources.

As charged, 1 year after the Executive order and policy statement were issued, the National Science and Technology Council issued the "National Plan For Aeronautics Research and Development and Related Infrastructure.” Rotary wing R&D is specifically identified as being among the aviation elements vital to national security and homeland defense with a goal of "Developing improved lift, range, and mission capability for rotorcraft.” Future NASA rotary wing foundational research contributions may also contribute to other goals and objective of the plan. For example, under Energy Efficiency and Environment Protection, is Goal 2: Advance development of technologies and operations to enable significant increases in energy efficiency of the aviation system, and Goal 3: Advance development of technologies and operational procedures to decrease the significant environmental impacts of the aviation system.

Perhaps the most important long-term challenge for the rotary wing segment of aviation is the need for focused attention on improved safety. In this regard, Goal 2 under the plan section titled "Aviation Safety is Paramount” appears to embrace the rotary wing need in calling for devel­oping technologies to reduce accidents and incidents through enhanced aerospace vehicle operations on the ground and in the air. The opportu­nity for making significant contributions in this arena may exist through enhanced teaming of NASA and the rotary wing community under the International Helicopter Study Team (IHST).[321] The goal of the ambitious IHST is to work to reduce helicopter accident rates by 80 percent in 10 years. The participating members of the organization include techni­cal societies, helicopter and engine manufacturers, commercial operator and public service organizations, the FAA, and NASA. Past performance suggests that the timely application of NASA rotary wing fundamental research expertise and unique facilities to this international endeavor would spawn significant contributions and accomplishments.