Forcing Factors

One of the more impressive advances in aerospace capability in the last few years has been the acceptance and accelerated development of remotely piloted unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) by the military. The progress in innovative hardware and software products to support this focus has truly been impressive and warrants a consideration that properly scaled free – flight models have reached the appropriate limits of development. In com­parison to today’s capabilities, the past equipment used by the NACA and NASA seems primitive. It is difficult to anticipate hardware breakthroughs in free-flight model technologies beyond those currently employed, but NASA’s most valuable contributions have come from the applications of the models to specific aerospace issues—especially those that require years of difficult research and participation in model-to-flight correlation studies.

Changes in the world situation are now having an impact on aero­nautics, with a trickle-down effect on technical areas such as free-flight

testing. The end of the Cold War and industrial mergers have resulted in a dramatic reduction in new aircraft designs, especially for uncon­ventional configurations that would benefit from free-flight testing. Reductions in research budgets for industry and NASA have further aggravated the situation.

These factors have led to a slowdown in requirements for the ongoing NASA capabilities in free-flight testing at a time when rollover changes in the NASA workforce is resulting in the retirements of specialists in this and other technologies without adequate transfer of knowledge and mentoring to the new research staffs. In addition, planned closures of key NASA facilities will challenge new generations of researchers to reinvent the free-flight capabilities discussed herein. For example, the planned demolition of the Langley Full-Scale Tunnel in 2009 will terminate that historic 78-year-old facility’s role in providing free-flight testing capa­bility, and although exploratory free-flight tests have been conducted in the much smaller test section of the Langley 14- by 22-Foot Tunnel, it remains to be seen if the technique will continue as a testing capa­bility. Based on the foregoing observations, NASA will be challenged to provide the facilities and expertise required to continue to provide the Nation with contributions from free-flight models.