Tag: 2018 AIAA AVIATION Forum

Political Challenges of Aviation

Panelists: Moderator David Hills, vice president of research and technology, Airbus; Michael Huerta, senior adviser, Macquarie Holdings

by Tom Risen, Aerospace America staff reporter (2017-2018)

Michael Huerta, a former FAA administrator, emphasized the need for data sharing, international collaboration and public education to achieve the aviation industry’s common goal of safety June 27 during his “Aviation Transformation — The Ultimate Team Sport” speech and on-stage discussion at the 2018 AVIATION Forum in Atlanta.

The way people fly is changing and will require the industry to ask tough questions on topics, including how to improve air traffic management, said Huerta, now a senior adviser at Macquarie Holdings financial services group. In addition to questions about how to improve safety, he said people in the industry also ask themselves “if something has worked fine the way it is, do I want to be the one to mess all that up?”

Electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles that companies aim to offer for short flights from cities to suburbs raise questions about where to set safety standards for these new aircraft, he said, because “nobody is debating whether it is going to happen.”

“The age of the drone taxi is really just around the corner,” Huerta said.

Companies designing new types of aircraft in Silicon Valley and the established aviation community have to learn from each other so that improvements can be made without moving too fast.

“We have to be willing to throw out processes that have outlived their usefulness,” Huerta said, cautioning “maybe we don’t want to beta test around major airports because lives are on the line.”

Huerta nodded to efforts to research supersonic aircraft that create a quieter sonic boom but said the challenge of creating a regulatory path to allow commercial supersonic flights over land in the U.S. is mainly “a political problem, not a technical problem.”

After the discussion, Huerta said educating the public about new low-boom supersonic flight technology will be key because “the public has this very old notion of what supersonic means; that it is going to mean windows shaking and china breaking.”

Discussing the Brexit vote in the U.K. to separate from the European Union, Huerta said it will be “a big problem” for U.K. airlines to fly between London to New York, which is among the busiest flight paths in the world. Officials in the U.K. are negotiating to have an affiliate membership after March 2019 with European Aviation Safety Agency, which is recognized by the FAA, Huerta said, adding that would be “the ideal situation” to allow the U.K. aviation industry to continue to operate flights and sell aircraft parts in the U.S.

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FAA Part 23 Rewrite Transforms General Aviation to Meet New Demands

Panelists: Moderator Nicolas Borer, advanced air vehicle configurator technical lead, Aeronautics Systems Analysis Branch, NASA’s Langley Research Center; Ella Atkins, professor of aerospace engineering, University of Michigan; Anna Dietrich, co-founder, Terrafugia; Stephane Fymat, vice president of product management and marketing, BendixKing, Honeywell Aerospace; Zohaib Mian, senior autonomous systems architect, Mercedes-Bosch Autonomous Driving Project, Robert Bosch LLC; Wes Ryan, unmanned systems certification lead, Policy & Innovation Division, FAA; David Sizoo, FAA

by Hannah Thoreson, AIAA Communications

General aviation is transforming from a world of very uniform small aircraft to one of a mix of air vehicles, both manned and unmanned, and technology and infrastructure must adjust to accommodate new types of vehicles into the national airspace, a panel of experts said June 27 during the “Entering a New Era of General Aviation (Part 23)” session at the 2018 AVIATION Forum in Atlanta.

Wes Ryan, unmanned systems certification lead at the FAA, touched on safety in general aviation and said it has improved over the past several years.

“We were flat in our fatal accidents for general aviation aircraft for a very long time, and over the last several years, we’ve seen a marked, measurable decline in fatal accidents in general aviation aircraft,” Ryan said. “We believe that is from the technology initiatives and also coming from some of the training aspects that we’ve done and collective efforts for safety. But we’d like to give credit to a lot of the new technology and the new ideas that industry has brought to us like moving map displays, GPS, envelope protection autopilots, all of those kinds of things.”

David Sizoo, an FAA test pilot, said there is still room for improvement with small airplanes.

“In general aviation in the United States alone, there is a fatal accident once every two or three days. We can do much better than that,” Sizoo said, adding that he believes that fly-by wire technology needs to become more affordable for general aviation pilots.

Ella Atkins, a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Michigan, also zeroed in on the cost of improvement in aircraft electronics as a major burden for general aviation pilots.

“One of the big pushbacks from the general aviation community is that ‘we can’t afford to spend another $15-20,000 for new avionics,’” Atkins said.

Anna Dietrich, co-founder of Terrafugia, said recent changes in the FAA regulatory schema for general aviation will also help accelerate the transformation of the space.

Dietrich said before the Part 23 rewrite, it was meant for fixed-wing aircraft and that Part 27 was for rotor-wing.

“They were kind of self-replicating,” she said. “You followed a very prescriptive set of rules, and you got a very predictable set of aircraft out the other end.”

Dietrich said that during the Part 23 rewrite, the prescriptive language was removed.

“We took that all out,” she said, adding, “Part 23 is a good solution for eVTOL and on-demand aircraft.”

However, Dietrich said the days of standard fixed-wing general aviation aircraft under the new schema might be numbered.

“I think that the days of, ‘I’m going to have my own plane that I keep in my own hangar that I fly on the weekends,” that’s going to be very clearly a hobby,” she said. “But that’s not where aviation is headed.”

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Life in the F-35 ‘Fish Bowl’

Panelists: Moderator Juan J. Alonso, professor, Stanford University; Jeff Babione, vice president and general manager, Advanced Development Programs, Lockheed Martin

by Ben Iannotta, Aerospace America editor-in-chief

Lockheed Martin’s Jeff Babione challenged the audience of the “Evolution of the F-35” session June 26 at the 2018 AIAA AVIATION Forum in Atlanta to utter the first words that came to mind when they thought of the F-35.

After some minor prodding, a voice in the crowd said “cost overrun.” Another said “schedule.” And a third voice, which was difficult to hear, seemed to say “not as good as the F-16.”

Issuing this challenge was Babione’s way of encouraging people to reconsider their perceptions of the F-35 program as Lockheed Martin seeks to reboot opinions about the multibillion joint and international initiative that has indeed been marked by schedule delays and cost overruns. Since the program’s last re-baselining, Babione said, the company has been rolling out the F-35 aircraft nearly as planned in terms of cost and schedule.

“It was tough, but we got there,” he said.

Babione knows the F-35 program as well as anyone. Before moving earlier this year to head Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development Programs, or Skunk Works, he was the general manager in charge of the F-35 for more than two years. For almost three years before that, he was the deputy in charge of day-to-day program management. His speech and a Q&A session moderated by Juan J. Alonso of Stanford University opened a series of “special programming” sessions at the forum planned for June 26 and June 27 to discuss the F-35 program and its history.

Babione ticked off a list of milestones for the audience. Among them, he noted that the system development and demonstration phase, involving numerous test flights, was completed earlier this year, not long after the planned 2017 date under the re-baselining. He said the program is running “just several percentage points higher on cost.” He said initial operational test and evaluation flights are scheduled to begin in August under the program’s strategy of conducting tests concurrently with low-rate initial production.

Pointing to a cost chart, Babione said that today, an A model of the F-35 — the version that will eventually replace the U.S. Air Force’s F-16s and A-10s — costs $94 million. He said the company envisions the cost declining to $80 million per plane by 2020.

Babione said Lockheed Martin has been open about the hurdles it has faced over the years and that there are no shortage of challenges ahead. He displayed a slide showing a goldfish in a bowl surrounded by the corporate logos of CNN, Facebook, Fox News, YouTube and Twitter.

“Do I look at all like that goldfish? Because that’s how it feels to be on the F-35 program,” he said, joking about searching G-O-D on Google and realizing that the F-35 received more hits.

None of that was meant to be a complaint, Babione suggested: Oversight of a multibillion program is certainly “reasonable,” he said, adding that transparency is the “hallmark” of the program.

“You can’t claim we’re hiding anything,” he said.

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Disrupting Aircraft Design and Production

Panelists: Moderator Juan Alonso, professor of aeronautics and astronautics, Stanford University; Rodin Lyasoff, CEO, A^3 by Airbus; Jack O’Banion, vice president of strategy and customer requirements, Advanced Development Programs, Lockheed Martin; Pradeep Fernandes, managing director of disruptive horizons, Boeing HorizonX; Ilan Kroo, Thomas V. Jones professor of engineering, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University

by Tom Risen, Aerospace America staff reporter (2017-2018)

Companies must rely on new tools for design and development to meet shifting consumer demand with new types of aircraft, including electric vertical takeoff and landing, or eVTOL, vehicles, a group of executives and academics said June 25 during the “New Paradigms in Aviation” panel at the 2018 AIAA AVIATION Forum in Atlanta.

Maturing technologies, including autonomy and increased battery density, give companies opportunity to create “a new layer of transportation” not possible a few years ago, said Pradeep Fernandes, managing director of disruptive horizons at Boeing HorizonX, an arm of Boeing he said exists to “beat our own game.”

The challenge for the aircraft industry, Fernandes said, is to pursue better fuel efficiency, better maintenance costs and lower crew operating costs for a new layer of transportation.

“If you cannot do that, you need a new unique capability that today’s system cannot provide,” he said.

Fernandes cited Boeing’s ecoDemonstrator program — which test flies new technologies, including plant-based biofuel, every year on a commercial airliner — and referred to the eVTOL vehicle being test flown by Aurora Flight Sciences, the Virginia-based company acquired by Boeing last year. Aurora Flight Sciences CEO John Langford is the president of AIAA.

New eVTOL aircraft promise a market for electric flight for commutes from a city to the suburbs by being cleaner and quieter than conventional helicopters, said Rodin Lyasoff, CEO of Silicon Valley-based A^3 by Airbus. The eVTOL aircraft being test flown by A^3 is the Vahana, which will begin test flights to transition from vertical to horizontal flight in August, according to a spokeswoman for the company.

Improvements in automation have made automated assembly lines less costly in car manufacturing factories, Lyasoff said, adding he is curious what can be leveraged from that industry method when eVTOL vehicles such as the Vahana complete the testing and regulation stages and are ready for mass production.

Additive manufacturing is another increasingly mainstream production method that promises lower costs and easier creation of aircraft parts in complex shapes, but “it has to be done with significant care,” said Jack O’Banion, vice president of strategy and customer requirements with Advanced Development Programs at Lockheed Martin, also known as Lockheed Martin Skunk Works.

The challenge for additive manufacturing of aircraft parts is certifying them for safety with regulators, O’Banion said, calling certification “a whole science in itself.”

“It has opened avenues of design that weren’t there before,” O’Banion said of additive manufacturing. “We are able to create new propulsion systems and other things that would have been impossible to machine a part to do.”

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How to Speed to Prototype

Panelists: Moderator Starr Ginn, deputy aeronautics research director, NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center; Charles “Chase” Ashton, senior engineer, AeroVironment Inc.; Scott Drennan, director of innovation, Bell; Steve Ericson, director of advanced design, The Spaceship Co.; Bob Morgan, director of research and development, Scaled Composites; Michael Swanson, chief engineer, Advanced Development Programs, Lockheed Martin

by Michele McDonald, AIAA Communications Manager

AIAA AVIATION Forum, Atlanta, June 25, 2018 – Moving quickly from aerospace design to prototype can be daunting, but a few key principles may help: keep it simple; fail early and often; use existing technology; and perhaps most essential, have a great team.

A panel of aerospace experts outlined some key factors for a successful and fast prototype launch June 25 during the “Rapid Spiral Development From Ground to Flight” session at the 2018 AIAA AVIATION Forum in Atlanta.

Scott Drennan, director of innovation at Bell, said there’s a lot to learn from getting your hands on hardware because it feeds back into the design.

“I’m a big believer in the build,” he said.

Charles “Chase” Ashton, an aeromechanical engineer with AeroVironment Inc., said team members with many hands-on skills and who are “masters of some” are crucial to the success of a fast-moving project.

“We not only design [the prototypes] and build them, but have the ability to test them as well,” Ashton said.

Bob Morgan, director of research and development at Scaled Composites, said doing the work in-house, without relying upon contractors, helps speed the path to prototype; he advised not to design something you can’t build yourself.

Morgan added that companies should keep it simple and resist design changes late in the process because they add cost and time. Look at what really needs to be done and then add from there, he said, adding that the simplest answer can be surprising.

For example, Morgan said, a prototype aircraft with a pilot can be faster to prototype than an unmanned system, depending on the size of the aircraft.

“Sometimes it’s easier to stick a guy into it,” he said.

Another tenet: “Fail early and fail often,” Morgan said. Fixing problems early saves time and money.

In addition, reuse what you know, Michael Swanson, chief engineer of Advanced Development Programs at Lockheed Martin, said, adding that costs can be reduced by a factor of four by simply using existing parts and technology. Skunk Works tries to bite off only one miracle per aircraft program, Swanson joked.

Building trust with the customer also helps shave time from design to prototype, said Steve Ericson, director of advanced design with The Spaceship Co.

Embedding the customer within the team builds trust and speed, Ericson said. He explained that when he worked on a project that required nine prototypes built to production standards, the customer was a part of meetings and already knew about any failures and what was being done to fix them.

Keeping the customer close eliminates “having a Power Point battle,” Ericson said.

Panelists agreed that during this rapid process, both the team and the customer must have a high tolerance for risk and failure.

“It’s not for the faint of heart,” Swanson said.

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Transatlantic Collaboration May Speed Up Safer, Greener, Faster Aviation

Panelists: Moderator David Hills, senior partnership manager, Airbus Americas Inc.; Matej Andrejašič, head of aerodynamics, Pipistrel Vertical Solutions; Pier-Davide Ciampa, team lead, Multidisciplinary Design and Optimization, German Aerospace Center; Sebastiano Fumero, head of unit-aeronautics, Research and Innovation Directorate General, European Commission; Pablo Perez-Illana, program officer, Research and Innovation Directorate General, European Commission; Joeri De Ruytter, Research and Technology Business Development and Partnerships, Honeywell Aerospace Europe

by Michele McDonald, AIAA Communications Manager

Collaborating with the European aerospace community could expand and speed up aviation transformation across the globe, 2018 AIAA AVIATION Forum.

It would be shortsighted for U.S. aerospace companies to ignore Europe, noted David Hills, panel moderator and senior partnership manager at Airbus Americas Inc.

Europe is working on making aviation safer, greener and faster, said Sebastiano Fumero, head of unit-aeronautics at the Research and Innovation Directorate General with the European Commission. Shared interests with the U.S. range from supersonic aviation to deicing technology.

“We feel there is a lot of room to work together,” he said, adding the European Union will fund large projects and also individual researchers.

The EU’s Horizon 2020 program has an over $90 billion budget, and the Horizon 2021-2027 is expected to be over $115 billion. Funded projects address future and emerging technology, research infrastructure, information and communication technology, as well as societal challenges, including health, security, climate, food and transportation. The United States is the biggest non-European collaborator, followed by China.

Bringing people together from different backgrounds and disciplines can lead to better outcomes, said Pablo Perez-Illana, program officer at the Research and Innovation Directorate General.

“No one has the monopoly on good ideas,” he said quoting a June 27 keynote address by Michael Huerta,senior adviser with Macquarie Holdings and a former FAA administrator.

It’s helpful to have some guidelines when entering a project with partners from different countries, Perez-Illana said, adding that a successful collaboration needs to have a clear objective, defined roles of each partner and clear communication.

Creating “safer-greener-faster aviation” is a prime area of collaboration between the U.S. and Europe. Working together has increased in recent years, especially on safety issues, Perez-Illana said.

“In many cases, we get much better quality when we can share data,” he said.

For example, transatlantic cooperation came together on such projects involving wake vortex and high-altitude ice crystals, Perez-Illana said, explaining that the results can help create industry standards and cost savings.

There are several research opportunities opening up, such as a 2019 research project focused on hybrid-electric technology. Another one in development for 2020 focuses on supersonic technology.

“For those who need to dream big,” Perez-Illana said, EU research on civil aviation at Mach 8 could lead to a “total revolution for aviation” in the long term.

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Bell’s Thacker Outlines Mobility Strategy

Speaker: Michael Thacker, executive vice president of technology and innovation, Bell

by Ben Iannotta, Aerospace America editor-in-chief

Empowering everyday commuters and other passengers to fly over urban areas will require groundbreaking research but also achieving consumer acceptance and finding the most efficient way possible to certify these aircraft for safety, said Bell’s innovation chief, Michael Thacker, June 28 during the “A New Era in Flight” session at the 2018 AIAA AVIATION Forum in Atlanta.

As for Bell’s specific strategy, Thacker noted that the company has rebranded itself as Bell in place of Bell Helicopter to capture the innovative nature of the forthcoming aircraft. He showed the red logo on a screen and noted that it shows a dragonfly, “the ultimate master of flight.”

He said Bell is focused on “on demand mobility,” meaning passenger aircraft, and is “not really targeting the personal aircraft market.” He alluded briefly to the planned Bell Air Taxi but provided no details.

On the question of how the new breed of aircraft should be certified for safety, Thacker said, “We believe that Part 23” — the FAA regulations revamped in late 2016 — “can provide a reasonable basis for vehicle certification.”

Regarding research, he referred to the development of the tiltrotor concept, noting that it was first conceived in the 1930s but not developed into operational aircraft until decades later in the form of the Bell-Boeing V-22, which flies like a fixed-wing plane in horizontal mode and a helicopter in vertical flight. Thacker said “making the transition can be harder than it looks.”

He said the tiltrotor approach is “hard to beat,” but he showed a drawing of NASA’s planned X-57 Maxwell electric aircraft and said the distributed electric propulsion on it will target the “same benefits” as the tiltrotor.

He advised factoring in plans for full autonomy from the beginning, rather than trying to add it later.

Of course, the best technical approach doesn’t matter if it results in an aircraft consumers won’t accept. So he referred to “good neighbor goals” related to noise, safety, carbon emissions and price. He said these must be key considerations from the outset, and he singled out the cost factor.

“Why would people accept these vehicles in their backyards if they cannot afford [to fly in them]?” he asked.

On safety, he noted that today’s rotorcraft mainly fly over rural areas, whereas the emerging demand is for flights over highly populated areas.

“I don’t think it’s acceptable to have a lower safety standard than we have today,” he said.

On noise, residents and authorities in some areas have restricted helicopters, he noted.

“If we blend into the community,” Thacker said, “then we have a chance. “If we cannot do that, then we have already seen the results with helicopters.”

So, Thacker said, designs must address that issue.

“From a first principle,” he said, “noise is generated by tip speed.”

Regarding emissions, “we can’t add to the problem,” Thacker said, adding that he anticipates hybrid propulsion of electric power and combustion, because batteries cannot yet provide the desired range.

“There are limits to battery technology that will limit your mission set,” he said.

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Expert Advice from Venture Capitalists

Panelists: Moderator Van Espahbodi, co-founder, managing partner, Starburst Aerospace Accelerator; Maryanna Saenko, principal, Khosla Ventures; Brian Schettler, managing director, Boeing HorizonX Ventures; Peter Truwit, associate, Seraph Group

by Ben Iannotta, Aerospace America editor-in-chief

Four venture capitalists at the 2018 AIAA AVIATION Forum in Atlanta gave a glimpse into their world — from the fiercely competitive pace of their business to what they like to see in a pitch for funding — and discussed the technical areas in which they think the next aerospace breakthroughs might lie.

Success in the venture capital business requires moving quickly but not recklessly, several panelists said June 25 in the session “Investment Perspectives on the Aviation Market.”

Brian Schettler, managing director of Boeing’s 14-month-old HorizonX Ventures unit, said his team is doing deals in as little as three weeks. He said Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg responds to approval requests from the unit in minutes.

“It’s not hours; it’s not days; it’s not next month,” Schettler said.

Things can unfold even faster elsewhere, depending on the marker one chooses as a starting point. Maryanna Saenko, a principal at Khosla Ventures, said her company once reached a deal in three hours.

“They pitched at 9 a.m., and at noon, we had a signed terms sheet,” she said.

But Saenko said it took six months of research and talking to experts before that meeting to have confidence in their ability to make a fast decision.

“We knew what [the right opportunity] looked like when it walked through the door,” she said.

Saenko also offered a surprising caution about research: “It’s possible to do too much diligence.”

Dig too deep, and it becomes impossible to “believe in” the next SpaceX, or Planet or Rocket Lab, she explained.

Moderator Van Espahbodi, co-founder and managing partner of the Starburst Aerospace Accelerator, asked the panelists to describe quality investment pitches.

Peter Truwit, an associate at Seraph Group, said the best of them tend not to come from people who are driven solely by money.

“If the goal is to get rich, that’s perfectly fine, but we want to know why you want to do this thing to get rich,” he said.

Schettler added: “You want to see enthusiasm sweating off them. You’re betting on the people just as much as the technology.”

That said, enthusiasm can’t blind an entrepreneur from a key question, Schettler said: Can you make it economical, or can you only make one highly complex unit?

Also, there will be setbacks, and Saenko explained a successful entrepreneur needs to exude a sense of “incredible grit” to face such challenges.

In what areas will the next big aerospace breakthroughs occur? The panelists touched on everything from artificial intelligence to the desire for information connectivity to space launch to electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft for urban transportation.

“We want it to be unique, like ‘Holy crap, why didn’t I think of that?” Schettler said.

Saenko pointed to data showing societies are becoming more and more urban. She said that doesn’t mean getting from one place to another has to be “as miserable as it is today.”

Truwit said work will need to be done on enabling technologies if electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft are to take off.

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Unprecedented Global Partnerships, Collaboration Fuels F-35 Program

Panelists: Moderator Graham Warwick, managing editor, Aviation Week and Space Technology; Eric Branyan, vice president, F-35 Supply Chain Management, Lockheed Martin; Declan Holland, vice president of U.S. business, BAE Systems Inc.; Frank Carus, vice president and F-35 program manager, Northrop Grumman Corp.; Thomas Johns, director, F135 Weapon System Integration, Military Engines, Pratt & Whitney; John Mazur, director of foreign military sales, Joint Strike Fighter Joint Program Office; J.D. McFarlan, vice president, F-35 Test and Verification, Lockheed Martin

by Lawrence Garrett, AIAA Web Editor

AIAA AVIATION Forum, Atlanta, June 26, 2018 – The successful development of the F-35 has required unprecedented worldwide partnerships and extraordinary collaboration between private industry and government, said a panel of industry experts June 26 during the “Reflection on the Partnerships Within the F-35 Enterprise” session at the 2018 AIAA AVIATION Forum in Atlanta.

“I can honestly tell you that in the over 30 years that I’ve been in the business … certainly the [Joint Strike Fighter] F-35 program is unlike any other program I have worked on,” said Frank Carus, vice president and JSF F-35 program manager at Northrop Grumman.

Carus noted that the different intricacies of the program were incredibly challenging but that one of the unique characteristics was the “best athlete” approach management adopted.

As Carus described it, the program utilized the person who brought the best value to a position. He said that in certain positions, Lockheed Martin employees worked for Northrop Grumman managers, Northrop Grumman staff worked for BAE Systems staff, and Northrop Grumman and BAE people worked for Lockheed Martin.

“I’d never seen or been part of an organization like that,” Carus said. “It was unique.”

Thomas Johnson, director of F135 Weapon System Integration for Military Engines at Pratt & Whitney, said that “working together” was a critical ingredient for program success and that the concept applies to companies and organizations as well as people.

“The trick in a big program like this is getting all three functioning,” he said, adding that there were also a number of other complexities, including variations in product, development organization, customer and location.

J.D. McFarlan, vice president for test and evaluation at Lockheed Martin, said the F-35 test and evaluation program was over 20 years in the making.

“The F-35 program is vast and could not be done without a worldwide partnership,” he said, calling the F-35’s undertaking “an international program” from “start to finish.”

Eric Branyan, vice president of F-35 Supply Chain Management at Lockheed Martin, said some international cooperation resulted in improvements on overall time, cost and quality.

“The partnerships are not just there to build the program,” Branyan said. “The partnerships are there really to make the airplane a better part because of the sum of all those pieces together.”

Declan Holland, vice president of U.S. business with BAE, cited BAE’s expertise in short takeoff and vertical landing aircraft, systems engineering, subcontract management, structural testing and advanced manufacturing.

Holland said the U.K.’s experience in advanced manufacturing, acquired through past work on the Typhoon, has been implemented into the F-35 program.

John Mazur, director of foreign military sales for the JSF Joint Program Office, said the F-35 program is constantly evolving and will keep accelerating.

“This program is nothing today like it was 20 years ago or 15 years ago,” Mazur said. “The landscape for the international part is constantly evolving, and so every day, we have a new set of problems that comes scooting across our desks that we have to reach out and try to find some workable solution.”

Panel moderator Graham Warwick, technology managing editor for Aviation Week and Space Technology, recalled that prior aeronautical programs also experienced setbacks.

“They all had tremendous problems either in development or in early service introduction,” he said. “No program of that scale ever goes smoothly, and the F-35 is no exception.”

But, Warwick said, “like the F-16, the F-15, and the F-22, the chances are, the indications are, that we will have a truly capable machine at the end of this.”

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The Future of Commercial Supersonic Flight

Panelists: Moderator Robbie Cowart, director, supersonic technology development, Gulfstream Aerospace Corp.; Mike Hinderberger, senior vice president of aircraft development, Aerion Corp.; David Richardson, director for air vehicle design and technology, Advanced Development Programs, Lockheed Martin; Blake Scholl, founder and CEO, Boom Supersonic; Kevin Welsh, executive director, Office of Environment and Energy, FAA

by Tom Risen, Aerospace America Staff Reporter (2017-2018)

Executives from companies aiming to manufacture a new generation of supersonic airliners and a representative from the FAA working to create regulations to enable them to fly over land spoke about their efforts June 29 during the “A Path to Supersonic Commercial Travel” panel discussion at the 2018 AIAA AVIATION Forum in Atlanta.

The British Airways Concorde, which stopped doing commercial supersonic flights in 2003, only flew over oceans because commercial planes in European and U.S. airspace are forbidden from breaking the sound barrier over land to prevent community disturbance from a sonic boom.

Mike Hinderberger, senior vice president of aircraft development at Aerion Corp., said his company plans to begin offering flights by targeting the business jet set the Concorde catered to.

“We would love to go Mach 2 and Mach 2.5,” Hinderberger said of the Aerion AS2. But, he said, Mach 1.4 will be the super cruise speed of the plane because it would balance fuel burn to enable better range and limit noise. Aerion aims to fly the AS2 in 2023 and deliver to customers in 2026. The company is working with Lockheed Martin to design and develop the plane.

NASA has also contracted Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works to design, build and do initial test flights of the agency’s newly named X-59 low-boom supersonic demonstrator aimed at reducing the noise of a sonic boom. David Richardson, director for air vehicle design and technology at Skunk Works, said NASA and the FAA have a “once in a generation shot” to certify commercial supersonic aircraft to fly over land.

“If we don’t get it right, right now I don’t think we are going to be able to do this again in 30 years; someone will say, ‘look at what happened back then,’” Richardson said.

There are landing and takeoff noise standards to certify subsonic planes, and one was specifically written for the Concorde, but none exist for new commercial supersonic planes other than a provision for testing. The pace of how that new certification process unfolds “is going to be critical in the design, development and advancement of these aircraft.”
said Kevin Welsh, executive director of the FAA’s Office of Environment and Energy.

Blake Scholl, founder and CEO of Colorado-based Boom Supersonic, said his company is among the firms aiming to do commercial flights over oceans until regulations enable flights over land. To avoid certification snags with the Boom supersonic airliner, Scholl said, “we have a rule — no new technology on the plane if it has not been certified.”

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NASA’s New Aviation Era

Panelists: Moderator Rich Wahls, strategic technical adviser, Advanced Air Vehicles Program, NASA’s Langley Research Center; Robert Pearce, deputy associate administrator for strategy and acting director for Airspace Operations and Safety Program, NASA Headquarters; Peter Coen, project manager, Commercial Supersonic Technology Project, NASA; Jay Dryer, director, Advanced Air Vehicles Program; Davis Hackenberg, strategy adviser for urban air mobility, NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate; Parimal Kopardekar, senior technologist for air transportation systems, NASA’s Ames Research Center; Craig Nickol, manager, Low Boom Flight Demonstrator Project, Integrated Aviation Systems Program, NASA

by Tom Risen, Aerospace America Staff Reporter (2017-2018)

During the “NASA Aeronautics at the Dawn of a New Era of Aviation” panel discussion June 28 at the 2018 AIAA AVIATION Forum in Atlanta, NASA officials explained how the agency is creating technologies to help companies design new types of aircraft that meet the shifting demands of the public while observing safety and acceptable noise standards.

Robert Pearce, acting director for NASA’s Airspace Operations and Safety Program, said Congress and the general public are excited about the agency’s aeronautics projects but that planning for experimental planes is difficult because funding is often granted one year at a time.

“We need to make sure we have a five-year budget” to develop X-planes, Pearce said.

NASA has contracted Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works to build a piloted X-plane that will test technologies for reducing the noise of a sonic boom enough to permit supersonic flights across the U.S. On June 26, the U.S. Air Force designated the plane the X-59 QueSST, naming it for the Quiet Supersonic Technology plane design Lockheed Martin created for NASA in 2016.

Peter Coen, project manager for NASA’s Commercial Supersonic Technology Project said the ban put in place against supersonic flight over land in the U.S. has been warranted but that the international challenge is now “how do we define acceptability” for noise created by planes that make a sonic thump instead of “unacceptable” sonic boom.

Jay Dryer, director of NASA’s Advanced Air Vehicles Program said the agency is being selective in research it can do to enable certification, safety and public acceptance for new types of aircraft but added it will also help prove out adjustments to subsonic airplanes.

Dyer said NASA recognizes the need for research “isn’t binary” between traditional markets or the new markets: “It’s really both,” he said.

NASA has completed market studies recently about the interest in electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft that companies are designing and testing with the aim of ferrying people from a city to the suburb, said Davis Hackenberg, strategy adviser for urban air mobility at NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate.

“I would bet it’s hundreds of billions of dollars going into this industry over the next few years right now,” Hackenberg said of funding eVTOLs for urban air mobility. “There is a real opportunity to make this happen.”

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