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THE FUTURE OF AVIATION TECHNOLOGY: ''IS THE SKY THE LIMIT?''
Tuesday, May 16, 2000
House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Aviation, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Washington, D.C.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:00 p.m., in Room 2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John J. Duncan, Jr. [chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.
Mr. DUNCAN. Good afternoon. I would like to call this aviation subcommittee meeting to order. I understand, unfortunately, that we are going to be interrupted by a couple of votes. But after those votes, we will have a period of time in which we can proceed with the hearing. Before we begin today, I would like to extend a special welcome to the former chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board, the Honorable L. Welch Pogue.
Dr. Pogue has dedicated his life to the advancement of civil aviation. In 1942, he was appointed by President Roosevelt to serve as one of the first chairman of the CAB. He became the architect of the 1944 Chicago convention, which provided the blueprints for the post-World War II expansion of civil aviation. The Chicago convention still governs international aviation today.
I am told that at 100 years of age, Dr. Pogue is still actively involved with aviation today. Dr. Pogue, we are honored to have you here with us today. Would you please stand, and will everybody please acknowledge Dr. Pogue.
I would also like to extend a special word of thanks to Congressman Bateman, my good friend from Virginia, for his help in organizing today's hearing. Congressman Bateman has taken a personal interest in advancing aviation technology and has provided input into this hearing. Today, we have what I think will be a very fascinating hearing. We have an opportunity to take a look at a few examples of new and exciting technological innovations that will shape the future of commercial aviation.
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The history of aviation in this country is steeped in a rich tradition of innovation. From the Wright Brothers' first flight over Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, to the space shuttle program, the constant advancement of technology has allowed aviation to grow at a staggering rate and become the backbone of long distant travel. Today, domestic airlines carry twice as many passengers as they did 20 years ago. In the year 2020, not that far distant future, they expect to carry three times the number of passengers that they carry today.
Air cargo has grown even faster. In the last 5 years, air freight tonnage has increased by 60 percent and is expected to continue that staggering rate of growth. As we prepare to enter the second centennial of powered flight, our Nation's aviation system is under heavy pressure to keep pace with the rising demand for air service. Improvements in safety and security must be made to ensure that accidents and fatalities continue to decline. More flexible and efficient air traffic management procedures need to be adopted to make use of our air space. The environmental impact of aviation must be minimized to allow the industry to continue to grow.
The NASA, the FAA, and the private sector are working together to try to find new ways to meet these challenges and find new opportunities to improve our civil aviation. I am pleased to have Administrator Dan Goldin here to discuss NASA's vision of the future of aviation technology. Director Goldin briefed our subcommittee on a visit we had to Seattle and gave a very exciting, fascinating, impressive briefing at that time; and we are pleased to have you back again, Director Goldin. He will talk about several NASA programs that are designed to improve the use of domestic air space to extend civil aviation into space and make general aviation more affordable for the general public. The goals that NASA has are wonderful goals that I think maybe he will get into.
I am also happy to have Dr. Bruce Holmes to discuss the Small Aircraft Transportation program. We had a briefing on that, and that is a fascinating program. I thought at that time that their goals were too ambitious, but a few months ago in the Washington Times they had this—they had an article and we will hear from this witness, Paul Moller; but it says, ''A commuter's dream right out of a cartoon flying a George Jetson space car high above the traffic tie-ups and red lights is just a month from its first test flight.''
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The California company hopes to make that commuter's dream a reality with its line of sky cars, sort of a cross between a car and a miniplane that can take off and land vertically. 'This vehicle is something that your grandmother can get in and drive even without a driver's license,' said Paul Moller, president of Moller International. Eventually, you should be able to push a button to go from D.C. to New York.'' A fascinating thing and we are going to get into some of that.
Dr. Herman Rediess of the FAA's Office of Aviation Research is here to discuss FAA's many programs. I am also pleased to welcome representatives from private sector interests. Ed Bolen will give the perspective of general aviation, Dr. Sam Williams of Williams international to talk about the Eclipse 500, Dr. Moller to discuss the sky car, Mr. Stephen Wurst to talk about the importance of space for hypersonic transportation, and Mr. Douglass of the Aerospace Industry Association. I would like to turn to my good friend, the Ranking Member, Mr. Lipinski, for his comments.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you for holding this hearing. Aviation has grown by leaps and bounds since the beginning of the 20th century. Since airline deregulation in 1978, the number of people flying has tripled from 230 million to 660 million just last year. Passenger traffic is projected to reach 660 million this year and approximately 1 billion, with a B, in the next 10 years. Even today, the FAA estimates that at any one time there can be as many as 5,800 flights in the air over the United States. That is 5,800 flights in the air at any one time just over the United States.
It is only through advanced technology that more planes will be able to share the same air space safely and efficiently. The FAA already has several important projects under way to replace and improve computers, radars, communication systems, and other vital components of the air traffic control system. NASA is working on more long-term projects that will ensure our national aviation system will continue to meet the increased demands of tomorrow. In addition, the private sector is working closely with both the FAA and NASA in playing a large role in shaping the future of aviation.
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Again, Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing on the future of aviation. It is an issue that deserves the full attention of this subcommittee. I look forward to hearing from our knowledgeable witnesses here today, and I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Lipinski. Mr. Bateman.
Mr. BATEMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am grateful to you and the subcommittee for holding these hearings on the direction that we should take in pursuit of a sound and essential program in aeronautics research. Aeronautics is one of the most critically important industries in America and has been for many years. It is a gigantic contributor to our industrial base. I have had some concern with aeronautics research through all of the years that I have been in Congress, especially bearing in mind that I represent the first district of Virginia where there is located the Langley Research Center.
Langley Research Center was started 83 years ago in the 17th year of powered flight by man. That is how venerable that institution is; and if I took the time this afternoon to catalog all of the contributions that they have made to aviation, we would be here the rest of the afternoon, but obviously we don't have time for that.
Mr. Chairman, I have an extensive statement that echoes much of what you have said and the very heart and soul of it is that America as a national priority, not for Langley Research Center, not for anybody's center, not for any purpose other than the genuine overriding significance of a sound programmatic approach to aeronautics research. I am going to ask unanimous consent that my full statement be part of the record and that I have unanimous consent to have made part of the record the report on strategic assessment of U.S. aeronautics, which was done by the National Research Council for the National Academy of Science.
It is a study on aeronautics research and the programmatic needs that need to be made and the compelling case that is made for greater emphasis on aeronautics research. I remain a supporter of our space research program. It is incredibly significant that it be sustained, but it must not be sustained at the expense of doing the kind of aeronautics research that is critical to America's future and to one of America's greatest and most important industries.
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Mr. Chairman, I can spend a great deal more time, but that is the essence of the message that I hope will come through very, very clearly at this hearing and a message that the American people and those who are in positions of governance for the American people will fully receive and understand and act upon.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you. Your full statement and that report will be placed in the report.
Mr. Scott.
Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the invitation to be with you today. I am not a member of the committee, but the importance of aeronautics research is, as you and others mentioned, extremely important. Aeronautics represents one of the biggest balances of trade, favorable balances of trade, and we need to make the research investments to improve safety and environmental concerns, including noise and fuel efficiency and as the Ranking Member mentioned, airport efficiency to be able to handle the increased capacity. We need to fund that research. It is basic research that takes a long time to come into effect, and I appreciate the opportunity Mr. Chairman, to be with you today. I would like to welcome Mr. Goldin, who has been at NASA Langley many times; and we appreciate his hard work and leadership in aeronautics research.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Scott, and we will ask unanimous consent that you be allowed to participate with us here today. We thank you for being with us. We are going to have to break at this point and run to cast two votes and we will be back as quickly as we can. We will be in recess.
[recess.]
Mr. DUNCAN. We will go ahead and proceed now, and we are certainly honored to have a very distinguished official with us today, the Honorable Dan Goldin, who is the administrator of the National Aeronautics & Space Administration. We are very pleased to have you here with us you today. You may proceed with your statement.
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TESTIMONY OF HON. DANIEL S. GOLDIN, ADMINISTRATOR, NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
Mr. GOLDIN. Mr. Chairman, I would like to submit my written testimony for the record.
Mr. DUNCAN. You may do that.
Mr. GOLDIN. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, this is an important hearing, and I am very pleased to be here today. The aviation sector faces serious problems. We cannot count on military R&D spending to feed new technologies of benefit to the commercial aviation system. The growth in aviation is impeded by an inadequate supporting infrastructure, the fragility of which shows up whenever the system is stressed by weather or equipment breakdowns. And our airline and aerospace industries are operating on small margins and cannot invest in the long-term, high-risk, and high-payoff research and technology that is absolutely required.
At this juncture, we must choose to embrace change and to achieve a vision for aerospace transportation that will propel our economy and society into the new century. So let me first discuss with you our vision of the future and then talk about the challenges we absolutely must address.
The first element of our vision is to revolutionize aviation mobility. To do this we must dramatically improve safety, increase capacity, and improve environmental compatibility and increase the speed from doorstep to destination. The average for a trip under 500 miles is 80 miles an hour for planes that have a capacity of 500 to 600 miles an hour.
How do we accomplish these objectives? By overlaying an intelligent information system on the aviation network, we will break the current ''hub and spoke'' mold. Sixty-four hubs have 90 percent of our flights. We will have precise knowledge of the position of every aircraft and its flight path. Precision approach to every runway end in the Nation will be available. This will increase the capacity of our major airports while expanding access to over 5,000 smaller airports that can serve small cities and communities across the country.
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New small, efficient aircraft that can utilize these smart small airports will allow point to point transportation at rates of two to three times faster than highway speeds. And our goal within a decade is to be able to make four place jet planes available at the high-end of luxury cars in price. And to be operable by almost anyone. At the same time, ultra-efficient long distance transports will be developed that contain noise within the boundaries of the airport while reducing local and global environmental impact, and the future will see the addition of efficient supersonic and hypersonic transportation that will further shrink our globe.
In this new air transportation system, safety will be greatly enhanced. Aircraft will employ artificial vision, which employs advanced sensors, digital terrain databases, accurate geo-positioning, and digital processing—to provide a perfectly clear 3D picture of terrain, obstacles, runway, and traffic.
Intelligent aircraft will use neural network computers to learn and modify vehicle and subsystem behavior based on feedback from embedded microsensors distributed throughout vehicle structures and systems, providing the ultimate in vehicle health management and the ability to smoothly recover from most failures.
Mr. Chairman, we have recently tested an F–15 with a neural net in that plane with a few tens of thousands of lines of code and we were able to recover from a simulated partial loss of wing within 2 seconds. All of these technologies will be integrated to create the safe expansion of aviation that improves this Nation's mobility.
The second part of the vision is to create a safe low-cost highway through the air and on into space, creating a single seamless aerospace transportation system. Specific objectives here involve significantly increased safety, reduced cost and reduced time to accomplish space missions.
We must create an integrated system. Both aircraft and launch vehicles must eventually operate within the same air space system. Many of the same safety systems I talked about within aviation are applicable to space transportation. And in fact technologies from materials, to information technology, to air-breathing propulsion, to magnetic runways are synergistic across aviation and space.
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Space launch must become as safe, reliable, and frequent as airline travel is today. In order to bring this reality into being, we must use technology to enable simplicity, robust design, and hardware reusability. The first step on this journey is to enable within the current decade an order of magnitude reduction in cost from $10,000 per pound to $1,000 per pound and a two order of magnitude improvement in safety. This represents a reduction in risk of crew loss from one in 250 launches to one in 10,000 launches. I might point out if you are a modern jet pilot in combat, your probability is one in 20,000 so it is a lot more difficult getting into the shuttle than a fighter plane in warfare today.
The third element of our vision is technology and engineering innovation. Our key objectives here are to accelerate technology innovation and to pioneer new engineering tools and processes and culture. The future will bring us technological surprises from unexpected places. Biology is the last great bastion of science to be brought into the realm of technology. We must build on biological knowledge of the way living things work so as to revolutionize all areas of engineering. Think of how a bird can change the shape of its wings in flight to meet immediate needs, such as cruising, diving, and landing on the ground or in a tree.
Imagine single-surface aircraft wings mimicking this ability to morph shape as required. Biologically based systems can be orders of magnitude more power efficient, compact and sensitive than today's conventional silicon systems.
The related field of nanotechnology will deliver materials that will approach theoretical limits of performance. Carbon nanotubes are a hundred times stronger than steel at one-sixth the weight. We may literally grow multifunctional aircraft skins in the future for structure, aerodynamic efficiency and control, and environmental protection. When damaged, these surfaces may self-heal just like the human body. Clearly, the future holds amazing possibilities, especially for safety of our passengers getting into planes.
Mr. Chairman, today the aerospace industry is very different from the one that pioneered the systems we have in place today. In the past decades, the motivation for advances in aerospace technologies was dominated by military needs. The partnership among NASA, DOD, and the industry rapidly advanced aerospace technologies. However, both military aerospace R&D and procurement have notably declined, reducing the technology pull from the military sector.
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For example, in 1984 the military accounted for 56 percent of the market for aircraft engines, by 1998 it was down to 22 percent, and the 10-year projection from 1998 to 2008 is on average 11 percent. This market shift dictates a shift in R&D strategy. Therefore, at NASA we shifted our revolutionary technology development to long-term commercial needs while maintaining a strong partnership with the DOD.
And commercial markets are projected to be extremely large over the next decade. Passenger air transportation is projected to double in the next 10 years and air freight is projected to triple. These projections are based on the assumption of unconstrained growth, but limits to growth are emerging. Delays are increasing dramatically. Each year, airlines must add more padding to their schedules to maintain on-time performance and the integrity of their scheduling systems. At the same time, legitimate concerns over environmental issues, both noise and emissions, are preventing additions to physical capacity. In 1998, airline delays in the U.S. cost industry and the passengers $4.5 billion—the equivalent of a 7 percent tax on every dollar collected by all the domestic airlines combined. These constraints could threaten the commercial prospects of our aerospace industry as well as impact the integrity of our transportation system.
And aerospace is not exempt from globalization. The U.S. share of the aerospace market is declining, from around 70 percent in the mid–1980's to around 50 percent today, in part because of the development of new programs overseas.
And this is not an industry we can afford to lose. As we approach the centennial of flight, the size and scope of the Nation's aerospace system are truly impressive. Today, 75 percent of all trips over 2,000 miles and 50 percent of all trips over 1,000 miles are by air. Air freight carried 27 percent of the value of the Nation's exports and imports.
Since 1978, the U.S. gross domestic product has increased by 62 percent, while passenger air transportation has increased by 190 percent and air freight has increased by 289 percent.
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Never has the growth of the economy and quality of life depended more on aerospace transportation. At the same time, impediments have never been higher. Any hope of overcoming these problems will depend on technological advances and a change in our culture. We must bring aeronautics and space transportation together both technically and operationally in a seamless aerospace transportation system.
But it is unrealistic to rely solely on the private sector to produce the necessary technological advances in aerospace. Commercial rates of return are too low for investment in anything but evolutionary product development by America's aerospace industry. Yet more advanced revolutionary technologies are absolutely required to enable the advanced aerospace systems that are needed to serve the transportation and security needs of our Nation. Fully overcoming the barriers which face us requires a significantly increased government and industry investment over the next decade, a dramatically strengthened commitment, and a much closer partnership between government and industry. America must recognize the need for revolutionary change so our air and space transportation systems are value priced, not commodity priced. I believe we can do it, and NASA is deeply committed to achieving this goal.
Mr. Chairman, in closing, I would like to commend the subcommittee for inviting such distinguished leaders from the Government and industry aerospace community to testify on the second panel. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be glad to answer any questions you may have.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Mr. Goldin. I can tell you that I find it amazing and even mind boggling the technology that is out there today, and most of the things that you have spoken of sounded real exciting and wonderful; but when you talk about nanotechnology and some of these things, I know that I won't be able to keep up.
I am going to withhold my questions and go first to members that didn't get to make opening statements for any statements or questions that they may have. We will go first to vice chairman Sweeney.
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Mr. SWEENEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would ask unanimous consent to submit my full statement.
Mr. DUNCAN. Without objection.
Mr. SWEENEY. Thank you for conducting this hearing, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank you, Mr. Goldin, for all that you have brought in terms of your advocacy for aerospace technology. I want to thank you for including Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and understanding how important they are and I want to thank you for—it is great to have a witness who has a great New York accent to testify because they all think that I speak funny.
Mr. GOLDIN. You and I are the only ones that speak right.
Mr. SWEENEY. Got you. I was sitting next to my colleague commenting that you have really stated the case and in a very short period of time covered a number of issues and a number of topic areas that this committee has been involved with, so I am going to cut right to the chase and be very precise about what I am interested in. You have made the case that we need to consider as a topic priority an investment in aerospace technology. I would like to ask if you have any ideas in terms of what you would suggest that investment or how that investment should take place; what ideas you may have in regards to whether we should seek some sort of fee, whether we should use proceeds from things like Air 21; and then secondly, you anticipate that your SATS program will produce new small efficient aircraft. How soon and what period of time?
Mr. GOLDIN. Let me answer the second part first. We have been working with a number of different companies. One program we have is called Agate where we are developing a broad range of technologies that are already appearing in planes. Two new planes got certified, Lance Air and Cirrous, that have relied on NASA technology. Those are the first new general aviation planes to be certified in years.
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There is a plane that is going to be shown, the Eclipse, and Sam Williams will be talking about that later. I believe they are talking about 2005 for availability in the marketplace—2003, I take that back. I believe it is going to start at a price somewhere under a million dollars with a goal to make significant reductions below that, and I think it is a four or five place jet plane, six place, and as production rates go up, the costs will go down.
We intend to get a broad range of companies to get competition, and I believe we will get to our goal within a decade of a four to 6 place jet plane for the price of a very high-end luxury car. This is going to enable small communities that are not able to get business, and if I just go to some of the upstate areas where you are—it costs as much to travel 300 miles as it does to go across the country. In fact, I can go across the country for $300 and your constituents have to pay a thousand dollars to go 300 miles.
Mr. SWEENEY. You are absolutely right.
Mr. GOLDIN. This is the type of revolution that I am talking about. People say this is not for the middle class. For years they said long haul jet transports were not for the middle class. This can enable small communities that are losing their young people.
Mr. SWEENEY. So how do we pay for it?
Mr. GOLDIN. This is a dilemma. I will answer it this way. I believe America could not afford to pay for this and we have been paying the price, we have been standing at this crossroads for quite a while, and we are beginning do lose traction. There are a whole variety of techniques. I don't know why it is not socially acceptable to pay for it out of the Federal budget. There are many things that we do to enable the American economy and the health and welfare of our citizens; and why we have to make this critical investment a special investment is beyond me. I do not make policy; I make technology.
Mr. SWEENEY. Let me make the point that you are working strenuously to aid us not only in finding ways to pay for these new technologies but also map out a plan that will be cost efficient. You mention in your testimony that within the next 25 years you are seeking to lower launch costs to $100 per pound. How are you doing that?
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Mr. GOLDIN. There are a broad range of technologies, many of which apply. There is a crossover between aircraft and launch vehicles. We are looking at going to air breathing technology and there is one member of the panel, second panel, who will be talking about that. But the key place to do this is in information technologies. If you take a look at the shuttle, we have thousands of people that take each of the boxes out, test them and put them back in in between each flight. With an integrated vehicle health monitoring and management using some of these neuro networks, this is software that learns as it goes along. We will be able to pinpoint by exception those parts that have problems.
We will also build incredible robustness into the systems with some of these modern nanotechnologies and some of the modern electronics that we are talking about. Then we are looking at some very advanced materials that allow us to operate at much higher temperatures without the maintenance without the thermal protection systems that we have on the shuttle. When you integrate all of these technologies, the systems will be much more reliable. Our first goal is to make it more reliable. Our goal within 25 years is to get launch systems to have the same reliability as long-haul jet transports. That is 10,000 times more reliable. Then you don't need the intimate handholding, and the costs will drop by a factor of a hundred.
Mr. SWEENEY. I see that my time has run out. I want to thank you for your terrific testimony, and I thank the chairman for conducting the hearing.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much. Mr. Lipinski gave me a list of the order his members came in, and we will go next to Mr. Lampson.
Mr. LAMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank both you and Ranking Member Lipinski for holding this hearing on NASA. You know that Johnson Space Center is located in my district; and it is not only fun, but it is exciting to work with NASA to find ways in which space and technology can benefit other sectors of our economy. And I recently set up a task force to explore these issues in great deal. It is nice to hear these things talked about in here. Mr. Goldin, you mention breaking the current hub and spoke mold. Airlines claim that hub and spokes allow them to serve more markets more efficiently. I actually spoke recently with the CEO of a major airline who was talking about less use of regional airports and significantly greater use of the hubs. Can you talk a little bit about your vision. Why do you think we need to break this, and what is your vision for the regional airports? How are they going to be used?
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Mr. GOLDIN. We believe it is win/win. We do not want to tell the airlines how to conduct their business. We would like to be able to triple the business, day/night, all weather at the existing hub and spoke system. This will make an enormous change, and we are working on those technologies. Some of them are being tried out at the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport. We are also working to make it safer for surface traffic, and we are demonstrating those at Hartsfield Airport in Atlanta. We are working with the airlines. In addition to that, with the new technologies we are talking about with these smaller planes, with the general aviation planes we can make regional airports available. There are 5,400 airports in America and some of them are getting paved over. Once they are gone you can't have them any more.
So we are talking about a much safer system where we know at all times where each flight is, what its flight projection is. There is digital communication links to each and every plane. There are smart control towers. There is oversight by controllers in cyberspace and we have total situational awareness. Every plane knows where it is relative to the other planes and the weather and exactly where they are relative to the ground so we can make it safer, handle the density and open up the regional airports, not to tell the airlines what to do.
Mr. LAMPSON. What kind of equipment will have to be at those regional airports as far as controlling local flights for safety? Is it going to be continuously shrinking into fewer locations but be able to operate safely within the regional airports, or will there be a different kind of equipment?
Mr. GOLDIN. If we are successful with the digital data links so the planes have thorough and accurate communications of weather, both globally, regionally, locally and right on top of them, we will be able to have artificial vision in the planes. Without the help of any radars, ultimately when we are successful the pilots will be able to look through a digital window and be able to see through night and see through weather and know exactly where they are.
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We also have begun a process at NASA to build digital terrain maps, and the Shuttle just came back a few months ago where we built the highest accuracy digital map of the surface of the Earth. That will go into the planes; and when you combine it with GPS, the pilots will know exactly where they are relative to the ground. Two-thirds of the fatal problems we have in planes are due to situational awareness. The pilots don't know where they are relative to obstacles and other planes.
These technologies are revolutionary. We are working with the FAA on how to bring them into the system and certify it; and in the next few decades, it will be here if we make the investment, and that is why I was saying to Mr. Sweeney, we can't afford not to make this investment; yet we always put it to the back burners.
Mr. LAMPSON. You said perhaps 3 decades?
Mr. GOLDIN. Yes.
Mr. LAMPSON. Cost, do you have a guesstimate?
Mr. GOLDIN. I will not shoot from the hip. But again relative to the investments we make, it will be a small fraction. And I might point out when we take a look at some of this learning software, it will not have the same kind of problems we had as we do installing this deterministic hardline computing that the FAA is having to go through with their present systems. It is a field that NASA is now pioneering the world in.
Mr. LAMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much. Dr. Ehlers.
Mr. EHLERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, I want to congratulate Mr. Goldin on his comment that he is not and never tells the airlines how to run their business. Virtually every time I fly, I am very vocal how they should run their business.
Being more serious, it seems several big issues need to be clarified. Number one, I believe, is that we have to go to great lengths to improve our air traffic control system, to modernize it along the lines that you mentioned. Much of the transmission between the plane and the control centers is automatic, it is digital, no human or voice intervention needed.
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That is something which has been dragging and needs to be a big push, I believe, from the Congress because I don't see it happening by itself. Related to that, I think, is a major union issue because it is likely to displace a number of workers or at least they are going to have different jobs within the air traffic control system if we reduce a need for human intervention. We may need fewer, but more highly trained, individuals in that profession.
A third point I would raise—and this is one that you did not mention, Mr. Goldin, and I would appreciate your comments on that—much of what is projected for the aviation industry assumes continued availability of relatively inexpensive jet fuel or fuel in general. It is not clear that is going to continue to be the case whether for political reasons or simply availability reasons. And I would be interested in any comments you might have on that. What the impact of, let's call it the end of, cheap fuel might have on the aviation business. I would appreciate your comments on any or all of those points.
Mr. GOLDIN. First, the last point, one of the things that NASA has done over the years working with our industry and the Department of Defense, we have doubled the fuel efficiency of aircraft over the past decades. We are not stopping now. We have a program called the ultra-efficient engine program where we set a goal to further improve the fuel efficiency by 15 percent for long-haul jet transports. We won't stop there either. So one of the forces to counteract the cost of fuel is to press the limits of what technology can give you on improving the fuel efficiency in the planes.
Clearly there will be market forces, but another very important factor in cost of planes is the tremendous cost for development and the financial costs associated with it. Another way of helping the aircraft industry, especially the small aircraft industry, is with new tools. One of the things that the President proposed in this year's budget was intelligent synthetic environments which will give us new tools to allow geographically distributed teams to operate in virtual space, sight, sound and touch, so every designer is aware of what every other designer is doing and we have a complete database that is interoperable.
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We hope that this could cut the development time in half and yet in half again. So if there is an increase in fuel costs, the fixed costs or financial costs will come down; and I still believe that we will be able to fuel the expansion that I am talking about. So it is amazing technology. Technology is always a tool that can help you overcome some of the economic forces that appear out in the future.
Mr. EHLERS. What about the air traffic control and the personnel issues or the union issues?
Mr. GOLDIN. It is our experience that every time we exercise technology, we don't have lesser opportunities, we have new and different opportunities. I agree with you that people will have different jobs; but instead of having people doing highly stressful jobs sitting at control consoles, we will be retraining them to get involved in intelligent systems in coding and interaction and development of systems and maintaining the systems; and in the long run there will be more job creation rather than less when you take a look at the big picture.
People will be doing different things, but I believe they will be employed in higher paying more satisfying jobs. It is a tremendous level of stress that the controllers have and many of them retire early. One of my friends is a controller. He left due to those stresses. I believe they will have a much higher quality of life with what we are talking about.
Mr. EHLERS. And my last question on air traffic control systems. Would you agree that has to be one of our highest priorities?
Mr. GOLDIN. It is and it is one of the highest priorities at NASA. About 4 or 5 years ago I asked the President to reprogram moneys to support the FAA with advanced technology for air traffic control. We reprogrammed out of our own resources close to a half billion dollars to support the FAA, and these are the systems that are coming in right now. And Bruce Holmes will be talking about the small air transportation system which gives this Nation an unbelievable opportunity in partnership with States and the Federal Government to sequentially and logically test out all of these new concepts working in concert with the FAA. We can and will do it, and I put the air transportation system above all of the other technologies that I talked about.
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Mr. EHLERS. Let me just close by commenting, I agree with that and I want to commend NASA on improving the air traffic control system. As you know, the FAA also has responsibilities in that area, and I appreciate what you've done. I hope the FAA, which has done well in other areas, will improve their performance in that area so that we can see the net effect of that. Thank you very much.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you. Mr. Boswell.
Mr. BOSWELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon, Mr. Goldin. The little restaurant in the neighborhood in Grinnell invites you back.
Mr. GOLDIN. The food was good.
Mr. BOSWELL. Yes, it was.
More of a comment, I guess. I am encouraged by your continued enthusiasm to take the hill, if you will. To get going and to move us forward. This chart that you show us the increase of passenger, freight and so on is a bit boggling and for us to be prepared to deal with that is a tremendous challenge. I agree with the previous speaker/questioner/ colleague, that ATC system must get better. It has to do it. I think it has to move pretty fast. I am a frequent flyer. I still drive around in an old airplane of my own, and they do a wonderful job with what they have to deal with. But technology is surely on the brink of getting better. I am just glad that you are there working with that and your crew. Can you give us any kind of a time line, even a guesstimate, when you can see stepping up the ATC system to be able to deal with the increased traffic that is going to have to go with this?
Mr. GOLDIN. First, let me give you a very good piece of news. A few years ago, the President challenged NASA and the FAA to be able to cut the fatal crash rate of planes by a factor of five within a decade. We are on track, the FAA, NASA, and the industry working together to make that happen.
A good portion of it will be involved in the air traffic system, in the equipment in the planes. The President further went on to ask us to sign up to cutting the crash rate by a factor of 10 within a 25-year period. That is where we bring in the leap frog technologies. NASA does the long-term high-risk technological research, and the FAA has people co-located with us at our centers to be able to get involved in the early phases so they can do the development and certification of the systems later on.
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I believe the relationship between NASA and the FAA has never been better. I commend Administrator Garvey for working with us. We signed an agreement 2 years ago. We have an executive board working out together. When I go out to NASA, Ames, I can't tell the difference between the FAA employees and the NASA employees.
It takes time to get it started, but we are going to make this happen. We are committed to it. It is going to be new tools; and as Mr. Ehlers pointed out, there will be some people that are afraid of the new tools, but what we are going to do is have a very rigorous training program. At the present time we are talking to a number of universities to develop cyberspace courses to train teams of people to get them more comfortable with these technologies. In 2, 3 years I think we will get the comfort level up more.
Mr. BOSWELL. Thank you very much. We wish you continued success in your work. Thank you.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Mr. Boswell. Mr. Cook.
Mr. COOK. Thank you. It is very nice to see you, Mr. Goldin. Of course it is fascinating to listen to your vision of transportation efficiencies and possibilities of the future. I would like to ask you to kind of go out on a limb a little bit and give us some of your ideas for how very important and relevant Federal agencies like NASA and the FAA ought to be reorganized or the funding mechanisms changed a little bit to help realize this potential opportunity with small airplanes and smart airports and all of these efficient uses of the air space that could develop that efficiency in transportation.
Mr. GOLDIN. First, I have learned to make comments about that which I can control. I will make no comment on the wonderful FAA. I will talk about NASA.
NASA has restructured to focus on advanced technology. We recently appointed Mr. Sam Venneri to be head of the Aerospace Technology Enterprise. At NASA we used to have separate programs for aeronautics and for launch vehicles. We found that technologies are so similar that having separate structures programs, having separate materials programs, having separate information programs, having separate sensor programs, having separate propulsion programs was depriving us of the synergy between these two technologies. So we moved to bring together aeronautics and space launch into one organization. We have strengthened the capacity of our four primary centers, NASA Ames, NASA Langley, NASA Dryden, and Glenn Research Center; and we have focused them away from operational things and getting them much more focused on advanced technology, and we are improving the research and technology base to let them dream more and do broader ranging higher-risk things.
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We are now for the first time in many years hiring people. NASA believed what the American people said. They wanted government that cost less and did more, and we reduced the size of our work force by one-third; and we are now out hiring brilliant new people, and we are hiring them successfully even though they come at half the salary because of what we are doing.
We have started a whole series of new technologies, and in my opening presentation I showed a slide where we have three critical new technologies: biotechnology, information technology, and nanotechnology. These are on the leading edge; and when you integrate these three technologies, I believe it will give us the breakthroughs that I have been talking about. At NASA Langley we are working on planes with a single surface. The wings will morph. They will have aerodynamic control and will simulate how birds fly. Birds are much efficient than planes. Birds morph their wings.
We are working on a broad range of very advanced technologies where just 10 years ago we were doing point design systems. I think these changes in how we are going and having much stronger relationship with the university community, I just appointed General Sam Armstrong as my senior adviser to involve the universities of America. We put a lot of funding into science but not enough into engineering and technology. And Sam is going to be having a workshop this fall to see how we can engage the bright minds at the university system.
So we are really on the cutting edge; and then finally, I have set some very tough goals. They are achievable but they are tough. So those are the things that we have done at NASA. And the final point, we have recognized the leadership. NASA can only do the long-term high-risk technology, but we must partner with the FAA; and in 1998 we signed an agreement with them where they would work with us on the technology. They would certify and work with the airlines and put it into the system.
Mr. COOK. I have another question.
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Mr. DUNCAN. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. COOK. You brought up briefly some of the money constraints, and you didn't really want to say too much about what is the basic way of paying for this, but could you—when Mr. Sweeney asked that question—but could you sort of respond to what we have been working on in this subcommittee and that is the Air 21 legislation, which certainly has the potential of vastly improving and funding infrastructure and aviation and so on.
I would like you to tell us whether the money is likely to go to the right places with this legislation or should we be giving NASA a greater role in how we develop this whole thing. You have to be careful in what you say, but I do want to understand if we are on the right track with this new legislation that is going to really impact appropriations over the next 5 or 6 years, whether we are going to be close to hitting the mark of what you are talking about here.
Mr. GOLDIN. First, let me say that I salute what this committee is attempting to do and what the Congress is attempting to do to solve the problem, but the administration has not taken a position. I work for the President, and I think it would be very inappropriate for the administrator to get out ahead of the administration.
Let me answer, this is my 9th year as administrator and NASA is the ultimate of discretionary programs. Defense of the Nation is written into the Constitution. And defense gets funded, but we have to earn our stripes each and every day. And for 7 years the NASA budget has come down. We are 5 percent below where we started in 1993, today. Defense is 5 percent above and all other nondefense discretionary programs are 17 percent above.
I listen to all debate, but I go to the bottom line results. I watched last year's NASA budget was cut 1.4 billion dollars. I don't argue that money was needed elsewhere; but the plain and simple, we are not a high priority because we don't have the same constituency as people pouring concrete, and those are legitimate needs. We don't have the same constituency as veterans; medical benefits. Veterans need those benefits. Social Security, Medicare. The dilemma we have is the constituents for NASA.
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The constituents for these things that are 10, 20, 30 years out are the children who don't vote, and they do not get engaged in the process—and the members have to factor that in, but it doesn't always come to the top of the process. Now at NASA we have lived with the budgets we have got, and I would put our agency against any other organization in the world for that matter in terms of our ability to be efficient. To solve the problems we have is going to take money. And it is going to take a continuous investment of money, not over a year or 2 years, but over a decade or two; and the Nation has to focus not just on solving the problems for today but there is a long-term problem out there just like with Social Security and the baby boomers. It doesn't get enough attention, and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to talk today.
This is the first time I have had a chance to talk about this subject to a very distinguished committee such as this. But until—it is not a question of funding sources. Until it becomes a real priority that people see that there is this looming crisis out there that I tried to talk about in my testimony will people be willing to put the investment that is going to be a multidecade investment. I think that is the issue more so than the funding sources. Thank you.
Mr. COOK. Thank you.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much. Mr. DeFazio.
Mr. DEFAZIO. Just one question about the SATS research. What is the funding situation for that? Is this a line item or is it discretionary within your budget, and is it funded to move along as quickly as you would like to see it move along?
Mr. GOLDIN. We proposed a new program for the Small Aircraft Transportation System, and they would like us to get it started so we have a threshold level of funding to prove feasibility in a number of areas. In order to carry out the whole program, I believe it is going to require factors more of funding; but at the present time, I think we are at the right place at least for this year.
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Mr. DEFAZIO. So as I puzzle out that answer, you are taking money from some other programs, perhaps bringing together some staff somewhere at NASA and beginning the preliminary work to move toward a feasibility determination, is that it?
Mr. GOLDIN. No, we are not taking money from other programs. The administration has provided funding for a 5-year period. Before that it is a line item in the budget; it is a line item in the budget. The administrator is committed to it, but they have asked us to prove the vision. Do a few test cases to prove the vision, and then after we are able to demonstrate that setting these very challenging goals we can begin to solve them, I think there will be further discussion on more aggressive funding for that program.
Mr. DEFAZIO. Is ADS-B a part of this, or is it superseded by this?
Mr. GOLDIN. No, this is part of it.
Mr. DEFAZIO. What is that line item? I am not familiar with that.
Mr. GOLDIN. Over the next 5 years, it is about $80 million. It starts out at $9 million for fiscal year 2001.
Mr. DEFAZIO. That is a relatively small amount of money in your budget. Could this move along more quickly with more robust funding?
Mr. GOLDIN. We will prove out what we set out to do. As we prove we have done the right things, I think we would be justified in coming back for more money. But there is an interesting issue here. Money isn't always the magic ingredient.
Mr. DEFAZIO. I realize that.
Mr. GOLDIN. And I believe the administration says prove what you say you can do, and then we will propose more money.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Mr. DeFazio. Dr. Cooksey.
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Mr. COOKSEY. Thank you. I have one of my friends, neighbor and constituent that is trying to get your next shuttle up in the air, Colonel Jim Hull. I think they flew down there the other night.
Having been trained in scientific method, I am glad to see some of your background here, and I agree that the big changes that will be made in the future will be made on the nanometer level, and not made on the microscopic level as so many people think in terms of, even in the beltway.
How much is it going to cost to fund this type of research for the future? Is it going to cost 10 percent more, 20 percent more? And where do you think we should come up with the money to fund this type of scientific research that is so essential to NASA, to FAA, and to the future of transportation in general?
Mr. GOLDIN. Nanotechnology in particular for the Federal budget line item for this year is about $200 million. National Science Foundation is doing some very advanced work, and we at NASA are working with them. We at NASA have adequate funding this year for nanotechnology to be more applications oriented. The National Science Foundation is doing the fundamental research.
When we take a look at the impact that nanotechnology can have on the future of everything, we are looking at, I believe, ultimately at the Federal level we should be spending billions of dollars a year on nanotechnology. I will give you a few examples.
Mr. COOKSEY. You are talking about more than a hundred percent more than what we are currently spending?
Mr. GOLDIN. This year it is just beginning and, again, we are getting it started and you can't suddenly start spending a bunch of money until you get all of the trained people involved. But the potential where you build things an atom at a time and with nanotubes, there is the possibility of making them semiconductors, superconductors, thermal conductors. There is even the possibility of storing hydrogen in these devices at room temperature. At NASA Ames we have hooked up ATP proteins, and we have operated a protein motor integrated with nanodevices for 2 hours. We are now working with the National Cancer Institute to take these—develop these technologies so we perhaps could do subcellular and molecular sensing so we would have nanosensors and nanodiagnosticians and then nanotherapists. So the possibilities for health, these morphing wings that I was talking about to Mr. Bateman, we are looking at using nanotechnologies to build from the atom all of the way to the airplane and then build these multifunctional wings and wing surfaces.
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So the impact across this Nation is going to be unbelievable; and when we look at nanotechnology, information technology, and biotechnology, I believe that is where this Nation needs to look for the investment.
If you look at where information technology is going today, we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on product development and ten of millions and just hundreds of millions on these advanced information technologies. Eventually, we are going to reach the limits of silicon; and eventually we are going to reach the limits of what we can do with the kind of computation we have today.
There are 35 million lines of code in Windows. In 10 years, the number of lines of code will increase 10 times more. There won't be enough software coders in the world, so we have to come back to this basic investment. It is the core of the future of the economy and the defense of this Nation.
Mr. COOKSEY. Absolutely. I am glad that we have somebody like you at the helm of the organization. I know that most everybody inside the Beltway thinks that they know more than anyone else in the country, but probably it would be good for everyone to find out what nanotechnology is. You have done a good explanation.
The best book I have seen is Visions by Kaku. It is a good basic primer for anyone who wants to learn about nanotechnology, and it is the future. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Dr. Cooksey. Mr. Scott.
Mr. SCOTT. She is a member of the committee.
Mr. DUNCAN. Either one is fine. I was going by Mr. Lipinski's list.
Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Goldin, can you give us an idea of how long it takes for some of these investments to pay off?
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Mr. GOLDIN. We at NASA have a sliding rule. We have a scale called technology readiness level 1 through technology readiness level 10. Ten is a mature technology that is ready to undergo its next product cycle. Technology readiness level 1 is the initial concept. To go from technology readiness level 1, which is the kind of things that I am talking about now, to real products that go into goods and services that America produces could take anywhere between 10 and 15 years. There is a long gestation period so if you say I want to put it off and wait, you cannot take a vacation because you are going to get passed by. In some circumstances, you can go really fast; but if you are going at the speed of light, 5 years in very limited circumstances would be the shortest time I could see going from technology readiness level 1 to perhaps 7 or 8 where you are bringing it into the economic force of the Nation.
Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. You mentioned maintaining a noise reduction such that the noise would be maintained within the geography of the airport. Could you explain what you mean by that and how close we are and what we need to be doing to get there?
Mr. GOLDIN. We are probably a factor of three or four away. There are three ways to do it. The near-term approach is to control the glide path. And you want to get up as fast as possible so you are further away from the ground when you get to the extremities of the airport, and one of the things that we are doing at NASA Langley is taking a look at how you control that glide path. Then there are nearer-term changes where we can make modifications to the air frame and retrofit the air frame and engines because when you put a plane into service that has to 20 to 30 to 40 year life.
So the mid-term goal is to make modifications and retrofits to planes. Those mid-term corrections should be available in 5 to 10 years of the things that we are working on right now. In about 5 years, some of the newer things will come out, no later than 10; and then the long-term change is modifying and revolutionizing the engines and air frames, and they won't begin appearing for 10 years and then it will take—it takes, I think, 20 years to go to a 50 percent replacement of the fleet.
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So if we started today, 10 years from now we will have revolutionary—we will start having revolutionary new engines. A little later revolutionary air frames. So we are talking about a 10- to 20-year period for the longer term, and 5 to 10 years for the mid-term.
Mr. SCOTT. Have you had any success in actually reducing noise through your research?
Mr. GOLDIN. NASA has had unbelievable success. We have had a relationship with the industry for decades now, and in the early 1990's we set a goal of having a 10 db, or a factor of two reduction in noise, and we are about halfway there. We will have to have another factor of two or 10 db to get to where we want to get to.
Mr. SCOTT. What is the status of that research?
Mr. GOLDIN. We just in this year's budget proposed a quiet aircraft technology program where the leadership is coming out of NASA Langley and it is in the President's 2001 budget. We hope to see very strong support for this program, and we will move out on it.
Mr. SCOTT. Can you say a word about the value of some of our assets like wind tunnels?
Mr. GOLDIN. Yes. I believe almost every military plane and commercial transport has gone through wind tunnels, but what is happening now is developing a new set of tools called computational fluid dynamics, where on the computer more and more we are able to fly planes and understand how they operate, and we have even a newer set of tools called intelligent synthetic environments which NASA Langley is the lead center for that. When you integrate wind tunnels and you integrate computational fluid dynamics, intelligent synthetic environments and the advanced sensors that we are developing, you have the complete tool set to help us do our job.
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Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Mr. Scott. Mr. Moran.
Mr. MORAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Goldin, thank you for being with us. It is nice to see you again. You indicate on page nine about the close cooperation among various Federal agencies and the private sector, and I wondered if you would further expand about that relationship. Do we have the right organizational chart? Do we have all of the Federal agencies and the private sector cooperating? Do we need to do something different to focus admittedly limited resources for the most amount of success?
Mr. GOLDIN. Let me go through the agencies.
I believe there is a terrific relationship with the Department of Defense. In fact, we had a meeting with a number of Members of Congress, Secretary of the Air Force, chief of staff of the Air Force, and we formed the partnership council with the Air Force where we are looking at a whole variety of concepts of interest to NASA and the Air Force. Aging aircraft is very high on everyone's chart. Then there are a broader range of technologies. It was really a terrific meeting and we are moving out at all levels.
With the FAA in 1998 we signed a memorandum of understanding, formed an executive council, and we have had wonderful relationships there, and we are now having FAA people at our facilities; and we have our people at FAA facilities. In fact, we have some of the management of FAA integrated into the NASA management. It is taking time to get to know each other again, but I feel we are making real progress.
Third, there are a number of people from the industry organizations here. Ed Bolen from GAMA and John Douglass from the Aerospace Industries Association, we have spent a lot of time together trying to reach the common goals that we have been talking about in this hearing. So I am very satisfied that everyone is really trying. We are working with the Army out of NASA Ames. We have a rotocraft institute, and a lot of the technology that we see in modern rotocraft comes from the partnership between NASA and the Army.
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Mr. MORAN. The issues that NASA is addressing is that—can we clearly say that input comes from the private sector as to how you direct your resources to solve the problems that the industry faces?
Mr. GOLDIN. What we do is we have a joint partnership between the Federal agencies and the industries. NASA views its job as from 5 years and beyond. We do the high-risk high-payoff research. The industry does product development manufacturing. And we don't like to cross those boundaries because we want to assure the taxpayer that we are not subsidizing the industry. We are very careful never to go over that barrier. So we hold workshops jointly, and we tell the industry the areas that we think that we ought to be going into, and the industry gives us feedback as does our partners in the Department of Defense and at the FAA to assure that we have the right direction, and we try to get about 75 percent agreement. We don't want it to be a hundred percent because there needs to be a little tension in the system, and I think this is a very, very good approach.
In fact, we worked with GAMA and a number of the other general aviation manufacturing organizations in 1992, and we jointly developed a vision of what was going to happen to the future of general aviation. Last year, I went to Oshkosh and we accomplished almost all of the goals that we set out to do in 1992. We now have development of a small jet engine—you could literally hold it under your arm—and we set that goal in 1992, and it is going to be ready for flight in another year or two. So we worked together.
Mr. MORAN. I also assume that there is a relationship between private universities and NASA in regard to this research?
Mr. GOLDIN. Yes. I feel that we haven't done a sterling job there. We focused so intently on the industry and the other government agencies, we forgot a magic ingredient in the equation, and that is the university system. So recognizing that deficiency, I asked General Sam Armstrong, who retired as a three star from the Air Force who has been at NASA, headed up our aerospace enterprise to tie NASA much closer together with the university community; and this fall we are going to hold a major workshop to see how we can involve the universities, not just with NASA but with our contractors so that we will get the bright minds at the universities engaging us in the real high-payoff research.
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Mr. MORAN. Let me suggest that you not forget Wichita State University and its aviation focus. And finally, is the research result in kind of equal benefits between general aviation and commercial aviation?
Mr. GOLDIN. I believe we have a much better mix. When I became NASA administrator in 1992, there was almost no focus on general aviation, and we have an incredibly rich relationship now. And some of the technologies we are developing for glass cockpits, we are talking about items that cost tens of thousands of dollars, not millions and tens of millions of dollars. And I believe as the years progress, we will see these general aviation technologies migrating into long haul jet transports. It is going to help the long haul jet transport industry.
Mr. MORAN. Thank you.
Mr. DUNCAN. Ms. Brown.
Ms. BROWN. Hello, Mr. Goldin. Let me take a moment to thank you for what you are doing for Florida, in particular with how you augment what is going on in the public school system, the training of the teachers for the summer programs, working with math and science in particular, working with minorities, the use of the outdated commuters that go into the school system. They were delivered in a box at one of the schools in my district, and I went back a few months later and the 4- and 5-year-old kids are on the computers doing their assignments. And recently in Jacksonville at a high school, we had the mobile there and kids came from all over the district to work on those computers so that is very exciting. I want to thank you for that and, of course, remember the schools in Florida as you move forward in those partnerships.
But my question, much of your vision of the air transport system rely on computer technology. How do we ensure the integrity and reliability of these systems in light of the Love Bug and other 15-year-olds out their sabotaging billion dollar systems?
Mr. GOLDIN. This is a major, issue and I come from the world of military systems where you have adversarial countries where they have measures and countermeasures and counter-countermeasures. I think we are going to have to get much more sophisticated in our ability to use and operate commuters, and we are going to have to develop countermeasures and counter-countermeasures.
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In addition to that, we are going to have to build much higher quality software. There is a survey that was done in the mid–1990's of 8,000 software programs across America and across all industries. Only 16 percent of those programs were successful. Thirty-one percent failed outright. Fifty-three percent had major performance schedule or caused problems, and even in those 16 percent of the programs that were successful, there are 5 to 10 errors per 1000 lines of code.
I have a little phone here, and it is one of the most modern whoop-de-do phones. I cannot get my voice mail because there are problems in that software system, but people are willing to tolerate this because this is the way it is. But with aircraft and with spacecraft, it is one strike and you are out. It has to be a much higher level, higher quality software.
So recognizing this problem, NASA is working with the American software industry. We are forming a consortium with the top software companies in the country to have a software initiative because we need to operate at much higher levels of performance. We are also taking a look at new forms of computing called soft computing where you build thinking algorithms into the software; and we need to be working on these algorithms to protect us against, if you will, the Love Bug.
Ms. BROWN. Just a follow-up question. I think this is one of the greatest threats to our country. Someone can go into the system and sabotage our aviation system or—these are kids, but what if a country decides to attack us in this manner?
Mr. GOLDIN. I think there are others more qualified in the government to deal with those threats. There are efforts under way to deal with it and I think there are others in a more operational position to talk to it. NASA is developing the technologies to support other elements of the commercial and government sectors of our country. We have to be number one in the world in software to be able to protect ourselves.
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Ms. BROWN. Thank you.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Ms. Brown. Mr. Isakson.
Mr. ISAKSON. I have quickly read your printed testimony, and I wanted to ask you if I gleaned the right result from the testimony. It seems to me that what you say essentially was that the difference between whether we enjoy a generational development in technology or just evolutionary development really is ultimately going to depend on the investment in R&D at NASA as it relates to aviation?
Mr. GOLDIN. You got the message very clear, but the investment in NASA is not just for NASA. We work with the industry in true partnership, and we work with the FAA and the DOD.
Mr. ISAKSON. Which leads me to two questions, one relating to the gentlelady's question relating to software.
First, has there ever been a quantifying of the private sector economic benefits from the sum total of Mercury, Apollo, and Gemini? Tourism does a great job of telling you that there is a three-for-one payback on the tourist dollar or whatever else.
Mr. GOLDIN. We have tried to do that. It is very, very difficult and let me—I have asked a number of organizations to try and calculate that for us. But one example is very simple. NASA invented the disposable diaper. We cannot get from that industry the economic benefit in terms of profitability and gross sales volume even though they benefited from that invention, and I respect and understand it.
There are those who have done this calculation and said for every dollar that is invested in NASA there is seven-to-one turnaround for the American economy. I don't know the accuracy of that number, but it is a number that we see quite often quoted.
Mr. ISAKSON. The reason that I ask the question is this. I happen to be very supportive of increasing the investment in NASA and I happen to—when President Kennedy made the challenge, in 1961, established a goal to land on the moon, Americans were interested in landing on the moon which NASA accomplished and this country accomplished and the goal was primary.
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Now everybody takes for granted so much, yet most of the things that we enjoy, from liquid crystal displays, to Tang to freeze-dried food were developed because of that. So I happen to be very supportive, and in the absence of a race with another Nation to get to the moon or Mars or to wherever it might be, I think in the scheme of things it is important to do everything that we can to promote the benefits of research and development in technology at NASA and what the payback is.
That is why I asked the question, just very simply alone, if in your research and development you developed security systems that help in software prevention or protecting software from viruses and from many other things, the multiple payback to the rest of the world, not just to the security of the aircraft or the spacecraft is just incredible, and NASA is one place we can make that investment and actually have it come to fruition.
I appreciate your testimony. I happen to subscribe to your premise, and I also understand narrow bottom lines that the private sector deals with and the inability sometimes to make the investment in R&D because of the long-term wait for the payback and impatient capital in the private sector. Hopefully, we can join together to do that, and I thank the Chairman.
Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Lipinski.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all I want to say that you are an enormously informative witness, and I certainly appreciate you being here today. My first question for you, you were talking about a four-, six-place airplane. I don't have the faintest idea what you are talking about. What is a four- to six-place airplane?
Mr. GOLDIN. Four to six passengers. We have too many acronyms. I complain to our own people about acronyms. I am terribly apologetic.
Mr. LIPINSKI. So this is a four- to six-seat airplane. How soon do you see something like this being in production?
Mr. GOLDIN. I know of one that should be available in 2003. And I think Mr. Williams, who will testify on the second panel, can provide you more detail on that plane. We are working with a number of other manufacturers, and we hope that there will be a number of other competitors coming out very soon thereafter.
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Mr. LIPINSKI. What does Mr. Williams plan on charging for his plane when it is available?
Mr. GOLDIN. I think you might want to ask Mr. Williams. I think it is under a million dollars.
Mr. LIPINSKI. The middle class better start buying a lot more stock if they are going to be able to buy this plane.
Mr. GOLDIN. That is the initial offering. The cost should come down.
Mr. LIPINSKI. I will talk to him about it.
You were talking about reducing noise; and right now, we are in Stage 3 aircraft. There is a lot of talk on the part of the Europeans and Green Parties moving to Stage 4 aircraft. Stage 3, Stage 4 that is a policy decision where we come in. You were talking about significant improvements that you have already made in reducing noise. This improvement, is this technology going into current planes that are being manufactured?
Mr. GOLDIN. Pratt Whitney is coming out with a new engine which is going to be a quieter engine. For the last few decades, GE and Pratt Whitney have been building ever quieter engines. Boeing and its predecessor company, McDonnell Douglas, have been building ever quieter airframes because of the research done by NASA.
We have had significant improvements all coming from our laboratories in partnerships with these companies, and we don't wait. As the improvements come, they get incorporated in the engines. But there is one point that I would like to make that is important. One cannot just legislate how quiet a plane should be. And what we try and do with our partners in industry is prove out these concepts not just in the laboratory but in full-scale testing and in ensuring that in getting the quieter engines, we don't sacrifice the safety of the engines and fuel efficiency because then we can make emissions problems. We try to do an integrated approach to this; and over a period of time, we continue to make improvements to make the engines quieter and cleaner and safer.
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Mr. LIPINSKI. And that does get incorporated as soon as possible into the air frames, correct?
Mr. GOLDIN. As the new models come out, they do get incorporated.
Mr. LIPINSKI. And into modification of existing models?
Mr. GOLDIN. I am not familiar with that. Excuse me for one moment. Derivatives of existing models do get the upgrades in them.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Do you have any idea —are you familiar with Stage 3 aircraft and the clamor by some people to move to Stage 4 aircraft?
Mr. GOLDIN. I have heard rumors of it.
Mr. LIPINSKI. My question is, do you have any idea when there would be a significant improvement in noise reduction that would be available to the commercial aviation industry where you could see us moving to putting a date certain when we could be at Stage 4?
Mr. GOLDIN. I am a little reluctant because at NASA we develop the technology, and we then transfer that technology to the airframe and aircraft manufacturers. And I think this question might be more suitably answered by them because there are a whole range of issues that come in, not just noise but you want to make those engines safer; and you want to look at emissions.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Don't tell us 2050?
Mr. GOLDIN. It will be earlier than 2050.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Not if we leave it up to the people you are talking about.
Your funding has been reduced over a course of years. Has that been in space or has that been in aviation?
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Mr. GOLDIN. Our overall budget has come down. In human space flight, in 1992, it was almost 50 percent of our budget. Now it is under 40 percent of our budget. So the human space flight account has come down.
The shuttle is now a billion dollars a year less expensive to operate and its safety is much greater. It is a paradox. We saved the money by making the shuttle safer. Our science and aerospace technology portion of the budget has gone up. It has gone up from, I believe, 32 percent to 43 percent of the budget.
So there have been ups and downs. The actual aeronautics investment is somewhat less today than it was in 1992.
Mr. LIPINSKI. This chart that you have over here, can you tell me exactly what goes into this chart? What are we talking about? Are we talking about airframes, engines? Parts? Air traffic control systems? What are we talking about?
Mr. GOLDIN. I think that is total aerospace sales. All of the above.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Can you run down some of the things that are included.
Mr. GOLDIN. Airframes, engines, avionics.
Mr. LIPINSKI. And that is just in aviation or is that in—what about satellites, the launching of satellites?
Mr. GOLDIN. Satellites, I don't believe, are in that chart.
Mr. LIPINSKI. This is restricted to aviation?
Mr. GOLDIN. Aerospace which is the aviation and launch portion, but not the space segment.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Can you tell me—.
Mr. GOLDIN. Excuse me, it doesn't have launch. It is only aircraft.
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Mr. LIPINSKI. Then we are talking about airframes, engines, we are talking about avionics in the cockpit and that is it?
Mr. GOLDIN. That is it.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Why are we losing out so significantly to the rest of the world?
Mr. GOLDIN. The other countries have been unbelievably aggressive. They have made very significant investments. They have been very supportive of an aggressive industry. It is getting tougher and tougher. We are down to one airframe manufacturer for long-haul jet transports, commercial transports. One.
We are down to two engine companies, Pratt Whitney and GE, that are American owned. And at the present time, there are some very significant relationships with—between Pratt Whitney, GE, and European manufacturers and Japanese manufacturers just to stay alive.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Who is the Japanese engine manufacturer?
Mr. GOLDIN. Mitsubishi.
Mr. LIPINSKI. OK.
Mr. GOLDIN. It takes about 20 years to return the investment on a jet engine, and it is getting worse. Think about—and the only reason that Pratt Whitney and GE are able to make profits is with the after market in maintaining those engines. There isn't an incentive because of the huge investment necessary to develop an engine to go out and sell engines. The margins are just not there. And this is the reason that there are these tremendous problems. I don't know—when I was in the private sector and I went into the chairman of the board and said I have a good business proposition, I will turn the money around in 20 years, I would be fired.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Well, we have —the Japanese. What are they into in regards to this—you told me about their working with Pratt & Whitney and GE on engines. What else do they do? Are they doing anything else?
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Mr. GOLDIN. I believe they do airframes also at Mitsubishi. I believe they have a program, it is a fighter program that they are working with a number of American companies. They build pieces and parts for a number of the jet planes that Boeing builds and portions of the Airbus plane, but their goal it to build complete systems.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Do you know if the Japanese government subsidizes those operations?
Mr. GOLDIN. I know that they have made significant investment in the technology to get to where they are and they are going to aggressively pursue it.
Mr. LIPINSKI. So they are involved in airframes. Of course, they are involved in airframes with Boeing you say?
Mr. GOLDIN. They supply significant pieces to the planes that Boeing builds.
Mr. LIPINSKI. What about Airbus?
Mr. GOLDIN. I believe they do, but I am not sure.
Mr. LIPINSKI. And the Canadians have their regional jets. Do they have anything else?
Mr. GOLDIN. Their regional jets are very good sellers. They are very good planes.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Are they involved in any other way?
Mr. GOLDIN. They don't manufacture any engines and they are not manufacturing —Pratt Whitney has an engine plant in Canada that I am aware of. Turbo props.
Mr. LIPINSKI. But that is really—they are simply manufacturing the same thing that they manufacture in the United States?
Mr. GOLDIN. Yes.
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Mr. LIPINSKI. But they are doing it a little less expensively in Canada.
Brazil is very heavy into the regional jets, but we don't have any category for them.
Mr. GOLDIN. Yes.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Do you have any opinion in regards to the extent that the Europeans are subsidizing Airbus?
Mr. GOLDIN. I am a technologist. I don't get myself into that issue.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Whether you know it or not, you got yourself into that issue when we were talking about Japan. I see my time is up. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Mr. Lipinski. Mr. Bateman.
Mr. BATEMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In view of the hour and the number of witnesses yet to be heard, I am going to ask leave to submit some questions in writing for the administrator and simply use a moment or two of my time to make some comments.
The first comment is that I think the testimony has been invaluable. I wish that every member of this committee would have had the opportunity to hear it. It could not be more clear to anyone who is listening or who cares that we have an enormous challenge facing us if we do not get about doing the research that needs to be done to fulfill the challenges that are facing us and which are very obvious. Things that would be wonderfully advantageous to have which would be a good enough reason for doing it but things which would be disastrous for our future if we don't do it which is a heck of a good reason for getting about doing it.
Mr. Goldin has made clear several things that I think the committee, as it faces the challenges of the aviation—of the future of aviation that need to be highlighted. The existing synergism and partnership between the Federal aviation agency and NASA, it is real. It exists. It is not a new phenomenon. It is not a new concept of having NASA involved in seeking out problems for the benefit of civil aviation working with and through FAA.
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You also have done a great deal to dispel the myth that unfortunately too frequently comes from my sides of the aisle about aerospace research and aeronautics being corporate welfare. That is a great big false red herring, and we ought to forget that silly notion.
The next thing that I think we need to comment upon is that these things are not going to get done without money. And money does not solve all problems, but there has got to be a funding stream which is sufficient and predictable.
One of the things that I would impress upon all of my colleagues is we have an aviation trust fund. There is a research and development arm and program of the FAA. Some of that aviation trust fund money goes to fund that FAA activity.
Hopefully, it will be more money not less. And, hopefully, when it is best spent it will be spent within the framework of this FAA/NASA synergism and partnership. And I think we lose a remarkable opportunity to advance the things that everyone seems to be in agreement upon today unless we look at least in part to a greater utilization of a portion of the aviation trust fund for the basic research that has the highest payback and the greatest capability of serving the long-term interest of civil aeronautics in America. And with that I thank you, and I will have some written questions for the record.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Bateman.
Administrator Goldin let me say that I have heard you speak before and I have seen you on television and I have read statements that you have made and I am amazed and very impressed by how articulate you are and with the job that you have done as administrator. I think it is a real compliment that you have been able to stay on this job for a long time. Nine years is a long tenure as administrator of NASA. You don't happen to know what the average is of your predecessors?
Mr. GOLDIN. I am the longest-serving one. I am pretty much burned out.
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Mr. BATEMAN. The only problem anyone in America has with this administrator, he hasn't been able to do more with OMB who are the common enemy.
Mr. GOLDIN. I have no comment, sir.
Mr. DUNCAN. I find that you talk about fascinating, amazing, even at times exciting—and I think these are wonderful goals. And I remember last year, one time we had a briefing on the SATS program. And they said that they wanted to make this airplane travel common by 2025 they told us at that time. I was skeptical about that. I said maybe 2050, and now you come here today and say that you are going to have a plane that is in the upper end of the luxury vehicle price by the end of this decade, and that is even more impressive.
And then to hear about morphing wings, that impresses me. So many, many things. I wish you the very best. I think you have done a great job as administrator, and now I am going to ask you a question that is maybe a negative-type question, but I am curious.
Several months ago, last October, NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter because one engineering team used metric and one used English; and I am sure when you heard that you were really upset about that. What I am curious about—what was done about that? Do you remember that?
Mr. GOLDIN. I think I can remember that.
Mr. DUNCAN. I am not teasing. I am curious as to how you handled that situation.
Mr. GOLDIN. First let me say I don't believe the problem was the error itself. The problem was the system couldn't ferret the error out. We are dealing with human beings and we are not Godlike. We make mistakes. The problem we had is the system we set up couldn't find and ferret the error out.
The first thing I did as soon as I found out about the failure, I announced no one was going to be fired because there was no malice or forethought and no gross incompetence. You cannot ask people to take high risk. You cannot ask people to innovate if when a problem occurs you seek out the person who made the mistake and ostracize them. These are brilliant people who work very, very hard.
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The system failed them and I take—the second thing, I took total responsibility. We cut the cost of building spacecraft by a factor of three. We cut the cycle time by 40 percent, and we are now launching four to five times more spacecraft, scientific spacecraft than we did before on a smaller budget. I went for another factor of two. I pushed the system too hard. I cannot blame anyone but myself, so that is the second thing we did.
To me, accountability means the third part is you find out what went wrong and you fix it. It is clear that we have two issues facing the aerospace industry, not just NASA but the aerospace industry. The first generation of space systems developers are retiring. Those who fought the Cold War, those who did Apollo and those who did Gemini, Mercury and Voyager. We went from a few programs measured in billions of dollars over 10 years where you had stability and could train people and mentor them to dozens of programs where the new generation is taking over.
So the first place we failed is doing an adequate training and mentoring job. We are fixing that. We are bringing back some of the old hands who are playing a little too much golf and need more time working with the young people. We are setting up courses at MIT to do a better job of training.
The second thing is we are recognizing is that software is becoming an ever increasing part of our system. For decades we just had thousands of lines of code, and now what is happening with the information revolution, we are going from thousands to hundreds of thousands to millions. And I talked about some of the software statistics. We in the space industry cannot tolerate errors. So we set up this high assurance software consortium. We found that NASA had separate software standards. We are now going to the commercial standards. We used to buy most of the software. Now we are a small percentage of it. Instead of having our own standards, we are going to the IEEE standards; and we will tailor them.
The third thing that we are doing is Carnegie-Mellon developed a certification approach for software productivity, and we are going to require each of our NASA centers to be certified to level 3. And we are going to ask our contractors to do the same thing. Then we are developing advanced software tools, soft computing that will help avoid some of these problems. Those are the substantive things, and there is a third thing that we are doing. We found that we didn't do an adequate job in up-front formulation before the program began. And we are going to do a much better job at that.
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Finally, money will be the court of last resort.
Mr. DUNCAN. Let me ask you this. I believe it is the Air Force Titan IV program has had losses of some $3 billion in their last three shots. I know that is the Air Force. How much do you know about that program? How do you coordinate with the military because I am sure that —do you know why they have had so many problems and does NASA—I am sure NASA has learned from those failures.
Mr. GOLDIN. We learn from theirs and they learn from ours. We communicate with each other. They have the same problem with the transition of the labor force. They have the same problem with the software. We worked with them. I will point out NASA did one thing different than the Air Force. As part of the fast, better, cheaper program we put in, we decided to have a larger number of smaller programs so we can handle failures a lot easier. So since 1992, we have had 18 billion dollars in pay loads launched; and we have only lost a half billion dollars of that so by breaking things into smaller chunks—I know to the average American $125 million sounds like a lot of money; but if we were building our 2 and $3 billion spacecraft and we lost them on Mars, we would be in trouble.
So I think we took one step—and the military is moving towards these smaller more diverse programs. But we talk to each other. And I will also say it is not just America in the last few years that has experienced these problems, the Russians lost their proton vehicle, two of them. That was one of the most reliable vehicles. The Europeans lost an Ariane. The Japanese lost the H 2.
We are all seeing the signs of the huge software revolution and having to develop better management tools to deal with it and the transition from the first generation space designers to the second generation.
Mr. DUNCAN. I will tell you I find this so interesting I could talk to you for a lot longer than you would want to stay, and we have other witnesses. But I will tell you this not only—I have been very impressed today, but you answered one question of Mr. Isakson that really impressed me. I have heard and read from almost every industry out there that whatever they do, they get usually the figure is seven to one return although I have seen some that claim a $9 to $1 return and I have been so skeptical of those figures. When you said that you didn't really think that you could accurately determine that, that impressed me almost more than anything that you said today. You are a very honest, very fine, one of the best witnesses I think I have heard, and I have heard many of them. And I thank you very much for being here today and for the job you are doing.
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I get a note that Dr. Ehlers wants to ask you one more question.
Mr. EHLERS. I wasn't going to bring this up but since you did, I want to comment on the Mars landers and the experience that we have there.
I appreciate, Mr. Goldin, that you immediately took responsibility. I must confess I don't really know what that means. Janet Reno took responsibility for Waco and nothing happened there either. It is fine with me that you don't fire anyone. Most of the mistakes were not the fault of NASA they, were the fault of the contractor. And also, I don't except error free operation.
In almost every aspect of life, you have to assume that idiots are going to be involved and even when idiots are not involved, well-intentioned people make mistakes. What is important is to develop mechanisms for catching those mistakes, and I know that you are working on that. I wanted to clarify that issue.
But as we have discussed before, and I want to get on the record here again, it bothers me to no end that one major satellite launch was destroyed as a result of what I call a freshman physics error, and that is failing to determine whether you are using the right system of units or not.
It is the sort of thing that we give Fs for in freshman physics, and if they don't catch it by the end of the semester, they don't get out. I cannot conceive of an error of that sort being made at the professional level and at the advanced level at which NASA and the contractors operate. And as you know, I have introduced a bill to put some requirements on that.
But I think that is extremely important. Our Nation for some reason decided long ago to stick with the worse of the two systems, and I realize that there is reluctance to change that. But anyone in a technical field, particularly those who engage in digital science know that we use a base 10 number system, and obviously it is far easier to use a base 10 units system as well. And I found it inconceivable that today working on something as advanced as a satellite we have a contractor for the Federal Government using the wrong system of units. And that resulted in how many dollars lost? It is over a hundred million lost to the government just from that one simple thing which scientists working in a lab would not tolerate.
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I know that NASA almost entirely uses the metric system and always has. I think it is high time to require that your contractors use it as well. Thank you very much.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Dr. Ehlers. Administrator Goldin, thank you.
We will now proceed to the second panel. We have a very distinguished panel. Dr. Herman A. Rediess of the FAA; Dr. Bruce Holmes of NASA; Edward Bolen of General Aviation Manufacturers Association; Dr. Sam Williams, who is chairman and CEO of Williams International and who is accompanied by Mr. Ray Preston, who is vice president for business development of Williams International; Dr. Paul S. Moller, who is president of Moller International; Dr. Stephen G, Wurst, who is president of Space Access; and Dr. John W. Douglass, who is president and chief executive officer of the Aerospace Industries Association of America.
TESTIMONY OF DR. HERMAN A. REDIESS, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF AVIATION RESEARCH, FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION; BRUCE J. HOLMES, GENERAL AVIATION PROGRAM MANAGER, NATIONAL AERONAUTICS & SPACE ADMINISTRATION; EDWARD M. BOLEN, PRESIDENT, GENERAL AVIATION MANUFACTURERS ASSOCIATION; DR. SAM B. WILLIAMS, CHAIRMAN AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, WILLIAMS INTERNATIONAL, ACCOMPANIED BY RAY PRESTON, VICE PRESIDENT FOR BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, WILLIAMS INTERNATIONAL; DR. PAUL S. MOLLER, PRESIDENT, MOLLER INTERNATIONAL; STEPHEN G. WURST, PRESIDENT, SPACE ACCESS; JOHN W. DOUGLASS, PRESIDENT, CEO, AND GENERAL MANAGER, AEROSPACE INDUSTRIES ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA
Mr. DUNCAN. Bruce Holmes will begin his statement.
Mr. HOLMES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee. I am very pleased to have this opportunity to discuss with you the NASA aerospace technology enterprise proposal for specific technology development in support of the small aircraft transportation system concept.
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I am Bruce Holmes. I serve as the manager of NASA's general aviation program office. The central message that I would like to share with you this afternoon is that the Nation is now in a unique position to test potential innovations in the ways that our citizens travel, our products are delivered, and our services are transported; and NASA is in a unique position to lead this innovation.
As we cross the 21st century threshold into the age of information and the Internet and age of e-commerce, time is becoming the scarce commodity just as our existing infrastructure of interstates and hub and spoke airports are reaching maturity and, therefore, saturation. The growth towards gridlock and hublock ultimately will constrain economic opportunity in this age. The paradox is that away from the 600 hub and spoke airports in the nation, air space at over 5400 public-use airports is abundant.
Unfortunately, fewer than 10 percent of our airports in the Nation have precision instrument guidance for near all-weather operations. The good news is that as a result of the past 7 years of NASA's investments in technology for aircraft, we are now seeing a new generation of safe and affordable aircraft emerging from the marketplace. However, this is very important, in order that these new aircraft can best serve the American traveling public, we need new concepts for air space and operations for all-weather accessibility to any location in our great nation.
The SATS vision was conceived to create a latent market defined as trips not taken, trips not imagined, and trips not possible in today's system. I invite you to fast forward with me to the year 2010, not very far away. Can you picture same-day transportation 300 miles from Chester, Illinois with no scheduled air service to the Northwestern Medical Center in Chicago's North Side for a unique outpatient treatment and home again for the patient?
Can you imagine a Chattanooga e-commerce consultant calling on clients in Jackson or Pigeon Ford, Tennessee in a single day and returning home for family dinner that evening? Can you see a family of four from Winchester, Virginia making an affordable 800-mile round-trip to visit the grandparents in Lake Placid, New York? Can you envision same or next day small package delivery from a dot-com book company to smaller communities like Wisconsin Rapids or Stevens Point, Wisconsin or Marathon, Florida or Port Arthur, Texas.
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Now imagine with me that the aircraft and the airports needed for these transportation visions are readily available to the public with jet-like performance and safety at propeller-like prices. Imagine hub and spoke-like accessibility for the smallest of our neighborhood airports without needing radar and without needing control towers and, very importantly, without needing more land for runway protection zones around the smaller airports.
The vision for SATS is to provide safe accessibility to all communities. The concept utilizes small aircraft for personal and business transportation, for on-demand point-to-point direct travel between smaller regional reliever general aviation, and other landing facilities that are underutilized today, including heliports.
The SATS architecture contemplates near all-weather access to the landing facilities throughout the country, wherever they are. SATS would leverage Internet communications and that revolution for travel planning, scheduling, optimizing, minimizing user uncertainty regarding all aspects of planning and making travel practical in America.
The NASA enterprise goal is to reduce travel times by half in 10 years and more in 25 years. The good news is that we have a public infrastructure of 5400 public-use airports that are within a 30-minute drive of 98 percent of the population of the country. This infrastructure is an untapped national resource for mobility.
The SATS concept is based on the new generation of these affordable small aircraft that operate as computer-based clients on an airborne Internet, to coin a phrase from the Internet age, in a fully distributed system of small airports that serve the thousands of suburban and rural communities across the nation. The SATS proof of concept planning has been framed by a set of hypotheses which guide our investigation of these technology options.
These are as follows: First, that the public can safely operate these kinds of vehicles in three dimensions. Second, that the public can afford to travel this way. Third, that the infrastructure that makes this travel possible is an affordable option for the national transportation system investments that we make. Fourth, that SATS benefits all suburban and remote communities regardless of where they are.
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To prove these hypotheses, we have proposed three capabilities to test as the first out of the box capability. One, that we can operate aircraft in a sense in a virtual visual meteorological conditions for routine instrument condition operation. Second, that we can operate these aircraft safely even with high densities in the air; and third that automobile synergies and design for cost and manufacturability apply to this class of vehicle.
In summary, Mr. Chairman, the Nation we believe is now at a unique position to create the next major innovation in the choices available for personal and business transportation, shipment of goods and delivery of services. The SATS technology we are proposing have the potential to propel mobility and accessibility as we cross this threshold into the age of information when time again is our scarce commodity, and working in partnership with the States and industry and universities, NASA and FAA are capable of creating the technology base on which this vision can be built.
SATS, we believe, represents a national opportunity to create an affordable and safe transportation alternative freeing people and products and services from transportation system delays by creating more access to more places in less time.
Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to speak with you today. I will be happy to answer questions.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Dr. Holmes. Dr. Rediess.
Dr. REDIESS. Chairman Duncan and committee members, thank you for inviting me here to appear before you to address the future of aviation from a Federal Aviation Administration research and development perspective. I would like to address it from two time frames. First evolution of the aviation system from now to about the year 2015 to 2020, which we refer to as NAS modernization, and R&D for the aviation system beyond the year 2020.
Providing Free-Flight capability, which essentially allows the aircraft to fly routes they select subject only to controller intervention to maintain safety and overall system efficiency, is a central theme of NAS modernization. As FAA modernizes air traffic control systems, we are also introducing new technologies to improve system efficiency and move us closer and closer to Free Flight.
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Our Free Flight Phase 1 program is deploying a series of computer-based decision support tools developed under a joint R&D program with NASA at select locations around the country that will improve the system's flexibility and efficiency. These tools include Center-TRACON Automation System or CTAS and Surface Movement Advisory, both of which were developed by NASA. The User Request Evaluation Tool or URET was developed by Mitre and the Collaborative Decision Making tools were developed by FAA in close consultation with industry.
Next year, we plan to expand Free Flight Phase 1 tools nationwide and add new capabilities using an incremental ''build a little, test a little'' approach. This new initiative, which we call Free Flight Phase 2, is a logical next step in our evolution towards Free Flight and will result in user benefits in the years of 2003 to 2005 time frame.
Safe Flight 21 is a 3-year joint government, industry R&D program that will demonstrate nine communications, navigation, and surveillance operational enhancements recommended by RTCA. One aspect of the program is to demonstrate and quantify operational benefits of data link and collect performance data on three specific data link implementations: Mode Select, Extended Squitter, Universal Access Transceiver, and VHF Data Link Mode 4.
Last year, Safe Flight 21, in partnership with the Cargo Airlines Association, successfully completed an operational flight evaluation in the Ohio River Valley of the Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcaster, or ADS-B, to improve situational awareness and conflict avoidance, and potentially allow us to reduce separation criteria.
Flight tests will be conducted in Louisville this year using ADS-B to demonstrate improved departure and final approach spacing, surface situational awareness and conflict detection. Based on these tests, FAA will be able to determine whether these improvements should be made operational. Mr. Chairman, I would like to request that my written testimony be submitted for the record. It contains a few examples of recent aviation safety, security and noise research accomplishments that I cannot cover in the oral testimony.
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Our partnership with other government agencies has been crucial to the success of the FAA's R&D program. This past fall, the National Science and Technology Council released the first integrated plan for FAA, NASA, and DoD R&D for the improvement of civil aviation safety, security, efficiency, and environmental compatibility. This plan comprises the R&D programs of the three agencies in support of achieving national aviation goals over the next two decades.
Historically, transportation has been a prime factor in economic growth and prosperity; and in the 20th century, air transportation and the aviation industry have played vital roles in our country's economic growth and become a mainstay for the quality of life we enjoy. As we look to the future, beyond 2020, we must identify the R&D necessary for aviation to continue to stimulate and support our economic growth in an ever increasing global market. The explosive growth in air cargo due to e-commerce and just-in-time manufacturing and retailing is projected to continue into the foreseeable future. Globalization is driving growth in both international cargo and passenger travel. Increasing leisure time and discretionary income are fueling an expandeding tourism industry that is highly dependent on safe and efficient transportation.
The FAA and NASA have initiated a joint planning activity to create a vision of the aviation system beyond 2020 as a guide for long-term innovative R&D. We are working in partnership with the aviation community and other stakeholders to assure that it is a valid national vision and represents a consensus of the R&D required to enable the desired future of aviation beyond 2020. We welcome the views and concerns of all interested parties, including this committee and the full Congress. We expect to finish the vision activity this calendar year.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, again for providing this opportunity. I am ready to answer any questions at the appropriate time.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Dr. Rediess.
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Mr. Bolen.
Mr. BOLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, as this committee well knows, the United States is the world leader in all aspects of aviation. Perhaps nowhere is that world leadership more profound than in the area of general aviation manufacturing. Today approximately 85 percent of all of the new airplanes that are sold throughout the world are produced here in the United States. Since Congress passed the General Aviation Revitalization Act in 1994, production of aircraft here in the United States has doubled and over 25,000 new jobs have been created. These are good jobs. They are the type of high-wage and high-skill manufacturing jobs that we can keep here in the United States in the 21st century.
Mr. Chairman, I believe that the United States can keep its world lead in general aviation well into the future, but that type of leadership is going to require investments. Today general aviation companies are making significant investments in future technologies.
Last year, GAMA's chairman testified that his company was spending 20 percent of its total sales revenues on investment in research. Twenty percent. Now that compares to approximately an average of 3 or 4 percent of sales revenue that is spent in nonaviation manufacturing companies. So general aviation manufacturing companies in the United States are very serious about the future. But in this era of dot-coms there are very practical limits set by the capital markets in terms of demands for return of investments.
The time horizon is short, and the risks are few. Those are the practical demands set by the marketplace. Fortunately for general aviation, for the past several years we have had a partner in future research. And that partner has been NASA. The important thing about NASA's investment in general aviation, I believe, is that it comes at the entry level of general aviation. In the past, we have seen investments in new aviation technologies; but they are focused on the military or the commercial markets. And there is a very real limitation because of weight and because of cost on those migrating down the chain.
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However, by investing at the entry level, we are seeing new technologies that can indeed migrate up the chain. And I think Administrator Goldin touched on that fact, and it is very key. We are seeing now ready to enter the market a whole new generation of engines which have the ability to improve safety, reduce noise, reduce emissions. We are seeing avionics that improve situational awareness and reduce pilot workload. This is improving safety, and it is going to improve our system capacity. By making these types of improvements, I agree with Dr. Holmes that general aviation can become a mainstream form of transportation for the traveling public.
In that respect, I believe general aviation can play a role in reducing congestion on our nation's roads and in our commercial airports. The investments that we are making can also help keep the United States the world leader in aviation and keep for us the jobs that come with that title. I believe that the use of general taxpayer funds to help fund NASA's investment in aviation is critical. I believe it is a wise and constructive use of taxpayer revenues, and I hope that it will continue. I wanted to thank the committee for looking at this issue, and I look forward to answering your answers. Thank you.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much Mr. Bolen.
Dr. Williams.
Dr. WILLIAMS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am chairman and CEO of Williams international. We build more small, turbofan engines than any other company in the world. And I am here to make all of you very happy because the initiative by Dan Goldin and NASA has been successful already.
It only started about 4 or 5 years ago. As of today, there is a new company already formed with substantial funding to build this six-place, very low cost, twin turbofan engine-powered general aviation aircraft. This aircraft will fly further and faster, in fact, twice as far and twice as fast as piston-powered light airplanes. So if some of you get high blood pressure from facing the gridlock at airports, this program should make you very happy. Ray Preston, who is our business development VP, will present our statement.
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Mr. PRESTON. Thank you, Dr. Williams. In the 1980's and in the early 1990's, we at Williams International believed that there was potentially a very large market for high performance, lower cost, lightweight, entry-level jet-powered general aviation aircraft to replace piston aircraft. We also believed there was room in the market for smaller, lower cost business jet aircraft. Small, propeller-powered general aviation aircraft were 30-year-old technology. What we thought was necessary to turn this around was the development of new, low cost, high-performance, fuel-efficient turbofan engines which would be developed and, in turn, would revitalize the country's business jet and general aviation industry.
With our own funds, we quietly launched two major commercial engine programs. The first was the FJ44. This family of turbofan engines is in the 1900 to 2400 pound thrust category and did allow Cessna, Raytheon, and Swearingen to launch new, lower cost, entry-level business jets. These programs were successful. They were priced two-thirds of the price of previous business jets in this category. They are the most popular models today. The highest sales in business jets are with these engines. Williams International's investment in the FJ44 involved hundreds of millions of dollars. As a result, thousands of high-paying jobs have been created in the industry.
Our second new commercial engine is the FJX engine program. In the late 1980's, with company funds again, we developed a new generation of low-cost, lightweight, quiet, fuel-efficient, high-performance, general aviation turbofan engines in the 700-pound class, about one-third of the FJ44.
To demonstrate the possibilities that the FJX engine could create—we designed a six-passenger, twin-engine, general aviation prototype aircraft we called the V-Jet powered by two FJX engines. We quietly kept working the engine and aircraft program for a few years before NASA announced plans to jointly fund with industry a General Aviation Propulsion program called GAP.
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Dan Goldin's vision was that such a program could revitalize our sagging general aviation sales with these new technology engines. The key to new aircraft development has always been innovation of propulsion technology. Propulsion is the key to success. Williams won the NASA GAP program competition and more than matched NASA's expenditure of $38 million for technology development. In the 1970's, over 17,000 small general aviation aircraft were sold annually in the United States. This dropped to less than a thousand in the early 1990's.
Dan Goldin believed that what was needed to revitalize general aviation was major advancements in turbofan engine technology. Low-cost airframes, and advanced state-of-the-art low cost avionics. The NASA SATS program that Bruce Holmes addressed was formed around this concept.
The GAP program is already a success. The engine is pictured in front of you on your right. The engine is well along in development. What is especially encouraging is what Dr. Williams just mentioned, is that a new, well-funded aircraft company has been formed and will use a commercial version of this engine. And the market surveys show that 10,000 of these aircraft being manufactured a year is certainly a reality. The aircraft will be certified in 2003, will fly in 2002, and the picture of the Eclipse 500 aircraft is shown to the left of the engine. The performance is impressive, 368 knots up to a 41,000 ceiling; and the performance is comparable to entry-level business jets, at one quarter of the cost, about $775,000 initially.
I hope I have provided you some insight into personal experiences and successes as to why congressional investment in aviation research to include propulsion is of such national importance. You are investing, as we have heard many times this afternoon, in our future. Your continued support of the aviation industry and ensuring that our technology keeps pace is crucial to our economic and national security interest.
Thank you, sir.
Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Preston, thank you very much.
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Dr. Moller.
Dr. MOLLER. Mr. Chairman, committee members, I appreciate the opportunity to talk about a segment of the industry that has not been addressed today but is out there in a way that very few people realize.
There is a new category under the FAA classification of aircraft called powered lift aircraft, specifically dealing with aircraft that have that unique capability to take off vertically. That is really critical in any kind of opportunity to create a mass transportation personalized form of aircraft. I have a 12 to 1 scale model here so you can get a sense of what size the full-size aircraft might be that could undertake this kind of capability to take off vertically like a helicopter and then fly horizontally at very high speed.
This technology is recognized to the extent that the FAA has introduced a new pilot's license called a powerlift pilot's license. The reality of this coming into being is very much affected by this controlled air space that we have been talking about today. Without this ability to be controlled at all times within inches, and we can do that today, we certainly wouldn't have the possibility of being able to have such an aircraft as a reality.
Our company has spent close to 1 million working hours over 30 years and $150 million in today's dollars developing this technology. I am reluctant to tell you much of that money was not from the United States. Much of that support came from corporations outside of the United States like Samsung in Korea and some major companies in other parts of the world. That $150 million was always private money. We have had no government money except in the engine development which is very critical to the overall success of the project.
Dr. Goldin made one comment that you may not have picked up on and that is the fact that the aeronautics budget has significantly reduced. NASA being the lead agency in new transportation technology for many years, that budget went into outer space and has not come back again. So there is very little money going into the kind of studies, aeronautic studies that would lead to new forms of transportation. This vehicle here and my company is almost ready for test. In the next 30 to 60 days, we will be flying this vehicle. This is one of a series of vehicles that we have developed over years that progressively have gone faster and higher. There is a great deal of risk in this technology; and so therefore, of course, you end up with a long period of development as you debug the various components within the technology.
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Along the line one of the things that we have had to do is develop new engines because this has to be an inexpensive power plant if it is going to be an inexpensive aircraft. And we have now developed engines which become useful products in many other things, personal watercraft, and this is exciting to us because if we can put an engine out there which has application to a broad range of applications, the cost of the engine comes down, and historically the aircraft are about five times the cost of the power plant. If we get that engine cheap, we can get the aircraft inexpensive.
The aircraft has three significant features that make it practical. It is reliable through the use of redundancy, multiple computers, typical of what the F–16 or many other aircraft has. It is affordable because we have developed very low-cost engines for the use of this aircraft, and it is environmentally sensitive and that means from the point of emissions, fuel consumption, and user friendliness.
You can get in this vehicle without being worried about getting eaten up by a fan. Our company is known for being able to silence engines in a specific category, so noise is something that we have also dealt with. The net goal of what we are doing is to find a way that we can put an aircraft into the hands of somebody, the general public at a price that they can afford to purchase. We project numbers as low as $60,000 if we are talking about automobile level production. The only way that you are going to see transportation being significant in the hands—personal aviation transportation being significant—is if you can see it take off vertically and fly horizontally. Runways are going to be important, but without the ability to take off vertically and fly horizontally, there is very little chance that you are really going to see a large number of vehicles available to you to serve the purposes of transportation.
Our vehicle has a 900-mile range. That is about 80 percent of airport commercial flights. So we could off-load airports about 80 percent of those flights. Also about 80 percent of miles traveled in the United States are a hundred miles or more round trip. This same vehicle could off-load that kind of problem that we see today where transportation on the highway and problems at the airports are dominating transportation in general. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
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Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you, Dr. Moller.
Mr. Wurst.
Mr. WURST. Thank you Chairman Duncan, Ranking Member Lipinski, the rest of the subcommittee and staff, for the opportunity to discuss how the government and industry can work together to seamlessly extend the U.S. aviation infrastructure out into space.
As we all know, industries grow and the public benefits when new and improved products and services are introduced frequently and furnished to customers at lower cost. Rapid growth of the personal computer market illustrates the concept. Although introductory pricing on the latest advanced capabilities are often high, those capabilities are soon made available at lower cost to the customers as the next advance is always ''just around the corner.'' Hence the utility of owning a personal computer is thus extended to more members of society resulting in the continuing growth of industry which in turn supports the on-going introduction of technological advances through frequent development cycles. Now during the first half of the 20th century, the public enjoyed the benefits of a similar series of technological development cycles in aviation. In 1783, the Montgolfier brothers were the first to offer customers with aircraft-type rides in hot air balloons over Paris where the destination was often unpredictable.
Progress was relatively slow until over a century later when in 1903 at Kitty Hawk the Wright brothers initiated a rapid succession of aviation-related technological innovations by demonstrating ''real'' aviation where one could control the desired destination. As Wilbur Wright aptly described it, their ''flight demonstration would make flying a thing to be regarded as a normal feature of the world's future.'' By 1952, the British had introduced the commercial use of jet engine technology on a Comet and inaugurated the world's first jet liner air service dramatically reducing both travel time and cost.
The series of frequent technological advances in development cycles in the first half of the 20th century had reduced ticket prices by a factor of 20 and travel time by a factor of five compared to air travel time at its inception.
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Unfortunately, since the 1950's, the vast majority of airline passengers have not seen comparable improvements in the primary factors affected their travel experience. Seating accommodations in terms of leg room and width of seats are essentially the same as they were in 1960. Travel time is still the same at subsonic cruise speeds, precluding any improvements in travel times. And ticket prices are still controlled by the high cost of owning and operating subsonic jet aircraft—after adjusting for inflation and the number of seats per aircraft, the purchase price for new jetliners has doubled since 1960.
The introduction of the Concorde in 1969 might be considered an exception to the lack of significant technological advance benefiting the traveler since 1960 given that it did reduce travel time by flying faster. However, the supersonic turbofan engines are significantly less fuel-efficient at those speeds, and consequently the cost to operate and net cost to the customer are much higher and thus Concorde attracts and benefits only the upper echelon of passengers.
So I suggest that the time has come to focus our efforts on the development of advanced transport aircraft that offer the potential for significantly reducing both fares and travel times. This would create substantial market growth and extend the benefits of economical high-speed travel to a greater portion of society. But the question then becomes ''is the development of such aerospace transportation technically feasible?''
Efficient high-speed propulsion is the key to both quantum reductions to travel time and cost. And enabling technology of our SPACE ACCESS Aerospacecraft is a proprietary ejector ramjet that has already, in ground tests, demonstrated over twice the fuel efficiency of existing subsonic turbofan engines while operating at five times faster. It has the potential to revolutionize both domestic aviation and aerospace transportation industries.
How can the House Subcommittee on Aviation facilitate the development of such extraordinary advanced transportation systems? Well the current FAA regulations governing launch vehicles allow rapid introduction of new launch services products into revenue generating operation. Accordingly, we set out to prove that it is possible to develop an autonomous hypersonic aircraft, to promptly introduce the system into revenue generating operation by providing launch services and then use the associated flight experience database to certify the aerospacecraft as an FAA commercial transport aircraft.
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So in support of this approach, SPACE ACCESS is currently in the process of establishing an aerospaceworthiness standard based on the FAA's existing airworthiness criteria for transport aircraft. In designing, building, and certifying our Aerospacecraft to this standard would allow us to conduct both atmospheric and space transportation operations at the significantly lower aviation-based insurance rates. However, even with such technological and cost-savings measures, government financial incentives are essential in order to support our ability to raise the vast amounts of capital required to commercially finance the development of a hypersonic transportation system.
Therefore, I recommend that the Aviation Subcommittee support legislation that provides government financial incentives for the development of advanced hypersonic transport aircraft that are similar to the incentives provided to finance surface transportation projects through the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act of 1998. Such legislation would enable us to deliver to the public the benefits associated with the quantum improvements in travel time, cost, and reliability of both point-to-point and earth-to-orbit transportation thereby reestablishing the preeminence of the domestic industry.
The future of the U.S. aviation industry is bright, and as Chairman Shuster recently stated, entails the government working together with entrepreneurial U.S. companies such as SPACE ACCESS to seamlessly extend the U.S. aviation transportation infrastructure out into space. We would appreciate your continued support on the passage of legislation to implement governmental financial incentives to make hypersonic transportation a thing to be regarded as a normal feature of the world's future.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you.
Mr. Douglass.
Mr. DOUGLASS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Sir, I would like to add my thanks to those of my colleagues today, for having this hearing. It has been a long hearing, and we have covered a lot of ground. Your patience in sorting through all of this is really genuinely appreciated. I am going to show you a few charts, but I would like your permission to enter my full statement for the record.
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My testimony today is going to be a little different from what you have heard from my colleagues. It is a mixture of what they said and some of what Administrator Goldin said, but it is going to cover the broad spectrum of the aerospace industry. We represent well over 100 companies and about 800,000 workers in our country spanning aeronautics, astronautics, space system satellites, and launch systems.
[Chart.]
That first chart is a comparison of our business base this year versus where we were 10 years ago. If you look at 10 years ago, you see that our biggest customer was the Department of Defense. Over 50 percent of everything that we sold was sold to the Department of Defense. Today that is down into the mid 20's. The big growth has been in the export market. Our real customer today is the global economy, and almost 50 percent of everything manufactured in the United States aerospace industry today is exported outside of the United States.
We are the single largest earner of export credits in the entire American economy. It is too bad that Representative Scott isn't still here. He said we are one of the biggest. We are five times bigger than anyone else in the entire American economy. So the health of this industry which depends—and so critically depends on research and development-is the engine which is driving America's economy today, especially with respect to our balance of payments, to which the dollar is so closely tied.
Next chart, please.
[Chart.]
This is the overall investment picture for a period from 1977 up to 1997. There are 3 more years of information that could be put on that chart if we could get it properly collated from government sources. What you see on the left-hand side of that chart is that when Jimmy Carter was President of the United States, we spent about 15 percent of our national investment in research and development on aerospace.
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The big hump in the middle is the period when most of the products that are on the market today were actually designed. A lot of seeds of the work for example that Dr. Williams talked about was started when I was a young colonel working with Sam and his company developing the engines that really got their company going and were the cruise missile engines deployed during the big Reagan build-up.
Today less than 7 percent of our national investment in research and development is put into this industry; less than 7 percent. That is because research and development in the country in general has continued to increase almost at a 45 degree angle. This is where I separate from the rest of my colleagues today. They have spent a lot of time telling you about the wonderful opportunities of the future, but the issue facing us is how we take advantage of those opportunities and keep this industry financially and innovatively vibrant when we only spend 7, 8 percent of our national investment on aerospace R&D.
[Chart.]
Let me show you what the trend means in terms of intellectual capital. This next chart is one that—you are going to hear a lot about over next year because everybody is beginning to discover this problem. There are five studies: the National Academy of Sciences has completed one, the Air Force Association is doing one; and we are doing one. There are others, and basically, this tracks where the engineers and scientists are today. It is interesting because this amazingly tracks along the same line as an R&D investment line.
The left hand side of this chart shows that about 30 percent of all engineers and scientists in the United States were involved in aerospace in the 1950's. Follow that red curve. It more or less, follows the curve on the previous chart. Consequently, if we don't invest in research and development, young people don't go into this industry. They migrate off to other industries. Now we are down to 7 percent of the scientists and engineers in the United States that work in aerospace. That is where the innovation comes from. It comes from the human capital in the industry. The blue line is the total number of engineers and scientists working in our industry. It is very cyclic and tracks very closely to sales. One more chart and I will get off the podium so you can ask questions.
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[Chart.]
The tremendous connection between the health of this industry and our economy and the importance of having a vibrant aerospace industry and our national security, are the two traditional reasons for investing in this industry. Apart from those, the single most important reason, one that is emerging and that has been laced through the comments of my colleagues, and that is needed to make any of these dreams come true, is the need to have a tremendous increase in safety and efficiency of air travel.
The Boeing company has estimated—and they have a wonderful briefing that I would encourage you to get ahold of—that if the air traffic mileage of millions of passengers continues to increase, in order to keep the accidents down near the level they are today, we are going to have to increase safety and security by 80 percent. That is going to take a huge investment, and several of your colleagues have asked the question; and this was very difficult for Dan Goldin to answer, how much is this going to cost. How much is this going to cost America; and that is the real meat of this issue.
I am not going to go into all of these technologies. They are in my statement. We have to make engines quieter. We have to understand what is going on in the atmosphere. Little airplanes, are not going to be able to fly unless we get ahold of the kind of turbulence patterns there are behind a 747. God knows what the turbulence is going to be behind an AXXX which is much bigger than a 747.
We have to understand that problem if we want to make that synthetic vision that Dan talked about, which is a wonderful thing, reality. We have all of the building blocks right now to make it happen. There is a tremendous investment to be made here. Clearly, we have to understand how human beings are going to react to all of this technology.
Finally, we have to understand how to produce it. All of these things require investments and some of you asked, how much it would be. We tried to make an estimate. The best estimate that I can give you, if you want to get back to the innovative level back in 1977 when Jimmy Carter was president; we are going to have to increase our investment by around $70 billion over the next 5 years. We, in the aerospace industry, have pledged to put up $20 billion if the Federal Government can find the $50 billion over 5 years; and that is broken down into $22 billion for NASA, $20 billion for the Department of Defense, and about $8 billion for the Federal Aviation Administration.
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When you look at the amount of research and development done in some of those agencies, percentage wise, those are not huge increases in costs; but it is a big figure. If we don't make those kinds of investments, Mr. Chairman, what is going to happen is that our competition around the world are going to make those investments and we will find the blue line in those 800,000 jobs begin to shrink dramatically.
Thank you for the opportunity to be here today.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Douglass, and I thank all of the witnesses. You have made very outstanding and very interesting and informative presentations. I am going to yield my time to Mr. Bateman who originally had the idea for this hearing. So we will go to Mr. Bateman.
Mr. BATEMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think each of you have had your own particular perspective, but I have heard none of you who didn't establish further the case for additional research and development as it pertains to aeronautics and to how vital it is to the future of civil aviation.
Dr. Moller, you made the point which I think needs to be emphasized and reemphasized that the NASA budget has indeed gone down significantly in recent years as it relates to the aeronautics portion of NASA, and I don't think that we can lose sight of that. And, of course, that was one of the principal motives for my asking the chairman to conduct this hearing.
We have not done what needs to be done. Dr. Williams talks about the innovation and the remarkable step that his engine represents, and it is soon to be a reality. But it wasn't something that started with research and development 1, 2, 3, or 4 years ago. All of these things go back to many years ago. If you look at the so-called cutting edge, high-performance jet military aircraft that we use today, you are talking about 1970's technology. And we are not doing the things today to see that in the next 30 or 40 years we are going to be able to sustain a continuum of not just little evolutionary steps in the technology of now and 50 years from now, we have got to invest in making sure that we can do it both militarily and certainly for civil aviation.
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I think it has been a remarkable hearing, and I want to commend Mr. Douglass because I think he has really put it into the perspective that we, as public policy decision makers, have to put it. Everyone has the consensus view that we need to do more. The public policy decision makers better get about determining where they are going to get the resources and where they are going to apply the resources in order to get the biggest pay back and the best assurance that we make progress.
I certainly believe if you look at civil aviation, we ought to have a commission that makes—that has the assignment to ferret out the areas of research that most benefit civil aviation and come back with recommendations as to what those areas of research are and that those areas of research require funding and what that amount of funding is and then we have got to find the political will and persuade the American people that this is something that their tax dollars are well spent for.
I want to emphasize again my pleasure in the fact that there is a good and broadening synergism in the efforts of NASA and the Department of Defense. There is a broadening and better partnering between FAA and NASA. These are things that are very, very commendable and should be encouraged. They ought to be stimulated. One of ways that you can stimulate it is by seeing that we have a research prioritization where NASA, with its expertise and competency, is brought into doing those things which are most important for the advancement of civil aviation for the future.
Certainly, therefore, I have to hope that if you look at the reality of the budget of 2001 that has been submitted to us and a very, very modest increase in aeronautics research and an appropriation subcommittee that has to compete NASA programs against VA and HUD and the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, it is a very tough area to be competitive with. And given the allocation under the budget resolution to that subcommittee whether or not they will even fund the modest increase for aeronautics research is doubtful. Therefore, it seems to me in the sense of common sense if you want to solve this problem you have got to find some other sources of funding.
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Not to raid the aviation trust fund, but surely I think we have got to be giving mature consideration to whether or not some additional portion of that fund should be devoted to research of highest benefit to civil aviation if we are not going to make a mockery of what the aviation trust fund is supposed to do for the future of civil aviation. So I would commend that concept to you, and frankly I have no questions I feel I need to ask of you. You have answered what needs to be answered, and the answer to me is very clearly and ringingly we need more investment in research and aeronautics for the future of America's civil aviation community as well as for our national security. Mr. Chairman, I thank you so much for making possible this hearing.
Mr. DUNCAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Bateman. Does anybody want to make a comment in regard to what Mr. Bateman has just said?
Dr. MOLLER. I would like to make a short comment to support what Mr. Bateman said. His district includes Langley, and I have had a lot of moral support from those people and I very much appreciate it. They have not had the money to even keep some of their own wind tunnels running, so I can't expect them to help financially, but they have some marvelous wind tunnels there, some of the best in the world.
I want to comment that I introduced an aeronautical curriculum within the University of California a number of years ago, and we found as time went along there were not the job opportunities in aeronautics and this was really an aeronautical curriculum, not so much an aerospace curriculum. We had to end up granting mechanical and aeronautical combined degrees so we could be sure that these students had a job when they got out of college.
Experienced aeronautical engineers are disappearing, and they are not being replaced because there is a great concern about whether the jobs will be available. We really have to get serious about putting money into aeronautics if we except to have those people available to us when we need them at some future time, and we need to preserve the capability of Langley with unique capabilities, and that is presently not possible with the very limited budget going into aeronautics.
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Mr. WURST. I would like to reiterate the point: What it is going to take is a combination of both production-type incentives such as loan guarantees to help us facilitate raising the capital to field operational systems in combination with investments in research and development to assure that we continue to have the products necessary to sustain our growth. The progress we have made is on the basis of that back in the 1960's, people built and tested a lot of ram jets and we are able to capitalize on that today. It is a longer term type of investment than most of the commercial world is eager to do.
I think it is a combination of both production-type incentives which here in the transportation committee should be the focus; but in addition, the types of things typically done by NASA which is to direct research and development funding to do the long-term technology developments that are necessary to continue and sustain the growth.
Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Douglass.
Mr. DOUGLASS. I would like to pick up on one thing that Mr. Bateman said and that he was alluding to the fact there is legislation about to be introduced in both houses of Congress to create a presidential commission on the future of aerospace. I would urge all Members of Congress to look very seriously at supporting that legislation. There isn't a day that goes by, Mr. Chairman, that I don't deal with a host of different government agencies. The Department of Defense, NASA, FAA, Department of Transportation, Department of Commerce, the U.S. Trade Representative, a host of people from both houses of Congress and other places, committees and so on, are involved in this issue.
The one thing that I think could help us take advantage of the technology we have in this country and that we should be developing in this country, is a commission where we can get, on a bipartisan basis, labor, management, academia, Wall Street and all of the forces in America that are shaping this industry together in a presidential commission. Here they can make the kind of recommendations Mr. Bateman was talking about on where we should go since we have seen industries decline and go offshore in the latter part of this last century. We saw that happen in lots in heavy industries, and we cannot let it happen in this industry which is vitally connected to our national security and our economic welfare.
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Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Lipinski.
Mr. LIPINSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First of all, I want to say in response to my good friend, Herb Bateman, he and I came to Congress at the same time. He is choosing to leave a little sooner than I but at least voluntarily. We are not going to leave at the same time. He is leaving voluntarily.
I think that the presentation that the panel has made and the presentation that we had earlier were magnificent presentations, but I think it is going to be enormously difficult to get any kind of money out of the aviation trust fund for the endeavors that you are interested in and these gentlemen are interested in, and I am quite sure that most members of the aviation subcommittee are interested in.
You know the struggle we have had attempting to get the aviation trust fund off of budget so we could utilize all of the debt money for aviation purposes. We have achieved doing that to a great degree, but we still have to wind up getting some money out of general revenue for aviation. So I am very sympathetic to what you would like to do and to what these gentlemen would like to do, but I think we should look in a different direction because I think it is going to be enormously difficult if not impossible to get any money out of the aviation trust fund in order to improve the moneys available for research and development. I think it is something that we should do, but I suggest that we look in a different direction rather than the aviation trust fund. And I want to mention to Mr. Douglass at the end, how much of this industry has gone offshore already?
Mr. DOUGLASS. Well, sir, as Mr. Goldin pointed out, our share of the global aerospace market has been gradually declining since World War II when there was a resurgence of much safer aviation after the world war. In some sectors it has declined very precipitously. In space, for example, we at one time had a hundred percent control of civilian access to space. Now that has gone down to about 30 percent of the commercial satellites.
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Mr. LIPINSKI. Has that been because of the lack of money we have had for research and development?
Mr. DOUGLASS. It is partially that. It is partially that some of our trading partners have made it a matter of national policy to write us out of their economies. For example, because of the export licensing problems that have been imposed on this industry, the French have decided to make it a matter of national policy not to have any American components in their space program. They are trying wherever they can to reduce American content in all of their aerospace systems.
As a result of the concern over technology transfer to China, we took commercial communication satellites, these are the ones that make your beeper go off, send radio and TV signals around the world, we took them away from the Department of Commerce, and we put them in with the Department of State. We treated them like they were bombs. The sale of commercial satellites in this country has dropped somewhere between 40 and 50 percent, and all of that business went to Europe.
Mr. LIPINSKI. This is enormously interesting to me and a lot of other people. But we have a vote on and we are not coming back from the vote, and you are all going home. I don't want to take up any more time, but if you would please give my office a call. I wanted to sit down and go over this with you in great detail. The little red plane over there, does that take off vertically?
Dr. MOLLER. Yes, sir.
Mr. LIPINSKI. And that technology has been perfected? We can do that on a regular basis?
Dr. MOLLER. We have flown earlier models over 200 times in test flights, and Boeing did a half million study on the technology and confirmed the viability. They determined that the vehicle was theoretically more reliable than their new 777.
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Mr. LIPINSKI. When it gets up in the air, how fast does it fly?
Dr. MOLLER. It depends on altitude. At sea level, it is about 225 miles an hour. At 25,000 feet, it is about 325 miles an hour.
Mr. LIPINSKI. How many people does it accommodate?
Dr. MOLLER. You can't go more than four. Because of the laws of physics, you can't go more than 4 to 5 passengers or you change to a tilt wing.
Mr. LIPINSKI. I have a lot of questions.
Mr. DUNCAN. Let me give Mr. Isakson a chance to say something.
Mr. ISAKSON. I yield back the balance of my time to the chairman.
Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Bateman?
Mr. BATEMAN. I want time enough to say it is good to see Dr. Holmes here. He is from back home, and I wanted to make reference do that.
Mr. DUNCAN. Well, there are many things that I am curious about. I am going to submit most of my questions for the record and let you submit the answers later.
Dr. Rediess, how widespread is free flight thus far?
Dr. REDIESS. There is a different part of the air space in which we have free flight. In visual flight conditions, the GA community has that. What we are trying to do is spread it to the—all of the commercial operations, and that will give us a lot more flexibility to increase our capacity and capability. And we are moving towards that.
Mr. DUNCAN. So rough guess, what percentage would it be? What percentage of flights, total flights, all of the flights that are out there, what percentage are being flown under free flight rules at this time?
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Dr. REDIESS. I am afraid I will have to get back to you in terms of operational answers.
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Mr. DUNCAN. Dr. Holmes, maybe I remembered this wrong, but I thought in our briefing last year about your program which I think is just really fascinating, I thought that you all told us 2025 as a general goal; but you heard Administrator Goldin say that he hoped by the end of this decade to have it as cheap and so forth as an upper range luxury vehicle. Do you think that that is likely, possible, probable?
Mr. HOLMES. I think that there is a shape of the innovation life cycle that will start off slowly and pick up steam like any innovation cycle does, that the entire length of that life cycle will be on the order of 25 to 35 years.
The highest rate of growth in that life cycle is probably about 10 years away when the first of the most affordable of these vehicles begin to emerge in the marketplace.
Mr. DUNCAN. Jumping over to Dr. Moller. You heard me read that newspaper article from The Washington Times where it quoted you or said that you said something about it would be—at some point somebody could get in there and push a button and go from New York to Washington—.
Dr. MOLLER. That is really the only way such a vehicle could be used effectively, a small vehicle going 400 miles or 300 miles. It would be very dangerous to operate in. It will be much more a flying computer. You will be a passenger, code in a number, and it will take you there. You will be like a passenger.
Mr. DUNCAN. I really hope that this comes about sooner rather than later because when you think about how many people are being killed on the highways, it amazes when I speak to groups and say that there are more people killed in 4–1/2 months on the nation's highways than there have been in all of the U.S. aviation accidents combined since the Wright brothers' flight in 1903. It wouldn't amaze you all, but I am talking when I speak to general-type audience.
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At any rate there are a lot more things that I would like to get into, but we are going to go vote. I thank you very much. You have been a great, great panel and this will conclude this hearing.
[Whereupon, at 5:10 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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