July 3, 2015 • 34 mins
NASA has given the thumbs up to six research projects that could revolutionize aeronautics. We look at each one and talk about what the results could mean to the rest of us.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there we went, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
the podcast that looks at the future and says I said, doctor,
Mr m D. Can't you tell me what's ailing me?
(00:20):
I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Bulkabon, and I'm Joe McCormick.
And for the second time this week, we're gonna be
touching on an aviation related theme. Yeah, we apparently have
airplanes on the brain. Yeah. So have you all been
on an airplane lately? Uh? Yeah, actually not long ago
in May? Yeah, for me, it was earlier this month.
(00:43):
Where did you fly Outer Banks? Well, technically I flew
into Norfolk, Virginia. Then we rented a car and went
to the Outer Banks. Nice. Yeah, sunny, sunny Fort Lauderdale.
I haven't been on a plane since last year. I'm
just wondering. Was there anything remarkable lead different in your
experience of flying as far as the actual like technology
(01:04):
of flight was concerned when you went on that flight
compared to the one before it. Uh nope, nope, not yeah,
not for me either. I Mean the most remarkable thing
was that Delta had once again updated their safety video,
which now includes Oh no, no, actually, I really like
I'm very fond of the kind of cheesy Delta safety videos.
(01:24):
I'm I really like them. They started with the the
flight attendant who would would wag her finger, right, so
they so she kind of started it off, and then
they sort of took that ball and ran with it.
Sort of took an inspiration from some of the commercials
out there that have been very silly. The reason why
(01:47):
I even asked this, you know, I've gotten off in
this weird tangent, is that I wanted to talk about
a recent news item about the possibility that aviation could
see some rap bid changes in technology and and uh
engineering due to a project at NASA. Huh. Now, we've
(02:10):
talked about the possibilities in the future of aviation on
the podcast before, but yeah, today we wanted to talk
about a specific call for R and D. Yeah, yeah, Now,
we have talked also about NASA having some pretty you know,
far out there R and D branches already. There's of
course Eagle Works, right, which is associated with the M drive,
(02:33):
which we discussed in our episode. I think it was
probably called the M drive, or probably had the word
m drive in there. You can look it up. Yeah,
they're they're all about they're all about long shot propulsion
physics ideas that probably won't work, but if they do work,
it would be awesome. And and it's there specifically put
(02:53):
together to say, hey, you know, let's go on the
fringe for this stuff, because if it works, it's the
benefits are outstanding. And if it doesn't, well then maybe
we'll learn stuff in the process. It's kind only playing
the lottery. You're not likely to win, but if you
do awesome, right exactly, I assume that's the way you
were thinking of either and either way you might learn,
(03:17):
and either way you might learn something about math in
the processes you and I hope learned something about math.
So the one we're going to talk about now is
is a project called the Convergent Aeronautics Solutions Project or
c a S. All right, because Eagle Works is certainly
not the only branch of NASA that does research and development,
(03:38):
and it's not even the only one that does, you know,
pretty far out their ideas. NASA has several areas, several
several divisions or projects that are all about uh inspiring
and welcoming some revolutionary approaches to technology to really advance aeronautics. Yeah,
we often forget what that first A and NASA stands for.
(04:00):
We tend to think of NASA as the space organization,
and you know, space is probably cooler than airplanes, so
it's easier to remember. But yeah, they deal with aeronautics. Yeah,
so c A s that that Convergent Aeronautics Solutions Project
I just mentioned. Is itself a branch of the Transformative
Aeronautics Concepts Program or t A c P within NASA. Yes,
(04:25):
so the t A c P is its purposes to
cultivate multidisciplinary revolutionary concepts to enable aviation transformation. That's straight
from their web page over at NASA. And in other words,
it's all about experimentation and rapid development of technologies that
could advance our aeronautics technology. Now, the t A c
(04:48):
P is itself a branch of NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission
Directorate or Armed but not Dangerous But not dangerous, I
guess you know aeronautics. I guess there's an element of
danger that comes with the territory. This director. It recognizes
the impacts that aviation has on the economy and infrastructure
(05:11):
of our nation and aims to develop ever more efficient
aviation technology. You know, like cheaper, better, stronger, faster, more green.
Isn't that a daft punk thing? Cheaper, better, stronger, faster,
more green thing must speak think of a different song.
It's just a joke. Better, faster, strong, never mind, I understand. Okay,
(05:33):
I'm waiting for you to proceed. I see you're allowed,
but I can't do it. So there are three programs
encompassed by the T A c P. That's a C
A S which we're talking about today, along with Transformational
Tools and Technologies or T T T, which is a
software development program and Leading Edge Arrow research for NASA,
(05:55):
or LEARN, which is a program that awards grants to
external universities in law for aeronautics research. We will talk
more about those later, ye, just to give a kind
of wrap up to the whole Like what is this
whole section of NASA all about? Okay, but what's the
deal with C A S. Well, they're dedicated to conducting
short duration activities to establish early stage concepts and technology
(06:18):
feasibility for high potential solutions. Those are not my words,
those are NASA's words, that sounds like a mission statement.
What does that actually mean? Well, it's it's all about
this idea of let's let's try and invest in projects
that have the potential to advance aeronautics dramatically, um even
(06:41):
if we aren't completely convinced that they will succeed. Right,
it's asking, it's taking projects from within NASA, carried out
by NASA employees that are these weird experimental, high risk,
high reward kind of things, right, and so they the
teams at c A S. Whenever they're working on a project,
(07:05):
they're specifically supposed to conduct experiments, they're supposed to learn
from their failures, and supposed to be an environment where
you can take these these risks, not knowing if it's
going to succeed or fail, and there's not repercussions. If
you do fail, you're just expected to learn from those failures,
and hopefully you would you would be able to learn
ways of carrying out the experiment successfully. But if it
(07:28):
turns out there is no way of succeeding, you're still
going to learn in the process. You're also supposed to
continue conducting those experiments and you repeat this until you
reach the end of the research cycle, which maybe two
to two and a half years, and at that point, uh,
the team's performance and work is reviewed to determine if
the solutions that were developed by the team actually address
(07:48):
the issue and meet the pre established goals for that project.
Whatever they might be. Now they have to be. They don't.
It's not that they have to work, just that they
have to work. They do. But beyond having to work,
they have to be feasible ideas, so in other words,
like real world feasible, like not like theoretically right right
where you're like laboratory feasible Exactly. It can't be something
(08:10):
where in the lab if we pour in four cities
worth of electricity into this thing, then we can get
it to float an inch off the ground. That's not
a success. Even if you achieve we open a black
hole inside the engine and it goes really far, Yeah,
we go to a totally different place. Uh No, that
(08:31):
that would not. That would also not because there's a
success that would be catastrophic. So the promising solutions, the
ones that NASA feels, you know, the various people who
are reviewing these projects, the ones that they feel are
feasible and beneficial, would then be pursued by moving that
project over to a different arm of NASA or a
(08:52):
direct transfer of knowledge to the aviation community to say, hey,
we did this experiment where we designed an air craft
wing in this way and found that it generates much
more left in this manner, We're giving that information out
to everybody so that everyone can benefit from it. That's
the idea behind it. So um it's also very similar
(09:14):
to what we've set on Forward Thinking many many times,
the idea that it's all right if you pursue a
line of research and you ultimately find that it's not
viable because you learn that, you learn that it's not viable,
and you maybe even learn why and can apply that
to future projects which might become feasible. Yeah, it's it's
(09:34):
impossible to anticipate everything that you will learn. Whenever you
are pursuing any given line of research, right, you might
learn something that is not germane to the specific goal
that you have been assigned, but could be very interesting
for other applications. So there there's real value to research,
and that's something that NASA is really promoting within the
(09:55):
organization itself, and it's something that we on Forward Thinking
have promoted quite a few times, so specifically we wanted
to talk about. There was an article, several articles actually,
it was reported all over the science news sphere that
the c A S Project was entertaining six wild aviation
ideas well. First of all, each team there were several
(10:18):
things that had a competition. It was a competition. It
was actually, uh, they were inviting people to pitch ideas
to the c A S Project. So they were like,
bring us your weirdest ideas for how to make airplanes
much better. Kind of They had a little bit more
of a guideline than that, but though not by a
whole lot. They they told each team they would have
(10:39):
to explain their idea and approach and uh, what they
were going to do. They would have to justify it
to a panel made up of NASA managers. So it
almost comes across like one of those shows like Shark
Tank where the team, you know, an entrepreneur has to
has to present their business model and try and defend
it from experts who are either enchanted by it or
(11:00):
just you know, they're perplexed, they don't know what or
or they just aren't impressed at all. Yeah, we should
make airplanes. They doublest food drugs. Yeah, that would that
would probably uh not make it through to the next round.
Um So the play for themselves, Yeah, I think they've
(11:21):
already learned that lesson from the way that airlines are
handling food. Now. Every team had to have a membership
made up of experts from multiple disciplines and have members
from more than one NASA Aeronautics Center. There are three
or four of those, as I recall, uh, And the
teams had to come up with an answer, a potential
answer to one of two big questions. Their their study
that they want to conduct is supposed to address one
(11:42):
of two big ones, the first big question, and it's
an or and either or not a they have to
answer both questions. Um So. The first one was can
we demonstrate an aviation system with maximum efficiency and minimal
environmental impact? Which can be interpreted in many different ways,
and in fact, we'll see from some of the selected
(12:03):
projects how those interpretations were made. The second one was
demonstrate the feasibility for urgent medical transportation from the wilderness
of Alaska to the Mayo clinic without human interaction. That's
a very different kind of requirement, right, And and they
specifically said, like, yes, the way we framed this was
so that you would have specific parameters to work within
(12:25):
to design your approach, but the solution would be applicable
across the world and all sorts of different scenarios. They
just specifically framed it in this way, just just to
give you something to work towards. Was the idea, Not
that we're planning on having a lot of medical disasters
to Alaska that need to go to Mayo Clinic. No, sure,
it seems kind of like the Darker Robotics challenge, right.
(12:47):
It's a it's a specific scenario, but it's designed so
that you can test what can be done and applied
to many scenarios. It's very apt. Yes, that's exactly right. So,
out of the seventeen teams that pitched ideas, six were
selected for study. They would be the wild and or
crazy ideas we have mentioned before, and the study cycle
(13:08):
will last between two and two and a half years,
depending upon the individual studies. And here are the six. Okay,
the first one, Yeah, there's a problem with electric vehicles.
They got batteries. Batteries terrible, They're gigantic, they're big, they
take up a lot of space, and they they contribute weight. Yeah, aircraft,
(13:31):
by the way, weight not something you want to add
to an aircraft if you can help it, because then
you need more energy to keep the aircraft aloft. And
if you're using more energy, then it's not so green now,
is it. Or maybe you have decreased the amount of
time it can spend in the air and perhaps it's
not a practical solution. Need a bigger battery, which makes
you need to use more energy, which makes you need
(13:52):
a bigger battery. Which. Yeah, So we when we talked
about the solar powered aircraft and how it's it's designed. Um,
the one that's slowly making its way around the world.
It uh you know, that was the solar Impulse to
solar impulse to it. Their design was such that they
were trying to maximize the effectiveness of batteries while minimizing
(14:14):
their weight because obviously, if you're using electricity to propel
your your aircraft, um, you want to cut back on
that weight as much as you can. So how can
you do that? Well, the first one we're talking about
is the Multi Functional Structures with Energy Storage project, which
is pretty catchy. They're actually looking at making batteries, so
(14:37):
that the batteries themselves form the shape of the vehicle. Yeah,
they're they're they're the that's the casing. It's the actual
material that thee Yeah. So basically the plane is the battery.
To have all this like structural material there and then
(14:57):
put a battery in it, you just have the structure
of the plane and be a battery. Right. The walls
of the structure are our batteries. They're not. The batteries
aren't added to an already existing infrastructure. They are the infrastructure.
Which is really a cool idea. It's not unique to
the aeronautics industry. In fact, the automotive industry has been
(15:19):
looking at this where Yeah, I've read about battery designs
for electric vehicles that would work this way. Yeah, they
would be incorporated in the roof of the car or
the walls of the car, so that you know, you
don't have this large space. It also adds the carrying capacity,
you know, to the vehicle where you can you can
use the space that would have been you know, filled
(15:40):
up with batteries to hold other stuff. Now, I remember
one problem that went along with this when I was
reading about it in cars was that it sort of
made it a problem if you have a collision, right, right,
I would I would imagine that would be a difficult
point of of when the body of the thing can
catch directly on fire. Usually the body of vehicles is
(16:01):
made specifically to not catch on fire, but batteries are
pretty notoriously flammable. Yeah, it's it seems like it would
also be a problem just that you would hurt the
reusability of the car and its recoverability from even the
small accident if just like damaging you know, one of
the sides of the car or something, actually damage the
power source. Yeah, you would probably have to have it replaced.
(16:24):
It would make it. It would make the maintenance or
at least the repairs much more expensive potentially anyway. Uh,
And I'm sure those will be some of the things
that the study will have to look at too to
measure that risk versus payoff. Like, yes, it makes sense,
does it. That's part of the real world challenge, right, Yeah,
and it's an interesting question. Other teams are also looking
(16:47):
at how the batteries and motors of of these systems
can be improved. Yeah. The high voltage hybrid electric propulsion
system is one of number two. This is number two,
and they are looking at two different things. One is
they were looking at a way of cutting back on
that expense of if your power transmission system is damaged,
(17:10):
how can you how can you address that? So they're
looking at self healing materials their high voltage system. This
is so delightful to me. It's the kind of stuff
that that the insulation of their electrical systems would be
made of stuff if they can find such stuff that that,
upon receiving damage, would be prompted to like like like
(17:34):
the the damage that it receives in the form of
physical or electric uh punch would cause it to heal
over that damage. Essentially, the electricity passing through this the
chemicals that are bonded to that insulation would prompt it
to to expand and close those wounds. Uh. And the
(17:56):
cool thing about this is that it would really cut
back on maintenance costs. It would also allow the aircraft
to automatically address any sort of emergency situation that involved
the damage to the power system without requiring an emergency landing.
It would do it all automatically and there's no like,
there's no switch to throw or anything. It's because of
(18:16):
the chemical It's material science, right, it's chemistry, material science
that uh that allowed this to happen. At least that's
what they're hoping to to study and and develop. Keep
in mind, these are all proposals. This is not stuff
that necessarily exists right now. Concept. Yeah. So the second
part of their approach is that, uh, they want to
(18:41):
explore ways to make the electric system practical for aircraft.
So they want to make electrical systems that will have
a reasonable size and weight, very similar to the battery issue,
not just batteries, but the electric motors, all the all
the infrastructure that would come with an electrical power system
in order to make it feasible, and they to explore
options in high voltage. Variable frequency drives and v f
(19:04):
d s are sort of control systems for engines. They
can really save energy by changing an engine speed and
torque as needed, kind of on the fly, literally on
the fly in this case, because airplanes. Uh sorry, anyway,
I ever apologize for a pun Embrace them? Oh No,
I don't know. I don't like embracing them. They're all sticky.
(19:26):
The dark side. Um vfd s are currently used in
industrial manufacturing and ships. But but there are these big, old,
clunky mechanical things controlled by big old clunky computers, and
so they're they're not as of yet practical for airplanes.
So I'm excited to see what this project winds up
looking at. Yeah, that that should also be interesting. And
remember all of these have the potential to revolutionize aeronautics
(19:50):
in some way or another, right, that's the whole reason
why they were selected. Number three is Mission Adaptive Digital
Composite Aerostructure Technologies, And this is one of the ones
that I'm really excited about. It's a material science one
and super cool stuff so one. This is another kind
of two parter um. They want to combine two different
(20:10):
lines of research into a new approach, and in aeronautics,
one of those is a material science in the form
of composite materials. And now composite materials can be incredibly
light and incredibly strong. We have talked about compositive composite
materials on this show before. Yeah. For example, if you
wanted to create an actually feasible flying car, one of
(20:32):
the things we've talked about is that you might be
able to redesign the cars structure with lightweight composite materials.
So that it might be edging closer to reasonability that
this could take off and land with some kind of
electric motor, right, because you're lowering the weight, but you're
not compromising the strength of the structure. Now, the second
(20:52):
line of research that they want to combine with that
first one is looking at materials that would be capable
of changing their shape to adapt to flight conditions. So
this would be like and there have been aircraft that
can do this where they can they have wings that
can change shape during flight in order to give um
(21:13):
different effects, like to increase or reduce drag. This is
in large part to reduce the need for things like
flaps on an aircraft, so it actually can reduce weight,
it can reduce complexity of the aircraft a fewere little
mechanical bits to get broken. Yeah, So if you could
do both, if you could create a composite material that
(21:35):
also had this shape changing adaptation technology built into it,
then you could have an aircraft that is able to
be very effective and much greener because it's it's lighter,
so it doesn't need um as much power to remain aloft,
whether that's electric or fuel or whatever. Um and it
(21:56):
has fewer parts so it doesn't have to it doesn't
need as much main's it's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, So
those are all of the kind of hardware studies that
are going on. The last three are more on the
software end, right. So the first one is the autonomy
operating system for u A v s. And we've seen
autonomous u a v s. They're pretty nifty, you know,
(22:17):
the ones that can follow simple instructions. A lot of
u a v s are under direct human control, it's
a remote control, but some are autonomously operated. But in
general U a v s are not great at reacting
to changing dynamic situations. I know I'm being redundant there,
but still they're not being They're not able to react
(22:38):
the way a human pilot can. Sure. Well, I mean
this is the reason we don't just have autonomous airplanes
pretty much, right, I Mean, we have autopilot that works
just fine, but you want a human pilot there who
can react if something goes wrong, right, right, So you know,
if you command a a U a V to travel
from point A to point B and has a pre
(23:00):
programmed flight path and everything is fine, then as long
as everything's working properly on the U A V you
have a reasonable expectation that's going to arrive at point B. Again,
also assuming that has enough energy to get there. You know,
all those assumptions aside. It should get to its destination.
But if conditions change, the U A V may not
(23:20):
be able to detect it, or if it can detect
it, it it may not be able to react to it.
So something like whether yeah, sure, sure if there's a
thunderstorm that was unexpected in the area and the U
A V needs to change course, yeah, exactly, or that
there is what if a monkey jumps out of the
top of a tree right after it takes off, grabs
hold of the U A V and then is holding on.
(23:41):
That's could happen. What if? What if what if the
U A V? What if a flock of birds flies
in the U A V's path? I mean, there are
lots of different situations that could potentially have What if
a flock of monkeys flies you know, actually was the
banded flock of seagulls is playing while the V I
think runs run so far away? I think a flock
(24:02):
of birds is what happened to that that aircraft that
had to land in the Hudson Rivers after Captain Selley, Right, yeah,
is what happened. So, and there was a case where
you really needed a human pilot who knew what to
do when something went wrong, everyone lauded the pilot's efforts
to to land the plane or to crash land the
(24:24):
plane safely. UM, same sort of thing here. The u
a V s generally lack the ability to make these
kind of assessments and and change plans spontaneously. They're very
good at following specific instructions and and following a simple
series of steps because because their robots, that's what that's
what robots do. But creating an AI that allows them
(24:47):
the ability to to change in changing conditions is something
that this project would specifically be exploring. So they'll be
looking into recent developments of AI and seeing how to
apply them so that a ua V would be able
to do an emergency medical lift from Alaska and fly
to the Mayo clinic even if conditions are not stable
(25:09):
between the two. So that's that's pretty cool. The next
one is learn to fly. Now, this study is all
about looking into the possibility of getting rid of that
pesky testing phase that we have with aircraft. UM. This
may be more of an industry problem. Yeah, this one,
This one is a little this one is a little
(25:31):
weird for me to think of because I don't know
how I feel about this. I mean, I understand the concept,
the concept being we know a lot about aeronautics. We've
got a lot of experience in it. We have very
sophisticated computer models that can simulate conditions. That all goes
into the process when anyone is designing anything new with aeronautics,
(25:54):
testing anything out, there's always computer simulation that precedes any prototype.
Oh sure, it's a lot cheaper to to simulate building
a giant metal thing that it needs to actually do
it and go like, well this fly, let's just take it.
Let's just throw it off a cliff and find out. Yeah,
especially if if you find out that it does not fly.
It's much cheaper to do that in a computer then
(26:16):
to find out in real life. So the Learn to
Fly program is a study to look into do we
know enough at this point where if we create a design,
we can run it through computer simulations to test that
design thoroughly enough so that we can go straight from
design to building. The whatever that change in aeronautics happens
(26:38):
to be and implementing it directly and skipping that that
ground test period where you would typically build a test
vehicle and then do several test flights to make sure
everything was working. The question is can we skip that
step at this point? Do we know enough to be
able to skip that step? That's what that study is
specifically going to look at. And if that is true,
(27:00):
if we can do that, it means that we can
move into an era where there's much more rapid prototyping
and development, where the things that we are designing can
be incorporated without that long period of testing. But that's
what the study is going to look at. What is
that actually reality? Could that really be us? Are we
(27:21):
at that point yet? Are do we just need to
go poke stuff? Yeah? Yeah, exactly? And which is it's
it's good to hold a study to figure that out
rather than just say, hey, guys, let's try something now.
The final one is kind of interesting too. It's called
digital twin. I liked this idea. I thought this was interesting.
So the idea here is that they would study the
feasibility of building a virtual model of an airplane of
(27:46):
a real existing airplane. Would it's twin throughout its life
and then every time anything happens to the real airplane,
you update the virtual airplane to match it. And yeah,
and also can see the effects of aging because the
the virtual airplane will age the same way the actual
(28:07):
one does. I assume you could even accelerate the aging
just to see at what point is this one particular
component going to need to be replaced. Sure, I think
that's a really interesting and smart idea, because I've often
wondered this, like, Okay, we have a lot of fairly
old airplanes out there that are still in operation. This
(28:27):
seemed to be doing fine, but how long until they're
not doing fine? And how are we gonna know? Yeah,
do we have to wait for something to break in
order to or is it? Like is it I'm sure
that there's systems out there, you know, like my car
where they go you know, well, it's a hundred thousand miles.
You should really take it in for a transmission job
something like that. Ladies and gentlemen, I have just been
(28:48):
informed that the check engine light has come on the
control panel, So we're going to have air traffic Control
come out and check that. Yeah, I mean it's it's
it's true. We do first of all, aircraft have lots
of different uh, notification systems on them to let you
know if something is not working, but sometimes those fail.
They're also regular maintenance checks obviously of aircraft, but this
(29:10):
would be a way of getting a heads up before
something becomes a problem where it needs to be repaired.
Like you could say, all right, according to the model,
these five components of this aircraft are going to need
to be replaced next month. Let's do it now before
anything gets to a point where it gets critical. Yeah, yeah, no,
(29:31):
I I love this idea. I'm actually vaguely surprised that
that it's not already in operation. I also just I
really want them to call it the picture of Dorian
gray As long as long as this graphics file exists,
this plane will not deteriorate in any way. But the
plane and the graphics file gets more and more decrepit
as time goes on. Look at the long gray Beard
(29:54):
and this plane. That'd be weird. Uh what kind of
airplane would Oscar Wild create? It would be a fabulous Yeah,
we're on the same page on that one, all right.
So that those are the six ideas. Now we don't
have a whole lot more information because these these projects
(30:14):
have just gotten the green lights, so they're going to
start seriously looking into the stuff. They get some funding.
The funding depends upon the project. I think it's between
one and five million dollars a year or something like that,
which is a significant amount. Yeah, the projects are going
to last between two and two and a half years.
They were just announced yesterday as of the recording of
(30:34):
this podcast on June twenty second. So uh yeah, I'm
excited to see what news develops, right and to talk
about those other two parts anti a c P. Just
to close this out, Lauren mentioned the Transformational Tools and
Technology or t t T. That's all about advancing computational
and experimental tools used by NASA and aviation applications. So
(30:57):
they look into developing advances in technology will help analyze, understand,
and predict performance in various aviation concepts. So the cool
thing about this his T T T is innovating in
a way to make the tools to help judge how
effective the other stuff being developed by the various branches
of T A c P. You know, how effective are
(31:19):
those and so it's it's uh, you know, sometimes you
have to actually develop new tools to measure things to
make sure that whatever the um the hoped for effect
is is actually being achieved. So that's pretty cool. It's
all about developing those ideas that make other ideas uh,
you know, we can judge whether or not they're really working.
And then the leading edge arrow research for NASSA or
(31:42):
LEARN is all about looking to creating totally new next
generation capabilities and aeronautics research. So again kind of looking
for the next huge leap um. Keeping in mind that
usually advances and engineering come in lots of little steps, right.
We get, we learned things, we implement them, We make
(32:03):
incremental improvements to the stuff that we build. We don't
typically have enormous jumps. Although that those are very popular stories.
Everyone loves the story of someone who comes up with
a brand new, innovative idea that makes a huge difference.
We just have to remember that's the exception, not the rule.
The rule is we tend to make gradual improvements over time,
(32:25):
which is fine, um, And nothing should be taken away
from the thousands of people who have contributed to those
small increments. Those are things that have had a measurable impact.
Oh yeah, definitely, and that's why. Yeah, it's it's really
nice that that NASA helps support independent universities and research
(32:46):
teams that are working on that kind of thing. Right,
those are the ones that specifically are participating in the
Learn project. So yeah, really exciting stuff. I can't wait
to find out in two to two and a half
years which of these studies are going to tribute to
real changes in aviation. Again, we may end up in
the process learning things that were never anticipated at the
(33:07):
beginning of these projects. So it's hard to say. If
you make a virtual twin of an aircraft, apparently it's
always an evil twin. So all of them have gotes
which then developed into the long beards we've already discussed,
or possibly we learned that the digital twin feels all
the pain the original airplane fields. Who knows. There's all
(33:27):
these sort of things that we could learn and and
and fun knowledge that will be handy in pub trivia
and years to come. So uh, this was a This
was a blast to cover. If you guys have suggestions
for future topics that we can cover on this podcast
or in the video series, I welcome you to right
to us and let us know what your ideas are.
Our email address is fw thinking at how stuff Works
(33:50):
dot com, or drop us a line on Twitter, Facebook
or Google Plus. At Twitter and Google Plus, we are
FW thinking on Facebook. Just search fw thinking in the
search bar will pop right up. You can leave us
a message there. We read all of them, and you'll
hear from us again. Really sin For more on this
(34:10):
topic in the future of technology, I visit Forward Thinking
dot com h brought to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places,
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there we went, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
the podcast that looks at the future and says I said, doctor,
Mr m D. Can't you tell me what's ailing me?
(00:20):
I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Bulkabon, and I'm Joe McCormick.
And for the second time this week, we're gonna be
touching on an aviation related theme. Yeah, we apparently have
airplanes on the brain. Yeah. So have you all been
on an airplane lately? Uh? Yeah, actually not long ago
in May? Yeah, for me, it was earlier this month.
(00:43):
Where did you fly Outer Banks? Well, technically I flew
into Norfolk, Virginia. Then we rented a car and went
to the Outer Banks. Nice. Yeah, sunny, sunny Fort Lauderdale.
I haven't been on a plane since last year. I'm
just wondering. Was there anything remarkable lead different in your
experience of flying as far as the actual like technology
(01:04):
of flight was concerned when you went on that flight
compared to the one before it. Uh nope, nope, not yeah,
not for me either. I Mean the most remarkable thing
was that Delta had once again updated their safety video,
which now includes Oh no, no, actually, I really like
I'm very fond of the kind of cheesy Delta safety videos.
(01:24):
I'm I really like them. They started with the the
flight attendant who would would wag her finger, right, so
they so she kind of started it off, and then
they sort of took that ball and ran with it.
Sort of took an inspiration from some of the commercials
out there that have been very silly. The reason why
(01:47):
I even asked this, you know, I've gotten off in
this weird tangent, is that I wanted to talk about
a recent news item about the possibility that aviation could
see some rap bid changes in technology and and uh
engineering due to a project at NASA. Huh. Now, we've
(02:10):
talked about the possibilities in the future of aviation on
the podcast before, but yeah, today we wanted to talk
about a specific call for R and D. Yeah, yeah, Now,
we have talked also about NASA having some pretty you know,
far out there R and D branches already. There's of
course Eagle Works, right, which is associated with the M drive,
(02:33):
which we discussed in our episode. I think it was
probably called the M drive, or probably had the word
m drive in there. You can look it up. Yeah,
they're they're all about they're all about long shot propulsion
physics ideas that probably won't work, but if they do work,
it would be awesome. And and it's there specifically put
(02:53):
together to say, hey, you know, let's go on the
fringe for this stuff, because if it works, it's the
benefits are outstanding. And if it doesn't, well then maybe
we'll learn stuff in the process. It's kind only playing
the lottery. You're not likely to win, but if you
do awesome, right exactly, I assume that's the way you
were thinking of either and either way you might learn,
(03:17):
and either way you might learn something about math in
the processes you and I hope learned something about math.
So the one we're going to talk about now is
is a project called the Convergent Aeronautics Solutions Project or
c a S. All right, because Eagle Works is certainly
not the only branch of NASA that does research and development,
(03:38):
and it's not even the only one that does, you know,
pretty far out their ideas. NASA has several areas, several
several divisions or projects that are all about uh inspiring
and welcoming some revolutionary approaches to technology to really advance aeronautics. Yeah,
we often forget what that first A and NASA stands for.
(04:00):
We tend to think of NASA as the space organization,
and you know, space is probably cooler than airplanes, so
it's easier to remember. But yeah, they deal with aeronautics. Yeah,
so c A s that that Convergent Aeronautics Solutions Project
I just mentioned. Is itself a branch of the Transformative
Aeronautics Concepts Program or t A c P within NASA. Yes,
(04:25):
so the t A c P is its purposes to
cultivate multidisciplinary revolutionary concepts to enable aviation transformation. That's straight
from their web page over at NASA. And in other words,
it's all about experimentation and rapid development of technologies that
could advance our aeronautics technology. Now, the t A c
(04:48):
P is itself a branch of NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission
Directorate or Armed but not Dangerous But not dangerous, I
guess you know aeronautics. I guess there's an element of
danger that comes with the territory. This director. It recognizes
the impacts that aviation has on the economy and infrastructure
(05:11):
of our nation and aims to develop ever more efficient
aviation technology. You know, like cheaper, better, stronger, faster, more green.
Isn't that a daft punk thing? Cheaper, better, stronger, faster,
more green thing must speak think of a different song.
It's just a joke. Better, faster, strong, never mind, I understand. Okay,
(05:33):
I'm waiting for you to proceed. I see you're allowed,
but I can't do it. So there are three programs
encompassed by the T A c P. That's a C
A S which we're talking about today, along with Transformational
Tools and Technologies or T T T, which is a
software development program and Leading Edge Arrow research for NASA,
(05:55):
or LEARN, which is a program that awards grants to
external universities in law for aeronautics research. We will talk
more about those later, ye, just to give a kind
of wrap up to the whole Like what is this
whole section of NASA all about? Okay, but what's the
deal with C A S. Well, they're dedicated to conducting
short duration activities to establish early stage concepts and technology
(06:18):
feasibility for high potential solutions. Those are not my words,
those are NASA's words, that sounds like a mission statement.
What does that actually mean? Well, it's it's all about
this idea of let's let's try and invest in projects
that have the potential to advance aeronautics dramatically, um even
(06:41):
if we aren't completely convinced that they will succeed. Right,
it's asking, it's taking projects from within NASA, carried out
by NASA employees that are these weird experimental, high risk,
high reward kind of things, right, and so they the
teams at c A S. Whenever they're working on a project,
(07:05):
they're specifically supposed to conduct experiments, they're supposed to learn
from their failures, and supposed to be an environment where
you can take these these risks, not knowing if it's
going to succeed or fail, and there's not repercussions. If
you do fail, you're just expected to learn from those failures,
and hopefully you would you would be able to learn
ways of carrying out the experiment successfully. But if it
(07:28):
turns out there is no way of succeeding, you're still
going to learn in the process. You're also supposed to
continue conducting those experiments and you repeat this until you
reach the end of the research cycle, which maybe two
to two and a half years, and at that point, uh,
the team's performance and work is reviewed to determine if
the solutions that were developed by the team actually address
(07:48):
the issue and meet the pre established goals for that project.
Whatever they might be. Now they have to be. They don't.
It's not that they have to work, just that they
have to work. They do. But beyond having to work,
they have to be feasible ideas, so in other words,
like real world feasible, like not like theoretically right right
where you're like laboratory feasible Exactly. It can't be something
(08:10):
where in the lab if we pour in four cities
worth of electricity into this thing, then we can get
it to float an inch off the ground. That's not
a success. Even if you achieve we open a black
hole inside the engine and it goes really far, Yeah,
we go to a totally different place. Uh No, that
(08:31):
that would not. That would also not because there's a
success that would be catastrophic. So the promising solutions, the
ones that NASA feels, you know, the various people who
are reviewing these projects, the ones that they feel are
feasible and beneficial, would then be pursued by moving that
project over to a different arm of NASA or a
(08:52):
direct transfer of knowledge to the aviation community to say, hey,
we did this experiment where we designed an air craft
wing in this way and found that it generates much
more left in this manner, We're giving that information out
to everybody so that everyone can benefit from it. That's
the idea behind it. So um it's also very similar
(09:14):
to what we've set on Forward Thinking many many times,
the idea that it's all right if you pursue a
line of research and you ultimately find that it's not
viable because you learn that, you learn that it's not viable,
and you maybe even learn why and can apply that
to future projects which might become feasible. Yeah, it's it's
(09:34):
impossible to anticipate everything that you will learn. Whenever you
are pursuing any given line of research, right, you might
learn something that is not germane to the specific goal
that you have been assigned, but could be very interesting
for other applications. So there there's real value to research,
and that's something that NASA is really promoting within the
(09:55):
organization itself, and it's something that we on Forward Thinking
have promoted quite a few times, so specifically we wanted
to talk about. There was an article, several articles actually,
it was reported all over the science news sphere that
the c A S Project was entertaining six wild aviation
ideas well. First of all, each team there were several
(10:18):
things that had a competition. It was a competition. It
was actually, uh, they were inviting people to pitch ideas
to the c A S Project. So they were like,
bring us your weirdest ideas for how to make airplanes
much better. Kind of They had a little bit more
of a guideline than that, but though not by a
whole lot. They they told each team they would have
(10:39):
to explain their idea and approach and uh, what they
were going to do. They would have to justify it
to a panel made up of NASA managers. So it
almost comes across like one of those shows like Shark
Tank where the team, you know, an entrepreneur has to
has to present their business model and try and defend
it from experts who are either enchanted by it or
(11:00):
just you know, they're perplexed, they don't know what or
or they just aren't impressed at all. Yeah, we should
make airplanes. They doublest food drugs. Yeah, that would that
would probably uh not make it through to the next round.
Um So the play for themselves, Yeah, I think they've
(11:21):
already learned that lesson from the way that airlines are
handling food. Now. Every team had to have a membership
made up of experts from multiple disciplines and have members
from more than one NASA Aeronautics Center. There are three
or four of those, as I recall, uh, And the
teams had to come up with an answer, a potential
answer to one of two big questions. Their their study
that they want to conduct is supposed to address one
(11:42):
of two big ones, the first big question, and it's
an or and either or not a they have to
answer both questions. Um So. The first one was can
we demonstrate an aviation system with maximum efficiency and minimal
environmental impact? Which can be interpreted in many different ways,
and in fact, we'll see from some of the selected
(12:03):
projects how those interpretations were made. The second one was
demonstrate the feasibility for urgent medical transportation from the wilderness
of Alaska to the Mayo clinic without human interaction. That's
a very different kind of requirement, right, And and they
specifically said, like, yes, the way we framed this was
so that you would have specific parameters to work within
(12:25):
to design your approach, but the solution would be applicable
across the world and all sorts of different scenarios. They
just specifically framed it in this way, just just to
give you something to work towards. Was the idea, Not
that we're planning on having a lot of medical disasters
to Alaska that need to go to Mayo Clinic. No, sure,
it seems kind of like the Darker Robotics challenge, right.
(12:47):
It's a it's a specific scenario, but it's designed so
that you can test what can be done and applied
to many scenarios. It's very apt. Yes, that's exactly right. So,
out of the seventeen teams that pitched ideas, six were
selected for study. They would be the wild and or
crazy ideas we have mentioned before, and the study cycle
(13:08):
will last between two and two and a half years,
depending upon the individual studies. And here are the six. Okay,
the first one, Yeah, there's a problem with electric vehicles.
They got batteries. Batteries terrible, They're gigantic, they're big, they
take up a lot of space, and they they contribute weight. Yeah, aircraft,
(13:31):
by the way, weight not something you want to add
to an aircraft if you can help it, because then
you need more energy to keep the aircraft aloft. And
if you're using more energy, then it's not so green now,
is it. Or maybe you have decreased the amount of
time it can spend in the air and perhaps it's
not a practical solution. Need a bigger battery, which makes
you need to use more energy, which makes you need
(13:52):
a bigger battery. Which. Yeah, So we when we talked
about the solar powered aircraft and how it's it's designed. Um,
the one that's slowly making its way around the world.
It uh you know, that was the solar Impulse to
solar impulse to it. Their design was such that they
were trying to maximize the effectiveness of batteries while minimizing
(14:14):
their weight because obviously, if you're using electricity to propel
your your aircraft, um, you want to cut back on
that weight as much as you can. So how can
you do that? Well, the first one we're talking about
is the Multi Functional Structures with Energy Storage project, which
is pretty catchy. They're actually looking at making batteries, so
(14:37):
that the batteries themselves form the shape of the vehicle. Yeah,
they're they're they're the that's the casing. It's the actual
material that thee Yeah. So basically the plane is the battery.
To have all this like structural material there and then
(14:57):
put a battery in it, you just have the structure
of the plane and be a battery. Right. The walls
of the structure are our batteries. They're not. The batteries
aren't added to an already existing infrastructure. They are the infrastructure.
Which is really a cool idea. It's not unique to
the aeronautics industry. In fact, the automotive industry has been
(15:19):
looking at this where Yeah, I've read about battery designs
for electric vehicles that would work this way. Yeah, they
would be incorporated in the roof of the car or
the walls of the car, so that you know, you
don't have this large space. It also adds the carrying capacity,
you know, to the vehicle where you can you can
use the space that would have been you know, filled
(15:40):
up with batteries to hold other stuff. Now, I remember
one problem that went along with this when I was
reading about it in cars was that it sort of
made it a problem if you have a collision, right, right,
I would I would imagine that would be a difficult
point of of when the body of the thing can
catch directly on fire. Usually the body of vehicles is
(16:01):
made specifically to not catch on fire, but batteries are
pretty notoriously flammable. Yeah, it's it seems like it would
also be a problem just that you would hurt the
reusability of the car and its recoverability from even the
small accident if just like damaging you know, one of
the sides of the car or something, actually damage the
power source. Yeah, you would probably have to have it replaced.
(16:24):
It would make it. It would make the maintenance or
at least the repairs much more expensive potentially anyway. Uh,
And I'm sure those will be some of the things
that the study will have to look at too to
measure that risk versus payoff. Like, yes, it makes sense,
does it. That's part of the real world challenge, right, Yeah,
and it's an interesting question. Other teams are also looking
(16:47):
at how the batteries and motors of of these systems
can be improved. Yeah. The high voltage hybrid electric propulsion
system is one of number two. This is number two,
and they are looking at two different things. One is
they were looking at a way of cutting back on
that expense of if your power transmission system is damaged,
(17:10):
how can you how can you address that? So they're
looking at self healing materials their high voltage system. This
is so delightful to me. It's the kind of stuff
that that the insulation of their electrical systems would be
made of stuff if they can find such stuff that that,
upon receiving damage, would be prompted to like like like
(17:34):
the the damage that it receives in the form of
physical or electric uh punch would cause it to heal
over that damage. Essentially, the electricity passing through this the
chemicals that are bonded to that insulation would prompt it
to to expand and close those wounds. Uh. And the
(17:56):
cool thing about this is that it would really cut
back on maintenance costs. It would also allow the aircraft
to automatically address any sort of emergency situation that involved
the damage to the power system without requiring an emergency landing.
It would do it all automatically and there's no like,
there's no switch to throw or anything. It's because of
(18:16):
the chemical It's material science, right, it's chemistry, material science
that uh that allowed this to happen. At least that's
what they're hoping to to study and and develop. Keep
in mind, these are all proposals. This is not stuff
that necessarily exists right now. Concept. Yeah. So the second
part of their approach is that, uh, they want to
(18:41):
explore ways to make the electric system practical for aircraft.
So they want to make electrical systems that will have
a reasonable size and weight, very similar to the battery issue,
not just batteries, but the electric motors, all the all
the infrastructure that would come with an electrical power system
in order to make it feasible, and they to explore
options in high voltage. Variable frequency drives and v f
(19:04):
d s are sort of control systems for engines. They
can really save energy by changing an engine speed and
torque as needed, kind of on the fly, literally on
the fly in this case, because airplanes. Uh sorry, anyway,
I ever apologize for a pun Embrace them? Oh No,
I don't know. I don't like embracing them. They're all sticky.
(19:26):
The dark side. Um vfd s are currently used in
industrial manufacturing and ships. But but there are these big, old,
clunky mechanical things controlled by big old clunky computers, and
so they're they're not as of yet practical for airplanes.
So I'm excited to see what this project winds up
looking at. Yeah, that that should also be interesting. And
remember all of these have the potential to revolutionize aeronautics
(19:50):
in some way or another, right, that's the whole reason
why they were selected. Number three is Mission Adaptive Digital
Composite Aerostructure Technologies, And this is one of the ones
that I'm really excited about. It's a material science one
and super cool stuff so one. This is another kind
of two parter um. They want to combine two different
(20:10):
lines of research into a new approach, and in aeronautics,
one of those is a material science in the form
of composite materials. And now composite materials can be incredibly
light and incredibly strong. We have talked about compositive composite
materials on this show before. Yeah. For example, if you
wanted to create an actually feasible flying car, one of
(20:32):
the things we've talked about is that you might be
able to redesign the cars structure with lightweight composite materials.
So that it might be edging closer to reasonability that
this could take off and land with some kind of
electric motor, right, because you're lowering the weight, but you're
not compromising the strength of the structure. Now, the second
(20:52):
line of research that they want to combine with that
first one is looking at materials that would be capable
of changing their shape to adapt to flight conditions. So
this would be like and there have been aircraft that
can do this where they can they have wings that
can change shape during flight in order to give um
(21:13):
different effects, like to increase or reduce drag. This is
in large part to reduce the need for things like
flaps on an aircraft, so it actually can reduce weight,
it can reduce complexity of the aircraft a fewere little
mechanical bits to get broken. Yeah, So if you could
do both, if you could create a composite material that
(21:35):
also had this shape changing adaptation technology built into it,
then you could have an aircraft that is able to
be very effective and much greener because it's it's lighter,
so it doesn't need um as much power to remain aloft,
whether that's electric or fuel or whatever. Um and it
(21:56):
has fewer parts so it doesn't have to it doesn't
need as much main's it's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, So
those are all of the kind of hardware studies that
are going on. The last three are more on the
software end, right. So the first one is the autonomy
operating system for u A v s. And we've seen
autonomous u a v s. They're pretty nifty, you know,
(22:17):
the ones that can follow simple instructions. A lot of
u a v s are under direct human control, it's
a remote control, but some are autonomously operated. But in
general U a v s are not great at reacting
to changing dynamic situations. I know I'm being redundant there,
but still they're not being They're not able to react
(22:38):
the way a human pilot can. Sure. Well, I mean
this is the reason we don't just have autonomous airplanes
pretty much, right, I Mean, we have autopilot that works
just fine, but you want a human pilot there who
can react if something goes wrong, right, right, So you know,
if you command a a U a V to travel
from point A to point B and has a pre
(23:00):
programmed flight path and everything is fine, then as long
as everything's working properly on the U A V you
have a reasonable expectation that's going to arrive at point B. Again,
also assuming that has enough energy to get there. You know,
all those assumptions aside. It should get to its destination.
But if conditions change, the U A V may not
(23:20):
be able to detect it, or if it can detect
it, it it may not be able to react to it.
So something like whether yeah, sure, sure if there's a
thunderstorm that was unexpected in the area and the U
A V needs to change course, yeah, exactly, or that
there is what if a monkey jumps out of the
top of a tree right after it takes off, grabs
hold of the U A V and then is holding on.
(23:41):
That's could happen. What if? What if what if the
U A V? What if a flock of birds flies
in the U A V's path? I mean, there are
lots of different situations that could potentially have What if
a flock of monkeys flies you know, actually was the
banded flock of seagulls is playing while the V I
think runs run so far away? I think a flock
(24:02):
of birds is what happened to that that aircraft that
had to land in the Hudson Rivers after Captain Selley, Right, yeah,
is what happened. So, and there was a case where
you really needed a human pilot who knew what to
do when something went wrong, everyone lauded the pilot's efforts
to to land the plane or to crash land the
(24:24):
plane safely. UM, same sort of thing here. The u
a V s generally lack the ability to make these
kind of assessments and and change plans spontaneously. They're very
good at following specific instructions and and following a simple
series of steps because because their robots, that's what that's
what robots do. But creating an AI that allows them
(24:47):
the ability to to change in changing conditions is something
that this project would specifically be exploring. So they'll be
looking into recent developments of AI and seeing how to
apply them so that a ua V would be able
to do an emergency medical lift from Alaska and fly
to the Mayo clinic even if conditions are not stable
(25:09):
between the two. So that's that's pretty cool. The next
one is learn to fly. Now, this study is all
about looking into the possibility of getting rid of that
pesky testing phase that we have with aircraft. UM. This
may be more of an industry problem. Yeah, this one,
This one is a little this one is a little
(25:31):
weird for me to think of because I don't know
how I feel about this. I mean, I understand the concept,
the concept being we know a lot about aeronautics. We've
got a lot of experience in it. We have very
sophisticated computer models that can simulate conditions. That all goes
into the process when anyone is designing anything new with aeronautics,
(25:54):
testing anything out, there's always computer simulation that precedes any prototype.
Oh sure, it's a lot cheaper to to simulate building
a giant metal thing that it needs to actually do
it and go like, well this fly, let's just take it.
Let's just throw it off a cliff and find out. Yeah,
especially if if you find out that it does not fly.
It's much cheaper to do that in a computer then
(26:16):
to find out in real life. So the Learn to
Fly program is a study to look into do we
know enough at this point where if we create a design,
we can run it through computer simulations to test that
design thoroughly enough so that we can go straight from
design to building. The whatever that change in aeronautics happens
(26:38):
to be and implementing it directly and skipping that that
ground test period where you would typically build a test
vehicle and then do several test flights to make sure
everything was working. The question is can we skip that
step at this point? Do we know enough to be
able to skip that step? That's what that study is
specifically going to look at. And if that is true,
(27:00):
if we can do that, it means that we can
move into an era where there's much more rapid prototyping
and development, where the things that we are designing can
be incorporated without that long period of testing. But that's
what the study is going to look at. What is
that actually reality? Could that really be us? Are we
(27:21):
at that point yet? Are do we just need to
go poke stuff? Yeah? Yeah, exactly? And which is it's
it's good to hold a study to figure that out
rather than just say, hey, guys, let's try something now.
The final one is kind of interesting too. It's called
digital twin. I liked this idea. I thought this was interesting.
So the idea here is that they would study the
feasibility of building a virtual model of an airplane of
(27:46):
a real existing airplane. Would it's twin throughout its life
and then every time anything happens to the real airplane,
you update the virtual airplane to match it. And yeah,
and also can see the effects of aging because the
the virtual airplane will age the same way the actual
(28:07):
one does. I assume you could even accelerate the aging
just to see at what point is this one particular
component going to need to be replaced. Sure, I think
that's a really interesting and smart idea, because I've often
wondered this, like, Okay, we have a lot of fairly
old airplanes out there that are still in operation. This
(28:27):
seemed to be doing fine, but how long until they're
not doing fine? And how are we gonna know? Yeah,
do we have to wait for something to break in
order to or is it? Like is it I'm sure
that there's systems out there, you know, like my car
where they go you know, well, it's a hundred thousand miles.
You should really take it in for a transmission job
something like that. Ladies and gentlemen, I have just been
(28:48):
informed that the check engine light has come on the
control panel, So we're going to have air traffic Control
come out and check that. Yeah, I mean it's it's
it's true. We do first of all, aircraft have lots
of different uh, notification systems on them to let you
know if something is not working, but sometimes those fail.
They're also regular maintenance checks obviously of aircraft, but this
(29:10):
would be a way of getting a heads up before
something becomes a problem where it needs to be repaired.
Like you could say, all right, according to the model,
these five components of this aircraft are going to need
to be replaced next month. Let's do it now before
anything gets to a point where it gets critical. Yeah, yeah, no,
(29:31):
I I love this idea. I'm actually vaguely surprised that
that it's not already in operation. I also just I
really want them to call it the picture of Dorian
gray As long as long as this graphics file exists,
this plane will not deteriorate in any way. But the
plane and the graphics file gets more and more decrepit
as time goes on. Look at the long gray Beard
(29:54):
and this plane. That'd be weird. Uh what kind of
airplane would Oscar Wild create? It would be a fabulous Yeah,
we're on the same page on that one, all right.
So that those are the six ideas. Now we don't
have a whole lot more information because these these projects
(30:14):
have just gotten the green lights, so they're going to
start seriously looking into the stuff. They get some funding.
The funding depends upon the project. I think it's between
one and five million dollars a year or something like that,
which is a significant amount. Yeah, the projects are going
to last between two and two and a half years.
They were just announced yesterday as of the recording of
(30:34):
this podcast on June twenty second. So uh yeah, I'm
excited to see what news develops, right and to talk
about those other two parts anti a c P. Just
to close this out, Lauren mentioned the Transformational Tools and
Technology or t t T. That's all about advancing computational
and experimental tools used by NASA and aviation applications. So
(30:57):
they look into developing advances in technology will help analyze, understand,
and predict performance in various aviation concepts. So the cool
thing about this his T T T is innovating in
a way to make the tools to help judge how
effective the other stuff being developed by the various branches
of T A c P. You know, how effective are
(31:19):
those and so it's it's uh, you know, sometimes you
have to actually develop new tools to measure things to
make sure that whatever the um the hoped for effect
is is actually being achieved. So that's pretty cool. It's
all about developing those ideas that make other ideas uh,
you know, we can judge whether or not they're really working.
And then the leading edge arrow research for NASSA or
(31:42):
LEARN is all about looking to creating totally new next
generation capabilities and aeronautics research. So again kind of looking
for the next huge leap um. Keeping in mind that
usually advances and engineering come in lots of little steps, right.
We get, we learned things, we implement them, We make
(32:03):
incremental improvements to the stuff that we build. We don't
typically have enormous jumps. Although that those are very popular stories.
Everyone loves the story of someone who comes up with
a brand new, innovative idea that makes a huge difference.
We just have to remember that's the exception, not the rule.
The rule is we tend to make gradual improvements over time,
(32:25):
which is fine, um, And nothing should be taken away
from the thousands of people who have contributed to those
small increments. Those are things that have had a measurable impact.
Oh yeah, definitely, and that's why. Yeah, it's it's really
nice that that NASA helps support independent universities and research
(32:46):
teams that are working on that kind of thing. Right,
those are the ones that specifically are participating in the
Learn project. So yeah, really exciting stuff. I can't wait
to find out in two to two and a half
years which of these studies are going to tribute to
real changes in aviation. Again, we may end up in
the process learning things that were never anticipated at the
(33:07):
beginning of these projects. So it's hard to say. If
you make a virtual twin of an aircraft, apparently it's
always an evil twin. So all of them have gotes
which then developed into the long beards we've already discussed,
or possibly we learned that the digital twin feels all
the pain the original airplane fields. Who knows. There's all
(33:27):
these sort of things that we could learn and and
and fun knowledge that will be handy in pub trivia
and years to come. So uh, this was a This
was a blast to cover. If you guys have suggestions
for future topics that we can cover on this podcast
or in the video series, I welcome you to right
to us and let us know what your ideas are.
Our email address is fw thinking at how stuff Works
(33:50):
dot com, or drop us a line on Twitter, Facebook
or Google Plus. At Twitter and Google Plus, we are
FW thinking on Facebook. Just search fw thinking in the
search bar will pop right up. You can leave us
a message there. We read all of them, and you'll
hear from us again. Really sin For more on this
(34:10):
topic in the future of technology, I visit Forward Thinking
dot com h brought to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places,
Fw:Thinking News
Hosts And Creators
Jonathan Strickland
Joe McCormick
Lauren Vogelbaum
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