Main Engine Cut Off - T+230: Bob Pearce, Associate Administrator of NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate

Episode Date: September 19, 2022

Bob Pearce, Associate Administrator of NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, joins me to talk about Aeronautics at NASA. We talk about how the directorate fits into the agency overall, how they develop its strategic direction, how they choose which projects to take on, how they transfer technology to industry, what they’re working on right now, and what they’ll tackle in the future.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 42 executive producers—Simon, Kris, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Ryan, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, Moritz, Joel, Jan, David, Joonas, Robb, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), Frank, Julian and Lars from Agile Space, Matt, The Astrogators at SEE, Chris, Aegis Trade Law, Fred, Hemant, Dawn Aerospace, Andrew, Harrison, Benjamin, SmallSpark Space Systems, Schultzy, and seven anonymous—and 844 other supporters.TopicsMr. Robert A. Pearce, Associate Administrator | NASAAeronautics Research Mission Directorate | NASAArmstrong Flight Research Center | NASAAmes Research Center | NASAGlenn Research Center | NASALangley Research Center | NASANASA Armstrong Fact Sheet: F-8 Supercritical Wing | NASANASA Helps Create a More Silent Night | NASAQuesst | NASAElectric Propulsion Airplane | NASAAdvanced Air Mobility (AAM) | NASAAirspace Operations and Safety Program | NASAWhat is Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management? | NASASustainable Flight Demonstrator Project | NASAThe ShowLike the show? Support the show!Email your thoughts, comments, and questions to [e-mail] @WeHaveMECOListen to MECO HeadlinesJoin the Off-Nominal DiscordSubscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhereSubscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off NewsletterMusic by Max JustusArtwork photo by NASA/Joel Kowsky

Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff. I am Anthony Colangelo and today we have a very special guest with us. It is Bob Pierce, the Associate Administrator of NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate. He is the Head of Aeronautics at NASA, which is a very important part of NASA. We always forget. I say we as in space nerds tend to forget that the first A in NASA is aeronautics. It is a huge part of what the agency does. It's a huge part of what the agency does that makes its way into normal people's lives and something that I think a lot of people can connect with even more so than human spaceflight. So it's definitely an important part of the agency and something that I have not talked about on the show up until now, which is real

shame. But it's a great opportunity to dive into what they're working on, the things that the at that part of the administration does and how it works, how it differs from some of the space side, how it interacts with the space side. So we're gonna have a long conversation about everything they're up to the way they work across centers, how it all goes down in the aeronautics side, and what things we should be watching for the near future. So without further ado, let's talk to Bob. All right, Bob Pierce, welcome to Main Engine Cutoff. Thanks for hanging out with us for a while today.

It's my pleasure. Before we get into the aeronautics side of it, I do want to hear about your history and how you got to where you're at today, because it seems like you have quite a cool story. You've been part of NASA since, I think I read, 1990. I won't tell you what year I was born, but it was maybe the next year. So my entire life, Bob Pierce has been at NASA, and I'd love to hear the kind of things that you've been involved in there or before, if there's any stage setting that you'd like to do as well to tell the story of how you got to your role today. Sure. Absolutely. So, so yeah, so I'm an aerospace engineer. Went to school at Syracuse and later did a graduate degree at MIT, but I actually started at

Grumman Aircraft Corporation back when there was a Grumman Aircraft Corporation. Now it's part of Northrop Grumman. Several names ago. Several names ago, yeah. So I did aircraft design and development and test and so forth. And so probably the biggest highlight there is my work on the X-29 aircraft, the Ford swept wing demonstrator, was part was part of the design development. And then, uh, later the flight test out at Armstrong. And, and actually that's where, um, I got to,

to know NASA was my time at, at then Dryden flight research center, now Armstrong flight research center. Um, and the industry was, you know, as I said, it was grumbling back then, but the industry was starting to go through consolidation. So, um, after the X-29, um, you know, I was going to stay out in California and do some additional work for Grumman, but, uh, but things didn't work out that way. So I decided to go ahead and go back for graduate school. And then I knew enough folks at NASA that they invited me back to, to, to NASA. So, um, and so since then I've been, you know, in aeronautics. I've been in aeronautics my entire career. That's kind of who I am. And I've done various program project management jobs at NASA, strategy formulation, which is really what I probably enjoyed the most is kind of the big

picture. Spent a little bit of time at O OSDP, the Office of Science Technology Policy at the White House. I also spent time over at FAA helping with the next gen air traffic management system. Was deputy director over there for our joint planning development office and got to know FAA quite well and then came back to, after that came back to aeronautics and helped aeronautics then develop a strategy for the future, which we actually continued to implement. And so now I find myself as the head of aeronautics, as the AA and sort of for me, you know, I guess my dream job to, you know, to be at the helm here during, you know, what's a really exciting time in aeronautics and aviation and aerospace in general. Yeah, let's talk about how the mission directorate fits in to NASA overall. Because, you know, the people that know their history out there will think back to NACA and where NASA got its roots.

But, you know, a lot of the space nerds today have a tendency to forget that aeronautics is in the name as well. So, you know, mission directorates, maybe a rundown on how mission directorates operate and what aeronautics is tasked with as part of NASA. Sure. Yeah. So mission directorates by, you know, by implication by the name, you have the program authority, mission authority to actually plan, develop, and implement NASA's major missions and the programs that are within that.

But we do that through the centers. I mean, the centers are the basis for NASA capability and for our operations and research and development and everything else. So for aeronautics, you know, we operate through the research centers. And so there's four research centers across NASA. On the East Coast, there's the Langley Research Center down in Hampton, Virginia area. And they're probably have the broadest set of capabilities of the research centers, primarily focused on everything to do with airframe, but have also expertise in engine airframe integration and flight deck and air traffic management and other areas. And then if you start to head west, you get to Cleveland, and that's the Glenn Research Center primarily responsible for all things having to do with propulsion, air breathing propulsion and otherwise, and also with communications.

otherwise, and also with communications. And so we use them to work, Cognav surveillance type research as part of air traffic management. You get out to the West Coast and in Northern California and Silicon Valley is the Ames Research Center. They also have a broad portfolio. They do work in flight systems as well as in vehicles, but their primary portfolio for us is in air traffic management well as in, you know, vehicles, but their primary portfolio for us is in air traffic management and airspace autonomy, you know, things, things of that

nature and related. So a lot of that you can think about, you know, from a current perspective, things like UAS and, and, and other, other, you know, novel vehicles that need to operate in the system. And then down South in to operate in the system. And then down south in California in the high desert on Edwards Air Force Base is the Armstrong Flight Research Center, which does all our flight, you know, airborne flight research. So if we need to bring things to flight, that's a perfect place to bring it to flight, and they have all the capabilities to do that.

So everything we do, that said, everything we do, we don't do it on a center by center basis. We, all our programs and projects are multi-center in nature because, you know, the nature of the research we have is really multidisciplinary and really requires cooperation amongst the centers. And so we've really gotten good at that, you know, to try to be more boundaryless type of organization and to work seamlessly across our centers. And so that's really one of our sort of core values is to operate like that. And of course, the other aspect to it is, you know, we don't, you know, NASA doesn't, it's not an operational entity from an aviation perspective, right? Those are,

you know, the military, there's airlines, there's others that operate, and there's also commercial development, right? So, we, everything we do is in partnership with industry, other government agencies, and so forth. So, like I mentioned, air traffic management, we work that with FAA, all the vehicle stuff, we work with aircraft manufacturers, and so forth so you know we and obviously dod is a large partnership um even though we we don't have a military mission a lot of technologies have crossover dual use and so forth so we work a lot with them so we do a lot of partnership and i think most maybe most importantly for you know for your listeners. While our mission is aeronautics, much of what we do

is crossover to the space side as well. If you're going to get to space, you've got to go through the atmosphere. Many space systems are tested in our large wind tunnels. Many of the methodologies that are used for design are based on developments we do in computational fluid dynamics, computational materials and structures, in the V&V of complex systems and software, and so on. So there's a lot that we do on the aviation side that has application to space. space. This is a random thing that just came up, but I was down in Florida for the first Artemis One attempt, and we were on the beach and looking up in the sky watching the WB-57 fly around to take some imagery. So the fleet of these aircraft that, you know, the nerds like to track in NASA's

inventory, are those the operations of those under aeronautics as well, or is that something different at a NASA level? No, it depends, right? The aircraft that NASA has are, obviously, they're all, they're center-based and really they are, you know, their missions and their funding are based on their, you know, what their need is, what their application is. So, you know, so exploration systems obviously operates aircraft just for that, you know, the purposes you talk about, whether it's range safety or for, you know, photography, whatever the case might be. You know, most of the, so the aircraft we operate are resident at the research centers and tend to be used for aviation-related research, although some of those aircraft do have double duty and sometimes do support other missions.

Yeah. I'm interested to hear your thoughts on the way that NASA's made up today of mission directorates. And when I was thinking about this, I kind of equate this to the way that you mentioned the military, Mindego, I, when I was thinking about this, I kind of equate this to the way that you mentioned the military mind to go and how the different roles and responsibilities of the different branches, you know, came over time. Back in the day, there was a little bit of a turf war over who was going to be the space agency. It was at the army, it was at the Navy, it was the Air Force. Eventually, now we're in an era where there's a space force, they're still in charge of cyber. So there's like always this next round, or you're trying to figure out how do the organizations fit together. And if you were to take out, you know, the first 30,

40 years of NASA's history and look in the modern era and say, you know, how do these mission directorates fit together? Do you think we would still put NASA together in this way, where there's this space side and aeronautics mission directorate? Or do you think there would be an environment where, I guess I'm wondering about how you feel the commonality across those mission directorates fits in today's day and age? Yeah, it's an interesting hypothetical question. I guess the broadly, yeah, you would, you know, you tend to organize based on the needs and opportunities of the day with as much foresight as to where the future is going as possible. But, you know, given the long history of NASA, and if, you know, if you did take out those, you know, first several decades, yeah, you might organize differently. You know, I wouldn't

speculate to say exactly how, but I do think you probably would because, you know, the era is different and your outlook for needs, opportunities, and future would be somewhat different. That said, I think, you know, the real important factor here is what are the needs and opportunities of the day and how do you accomplish those? And I think what NASA, I think, is good at, and certainly we here in aeronautics believe we're quite good at, is, you know, we can partner and we can work across lines to really focus on what those needs and opportunities are and to capture those. opportunities are and to capture those. So, like I said, we, you know, I think we're, you know, we are working on important things like the sustainability of aviation. We're working on things like high speed. One of the crossover areas that we're working on is hypersonics, so air breathing hypersonics. You know, obviously today all access to space is rocket based, but

you can envision a future where air-breathing hypersonics could provide a mechanism for at least some aspects of launch or certain launch missions and so forth. That's a really hard kind of technical area that we've been working on for decades, but that's still an opportunity out there that NASA Aeronautics works. We have the expertise. We have the facilities. We have partnerships with DoD and others to do just that. So I think, you know, if you look across the board at the kind of things we do, you know, we've taken that heritage and we've applied it to the needs and opportunities of the day.

But, you know, would we be organized the same? You know, I think probably the easy answer is no. You know, would we be organized the same? You know, I think the, you know, probably the easy answer is no. But, you know, do we, are we effective? And, you know, with the needs and opportunities that are in front of us? And I'd say the answer is definitely yes. I think there's certainly also a facilities commonality there, like you were mentioning with the wind tunnels. And, you know, even some of the facilities that are out at Plum Brook where you've got vacuum

and all these satellites and spacecraft are going through there as well. There's commonality on a hardware side that is interesting to consider as well. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. I mean, the research centers are multi-mission centers. Every mission director does business at the research centers because they have facilities and they have expertise that enables them to contribute in really important ways to all mission directorates, all NASA mission directorates. And the history of those research centers is aeronautics, but the future

is to contribute to all missions. The other aspect of reorganization is that I don't think the space side would be as happy with the new branding they would get. NSA does not have the best branding in government, and I think your A is the one that makes NASA really shine. So I think that's probably an aspect as well. Yeah. We're really proud of that first A,

and we think we deliver enormous value to the american people and we deliver enormous value to nasa let's head right there right now talking about the the things that have direct lines from aeronautics out to general public what are some of the tent poles that you use as examples when you're explaining things that have made their way to, you know, our world today as we know it. Yeah, it's really interesting. You can't get on any airplane today that doesn't have NASA technology on board. You know, one of our catchphrases is, we're with you when you fly, and it really is true. So if you look at a, say, let's take a modern airliner, you know, the wing design for modern airliners are called supercritical wings. That was a NASA innovation.

Even swept wings and area ruling, things like that for higher speed, transonic flight and so forth, those were either developed at NASA or certainly improved at NASA. Things like winglets, structures and materials, even the flight deck and the way, you know, the way pilots work together were fundamental human factors, innovations at NASA. I mean, I like kind of like to say that, you know, when you get on an airliner and you walk down the aisle and if you look, you know, if you look behind you at the flight deck, you look to the left and right, you know, and you, and you see the wings out the window, you look at the engines, um, that are hanging off those, um, those wings. Um, all of that has, has NASA on board. The only

thing we did, we, I will take, uh, I'll be proud to say we don't take any credit for is the, the close, the close quarters that you have to be in. Listen, I'm 5'4", so I don't have a problem with the seats on the plane. How do those things make their way out? Are there different ways? Are there tech transfers to commercial markets? Is it basic research that eventually feeds into the engineering that goes into these commercial departments? What's the exact methodology there? these commercial departments. What's the exact methodology there? Yeah, like one good example that people can observe today is if you look at a modern engine, if you look at the back end,

you'll see something that looks like a kind of a serrated edge to the back of the engine. And we call those Chevron nozzles. And what they do is they actually reduce the noise signature of the engine so that aviation is friendlier to local communities and so forth. So how did we get there? So we got there because first there was a need, a recognized need for lower noise. First, there was, you know, a need, a recognized need for lower noise. And then we had the expertise to think about the fundamentals of noise generation from jet engines. And we had innovators that said, hey, we think we've got a technique. And basically what it does is it mixes the flow between the core jet and then the fan to, you know, get a reduced overall jet velocity, which reduces noise.

But it'd be one thing for our innovators and our researchers to come up with that idea. But we develop it at lower TRL, lower technology readiness levels. And then if that is promising, then we'll start to go to higher TRL. But we want to do that in partnership with industry. So in this case, we would do that in partnership with engine manufacturers so that there's a natural technology transfer to those manufacturers. Because it's not like it's a piece of hardware that we would give to them. In the end, it's really a set of design techniques and principles that they would use to do the final design for their engines. And so by being part of the process of raising the technology readiness level, they have firsthand knowledge of exactly how to do the design. And obviously, you know,

everything we do, we, you know, we do it as, you know, to the maximum extent possible for the greatest application. So, you know, we write technical and scientific papers, we deliver those to conferences and so forth. And those become part of the technical record that's available to folks to, you know, to do these applications. But I think the thing that contributes the most is the partnerships that allows, you know, industry and university technical folks to work with our technical folks in NASA facilities to really gain firsthand exposure and knowledge to the technology itself and how you go about analyzing and designing those technologies.

And there's literally thousands of examples of that across the decades. literally thousands of examples of that across the decades. How do those certain kinds of projects or innovations and eventually full-fledged programs, how do those develop into major focal points at aeronautics? Is there some criteria that you use to decide, okay, this is a baseline technology that could make a huge difference in commercial or private markets? What are the criteria you use to assess whether it's worth putting the weight of aeronautics behind an initiative? Yeah, that's a really important question. And we kind of look at it from at least two perspectives.

One is more of a top-down. We work with industry, with universities, with stakeholders and so forth to really look at the aviation landscape, the aeronautics landscape, and say, what are the major challenges and opportunities that face aeronautics and aviation over the long run? over the long run. And how do we organize, how do we create a strategy for either overcoming a challenge like sustainability, like reducing the environmental impact of aviation, or an opportunity like how do we get back to higher speed, you know, flight, you know, supersonic and hypersonic flight? Or how do we, you know, create new avenues for mobility using new types of vehicles? And so things like electrovertical takeoff and landing for air taxi type operations. So we have that. So we spend a lot of time, you know, thinking about, talking about, and coming to agreement across the community that this is the future that we really need to aim at. And then once we have that, we also then take a bottoms-up look and say, you know, with our subject matter experts, okay, what are the best, you know, what are the best ideas for

actually addressing those opportunities? You know, what are the technical avenues that could actually take us to those futures? So, you know, so for example, you know, in, let's take high-speed flight and say a return to supersonic flight, you know, one of the challenges is overland noise, right? So, you know, supersonic aircraft create large sonic booms. Well, that's why there's a prohibition against overland supersonic flight, because those booms are very disturbing to communities. And in some cases can, depending on the strength of the boom, can actually cause damage, broken windows and so forth. But over time, you know, in working with our SMEs and so forth, they've developed better methodologies that allow us to design supersonic aircraft that don't produce those loud sonic booms, that soften the shock waves that come off of supersonic aircraft.

And so we've been able then to put together a program that says, okay, let's go out and prove it. Let's actually develop some supersonic configurations that would actually be low noise. And then we work with the F-8 to say, okay, if we can do that, how would we get to a point where we could actually reduce or to eliminate the prohibition against overland supersonic flight? And so we essentially need to go out and fly a configuration like this over communities, prove that the communities find it acceptable, and then deliver all that data to the FAA and to the International Civil Aviation Organization so that they can produce a standard,

an overland noise standard that would be acceptable. So that's what we're doing right now. We're building the X-59, which is an aircraft that was specifically designed to produce a very low noise you know soft supersonic um you know soft sonic boom we call it kind of a sonic thump or sonic rumble um and we're we're at the final throes of actually putting that vehicle together getting it to to flight um next calendar year and then once we validate that it's producing the noise signature, we expect we're going to go fly it over communities. So that's an example of how we take a top-down look at what the opportunities are, a bottom-up look at what's possible,

and then putting that into a well-designed and crafted program to actually make something happen. I find it quite interesting because I feel like if you were to go out and do a general public poll and had people write priorities for different sections of NASA, right? Human spaceflight, robotic spaceflight, aeronautics, just to name three. I feel like people would nail aeronautics in terms of things that we feel like we should have in the world that we don't supersonic flight electric flight you know more advanced drone usage autonomous like i feel like people would nail that and the rest on this especially on the human

spaceflight side would be totally jumbled so i i find that kind of cool that you're striking the exact balance between um you know you're you're reaching out ahead into the future and saying these things are what we want to work on but you're not going you know you're reaching out ahead into the future and saying these things are what we want to work on, but you're not working on warp drives. You've picked the things that are out of reach now, but that feel like they should be part of our modern world. And it's such an interesting balance to continually get that right as a mission directorate. Yeah, no, you're exactly right. I mean, that's exactly what we try to do. Reach out far enough that it's outside the grasp of today's industry, but not so far that we can't plan a path to value for the American people. Yeah.

Because that's really the sweet spot that we need to hit. Now, we do, there is a part of our program that, you know, we give our researchers and we also have a part that gives our universities an opportunity to really reach and say, you know, do the wild and crazy things. Yeah. Because, you know, that's, you know, the seed seed corn that's the fodder for what's after that's your roadmap in 10 years and 20 years from now yeah exactly exactly um let's talk more about

x59 i i have never mentioned this in in public before but uh i have flown on the concord and so supersonic flight is something that I feel like I I got to experience once my dad at the time was like this thing's going away in a couple years like I won't be mad in the future if I spend too much money on this airfare to fly on this once uh yeah so I was I think nine and it was before 9-11 and fortunately I was able to my dad and I got to go up into the cockpit when we were 60,000 feet it was like probably one of the experiences that made me a nerd about all this stuff. Um,

and, and so I feel like, you know, I have this memory of what felt like, cause I was nine. I didn't know that like, you know, there was all these other problems with how much it costs to run these

things. And then the overland, uh, Sonic boom situation. And so like, as I got older and learned about what was going on, I was like oh man this that sucks that it happened once and it's gone now um but but with what you're working

on x59 and then thinking about this transition back into commercial industries as boom supersonic is making a lot of headlines as they're signing these uh memorandum of understanding with different airlines it feels like an interesting spot to really dive into what's going on there so um specifically i want to talk about x59 is like you said focused on making a lower sonic boom um but so is that is that airfoil and and you know the the body of the airplane that you're focusing on and less so uh the engines that might be used to drive what is eventually a commercial application because i know that's one thing that Boom is still kind of figuring out is what they're going to do for propulsion. So what does the NASA take on what you're providing to that segment?

Yeah, so right, it is the shape of the airframe itself, of the vehicle itself. For the X-59, we're just using an off-the-shelf engine. It's a pretty, for, for the X 59, we're just using an off the shelf, um, engine. Um, uh, but it's a pretty nice shelf. I'm sorry. It's a pretty nice shelf though. It's a pretty nice shelf. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's a military, it's a, you know, military engine. The, the, the thing you got to do right is to put the, put the, the engine essentially on top of the vehicle, so your inlet's on the top and so forth, to avoid the engine and sort of the nacelles and everything else being a part of the sonic boom challenge, so we put it on the top. So we can get away with using a military engine.

Now that said, and that's for that overland portion where the shape of the vehicle really is the dominant issue. You know, when you get into landing and takeoff noise, then that's a whole nother, you know, a whole nother issue that you need to solve. And we're doing some work on the landing and takeoff noise where jet noise, you know, the noise of the engine does become a larger because the dominant issue you got to deal with. And, you know, you've got, you know, because of the way in which you would have to design a supersonic aircraft, you are going to end up with higher jet noises, higher jet velocities, and that will lead to higher jet noise. And so there are some really particular issues that you have to solve around

landing and takeoff noise. And we're, we're working on some of that, but yeah, for overland, it's the shape of the vehicle. You just have to distribute the, the,

the lift and the loads in a very careful manner to avoid the shock waves coalescing, coalescing into very large shock waves that can make the, their way all the way down to the, to the ground. So through careful shaping that you can really only do with modern CFD techniques where you can really understand that flow in a lot of detail using those computer methodologies and then testing it out in wind tunnels and obviously ultimately in flight

but um so that's what we've been able to do because if you think about concord that was 50 years ago that was designed you know designed so yeah technology has advanced enormously since then to the aerodynamics but but also the engines right engines of um much later weight much more efficient much lower noise and so forth. The materials and structures that we can use, composite and so forth, are much lighter weight. So you get a lot higher efficiency, a lot lower noise, even just using the baseline technologies. But there are, you know, there are, you know, the specific things you have to do in order to get, again, to the low boom, in order to get to low landing and takeoff noise. There are some specific things you need to do in order to get again to the low boom in order to get to low landing and

takeoff noise there are some specific things you need to do to both the inlet and and the nozzle and to the cycle you know to the engine cycle itself there are issues around upper atmospheric emissions because you are flying higher and so you're emitting higher in the atmosphere so there's upper atmospheric emissions you have to deal with so there's a there's a whole range of of in addition to the sonic boom there's a whole range of issues that you got to deal with which we are you know we only have so many resources so we're kind of doing it um a bit one at a time in the meantime folks like boom are out there doing kind of first gen you know first next generation supersonic aircraft right that will set the set the pathway to,

you know, future commercial developments. So they're primarily looking over water for over water operations, um, and so forth, but that, that's not the, the ultimate vision, but that's a start at a, at a new commercial market. So, um, so yeah, I think that's, you know, it's a very complex problem and one where we try to take, you know, what are the best roles that government can play and not to get in the way of, you know, what the commercial, what the industry folks can do. can do and what's like even again like when we're looking at feasibility you you could come up with like the greatest technology in the world but if it's not going to have a life outside of nasa it's like really cool basic research but it doesn't have that effect on the world that that you want it to have so you know i feel like the way that you're talking about knocking down some of these challenges or even just working with the faa to say what would we need to prove to be able to license this over land usage likeaging at that level is something that

companies like Boom aren't going to have the funding or bandwidth to do right now. And it's a perfect role for NASA to play. Yeah, you're exactly right. I mean, the, you know, changing a standard is hard long-term work that industry really can't do on their own, especially something like an overland supersonic flight standard. And getting to a level of noise which is acceptable, that's something that you really need a government entity like NASA to do. But in addition, by doing this work and by proving this out, we're also validating these design codes and design practices that industry can

then pick up and utilize to build low-boom aircraft. And so we work closely with, even though we're doing this work, industry is there with us learning about how to do the design and what it takes to actually build a practical vehicle that actually satisfies those kind of standards. I feel like in the testing phase as well, you have, you know, we mentioned NASA branding earlier. It's got a really good brand in public. So NASA rolling up to a community and saying, hey, do you mind if we do some testing and

we'll see if we can do supersonic flight again? That hits different than some commercial company coming in and saying, we want to fly a bunch of planes over your house and see what it's like like that i don't know people would be jazzed to find out oh nasa's flying a plane over my you know over my house that seems really cool so hopefully that's what that's the response you've been met with yeah it's interesting we um um a couple years ago um down on the down in Galveston, Texas, which is obviously right on the Gulf, we're able to do a flight technique where we take an F-18 that we operate out at Armstrong. And you can do a dive maneuver where you dive the aircraft and then you pull up. And what it does is you go supersonic.

And when you pull up, it creates a sonic boom. But rather than coming straight down, it kind of goes parallel to the ground. And so if you offset that maneuver from where the community is, that sound will travel over the community. And it somewhat approximates what a low boom might be like. So we were able to do that maneuver off the coast, because right underneath the aircraft, there's a really loud boom, right? You want to do that carefully.

So we do that over the Gulf, right? And then the noise propagates inland. And so we wanted to do that just to test out the community survey techniques. And also, you have to put microphone arrays everywhere because in order to really do the survey, you've got to know exactly the noise that was heard by the community. So we were able to look at how we would deploy microphone arrays and measure the noise and all that kind of stuff. So it was a really good test. noise and all that kind of stuff. So it was a really good test, but I raised it because, um, you know, there was an excitement, um, within the community about doing, you know, being part of a NASA experiment and so forth. And, and they, um, in fact, they invite, they said, oh, please come

back when you have the X-59 and do it again. The challenge, interestingly enough, right, is, is you really want the community to be entirely objective. So you don't want to be too excited about being part of it and saying, oh, this is great. Let's do it. Yeah, totally. You actually want them to respond. Yeah, you don't want to test this over a bunch of aerospace nerds. Those are like, yeah, that was awesome.

It was a supersonic plane flying over my head. Exactly, exactly. So we do have to do things carefully. You're going to have to start doing secretive branding, I guess, so that people don't know it's a NASA plane. I guess that refutes what I was just saying. Well, it's a balance, right? You do want the support. In fact, one of the things our folks are doing is working with the educational community. And, boy, having, you know, obviously universities are very interested, but just think about the STEM opportunities to, you know, local schools, elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, and just, and just educational, you know, learning about,

learning about aviation and how aircraft fly and supersonics and so forth because, Hey, there's, there's one up there doing an experiment right now. Let's talk about the other X-Plane that y'all have been working on the X-57. Tell us about this program, what the similar kind of goals are for where this is heading in the future. Yeah. So this is a very different thing. So this is all about electric propulsion. And some of your, you know, your listeners, you know, may know that, you know,

there's a number of companies out there today that are working on electric vertical takeoff and landing. So, so basically rather than having, um, you know, gas engines, whether they're gas turbines or internal combustion engines, um, powering props, you're using electric motors to power the props. I mean, it gives you a lot more design flexibility. You can do a lot more things because, you know, electric motors are, are so-called scale free, right? They-free, right? You can make them as efficient at a small scale as a large scale. So by going to electric, it actually allows you to do very novel designs. It also is, you know, at least from an operational perspective, is very environmentally friendly.

Now, obviously, you have to get your electricity to charge the batteries from somewhere. So depending on the grid, you know, it would have various levels of environmental impact. But so the X-57 was, you know, we started this years ago as a way to really look at what it takes to design a distributed electric propulsion system, to integrate it, to test it, and then obviously to, integrate it, to test it, and then obviously to test it on the ground and obviously go out and fly and so forth. And so that's exactly what it is. It's a distributed electric propulsion system on basically a GA aircraft.

So the ultimate design is for two cruise motors on the wingtips. That would be the primary propulsion while it's in flight. And then it would have a series of distributed small props, small electric motors and props along the leading edge. And you would have those on for takeoff and landing. And primarily what you're doing is just increasing your lift characteristics by having those on. So rather than having high lift devices, which are expensive and difficult to maintain on a GA class aircraft,

you would just have these very simple distributed electric motors on the leading edge for those parts of flight. And then you could re-optimize your wing to be extraordinarily efficient for cruise operations. So that was kind of the idea but you had to do all this you had to do the design um and you'd actually have to do all the integration of that and so so all of those electronics in a very small space you know uh all the emi and other issues you got to deal with i'm in order to make that happen get the efficiency of your motor controls your motor is way way up up in order to make sure you're not getting, you know, too many thermal issues and so forth. So all that work had to be done.

And now a lot of folks have done that, but the difference is we did that all in the public, right? standards committees and the industry and so forth in order to do their designs and to look at the standards for test and other things. In fact, when we were looking at the batteries, one of the first rounds of batteries, we had what's euphemistically called a thermal runaway, which is essentially the battery pack exploded. I love names for explosions. Exactly, yeah.

This was obviously in a test experimental facility, so it was fine. We were doing it just for that purpose to really push the batteries as hard as we could. But by doing that, we learned a lot about what it takes to contain failures in battery packs so you don't end up with this thermal runaway or these explosions and so forth. And that's all been commercialized now and is available on the market. So all this learning, and that's all before we got, we haven't even gotten to first flight yet, but all of that's occurred all before first flight, all the learning on how you design the motors, how you design the power electronics, the motor controllers, all of that, the batteries, the integration. All that's been developed and documented and delivered to standards committees and into technical papers and so forth.

So that's all about supporting this, you know, X-57 has been all about supporting this new industry that's being built around distributed electric propulsion, primarily in the vertical takeoff and landing area. But there are folks out there also developing commercial takeoff and landing, similar to the configuration of the X-57. So that's been a, and we're getting close now. The latest projection is we'll have that aircraft in the air in December of this year. So we're really excited about that. But we've already delivered a huge amount of value to this new industry that's popping up. It sounds somewhat similar to the advanced air mobility mission that you have going on as well in terms of the vertical takeoff landing. So I'd love to hear a little bit about that, if there is crossover between those programs or just, you know, things that are shared between them because of similar fundamental tech there. Yeah, so there is, in fact, and advanced air mobility is kind of an umbrella term that we use that refers to exactly that, a different kinds of mobility, right?

Today, if you, you know, the majority of people, if they use the aviation system, you drive out to an airport that's away from the city, you know, and you pass through security, you get onto a big airplane and you fly to another airport

and you do the same thing at the other end. What we're envisioning with advanced air mobility is having aviation systems that support transportation in much smaller distances, so maybe within a city or between a city and a rural area or between regional stuff. If you look at today, a lot of the smaller regional routes are either subsidized by the government or have gone away because it's really hard to make money. But if we can get to vehicles that are really efficient because they use, they're electrically propelled and maybe a bit more automated than most aircraft are today. So you don't need two pilots and so forth. Maybe you get away with one and eventually maybe, you know, it's fully automated and so there's no pilots on board so you know you could think about you know like i said air taxi you can think

about you know package and you know larger um you know cargo deliveries you can think about in fact you know some of the exciting things are the public good things you can think about, right? So today there's – we are losing – you know, rural areas are losing access to health care. But we have world-class health care in urban areas. Well, those – if you talk to the urban health care folks, they know that they've got to provide – they've got to reach further and provide those services to more people in rural areas. services to more people in rural areas. So they're already starting to adopt small UAS to move, you know, medicine and laboratory work around those urban campuses. But if you talk to the really innovative folks, they'd love to use advanced air mobility to move doctors to rural areas. They can't do it today because it's just, there's no efficient way to move a doctor that far and take them out of service for, you know, you know, hour, two hours and so forth.

But if they could do it in 10 minutes or 15 minutes, they could really start serving a much broader area than they can serve today. And so there's a lot of potential value to the use of these EV tolls and these EC tolls to serve mobility and serve the American public, both for commercial purposes, but also these public good purposes. Another area that we're really excited about is the use of this kind of technology for fighting wildfires. Today, you know, aviation operations and wildfires are pretty limited.

They're very important, right? You know, you drop large loads of water or retardants on fires, or you do some surveillance and so forth, but they can only operate during the day. They operate at low density because the way they operate, they're pretty hazardous operations. Yeah, it's because the flight paths on these things are just terrifying to watch. It's like swooping down, pulling up right over a ridge. Every video is exhilarating. Exactly.

So we can bring this kind of technology to that as well and provide more precise operations and more precise application of water and so forth, more surveillance and so forth. But it's not just the vehicle. For all this to work, you need an air traffic management system that will allow it to work. You need automation systems that will allow it to work. You need, you know, vertiports, you know, just like airports except, you know, like more like heliports, vertiports, right, that are automated and in the right areas and can support all this. You need safety systems, right? Because no one's going to get on these if these aren't safe systems. And so you need prognostic safety systems that enable these to be as safe as an airline operation from day one. So all of those kinds of things, in fact,

are a big sweet spot for NASA that, you know, we have that expertise and we could bring that to, you know, to this system so because right now the companies that are they're developing these vehicles and we are doing you know we're working with them as well because we have expert obviously expertise on the vehicle side um and like around noise and so forth you know noise prediction and propagation so we can do that kind of work but if you if you work if you talk to them today, they want to certify in the next few years, but then their operations are going to be pretty limited because their ability to really utilize the current aviation system is

they want to fly differently than airlines fly. So the air traffic management and airspace systems aren't set up to support their kind of operations. And so they need a lot of innovation in that area as well. And that's what NASA is bringing to the table is to enable not just a few of these airplanes to fly, but hundreds, thousands, millions of these airplanes to fly and deliver these kind of benefits. That's where the value to the American people will really be when we do that. So the X57 fits in because, you know, that's electric propulsion is critical to making, you know, that market. There are two technologies that are critical to making that market work. One is electric propulsion. The other one is automation and autonomy.

And then all the surrounding stuff like air traffic management and so forth. Those are the things that are critical and those are the things that we're focused on. I do want to dig into the air traffic management bit a little bit because there's some areas that I find interesting crossover between the focus that you have and what people are talking about in future spaceflight operations. If you listen to SpaceX talk or anyone that's working on reusability and they're talking about how they need these frequently flying reusable vehicles, can't really do that without airspace operations that are...

If you want rockets to be aircraft-like, you need the operations of them to be aircraft-like as well. So, you know, looking into that future, I'm curious if there are things that NASA is working on in the airspace management area that could be passed on to the orbital spaceflight side of the industry, how you could transfer that sort of knowledge, or if there's even things today that you're doing out at the launch ranges that, you know, trying to trim in the closures that we have for, you know, I don't know if you've ever been flying on a day where there's a big launch, but you're going to fly in a really weird route that you probably wouldn't have otherwise. So what kind of crossover is there or do you foresee in the near future? Yeah, so that's a great question and an important question. And so a couple of years ago,

a couple of years, maybe 10 years ago now, when the small UAS folks wanted to figure out how to fly, our folks did a fundamental innovation called UAS traffic management. And really it was taking a modern network architecture. Because if you think, I don't know how much your listeners know about how the air traffic management system works today, but it's a closed architecture. And, you know, it's essentially government contractors selling these systems to FAA and FAA does, you know, does all the operations, right? But it's a very closed architecture. But that was not going to, that's not the path forward for the future, right? You really want a modern network architecture, open system with third party services, just the way

you operate, you know, the internet today, right, and iPhones and everything else today, that's the way you would want to operate. So NASA developed that for a small UAS to operate. Well, the reason I bring that up is because that's the future of how you get everything to sort of work, right, is to really transition to more network, modern network-oriented, you know, architecture, where third parties can provide services and so forth. And you obviously have fundamental, you know, inherent safety requirements as well that need to be met. So, you think about what I just talked about relative to AEM.

You want to apply those same, and we are applying those same techniques there to extend that. Interestingly enough, it's, you know, for orbital operations, it's the same kind of thing you want to do. You know, you want those, you want that modern network architecture. You want third information sharing so that you can overlay the kinds of applications that are required to maintain good situational awareness and safe operations. And so we are at a low level. We are working to transition those concepts to the space community. And we're working closely with the FAA to basically transition over the long run, you know, air traffic management to, you know, to that kind of a paradigm. And the way to, you know, the way we're doing that is not in the primary,

you know, airline heavily, you know, utilized space. But if you think about what's above 60,000 feet, it's what is called upper E airspace. It's one of the areas we're working on FAA where there's not really direct control today of upper E. Let's create an ETM. We call it UAS Traffic Management, UTM. We call it an ETM for upper airspace. And so we can start to look at parts of the airspace that don't have the kind of control that the, you know,

that the big airspace, Class A, Class B airspace has today. And we can start to bring this kind of paradigm to those airspaces. And FAA calls it XTM for Extensible Traffic Management. And then you can think about these different, you know, so you can think about, you know, what would you do in orbit? What would you do in upper E? What would you do at low, you know, in kind of class G airspace, you know, low altitude airspace and so forth. So that's what we're doing. And I think that paradigm is one that really can, for the long run, serve the future airspace. One last bit of potential space crossover because

we only got a couple minutes left um nasa is currently operating a an aircraft on another planet and uh they just announced a couple more that are heading out to mars in the near future as part of our sample return and so aeronautics is going interplanetary at this point and i'm curious you know what is that something that aeronautics is ever going to be involved in in the long run how do you see that? Are there things that you would like to experiment if you were given a budget to go experiment with aeronautics at Mars? What kind of things would you tackle? Yeah, well, in fact, I mean, the reason, you know, the reason that, that, you know, that little helicopter that could, that small UAS is working on Mars today,

is because of the NASA aeronautics expertise that we brought to the table. We have folks that have worked vertical lift for decades, you know, as an organization, but we also have individuals that have worked this for decades. And so we brought that expertise, you know, to the table, and it was utilized, you know. So today, and that continues to happen, so our investment in revolutionary vertical lift is what we call it. We have some resources set aside to support the Science Mission Directorate

and the design and development and test of new vertical lift and other aircraft that could operate on other planets and other celestial bodies and so forth. So, yeah, we were a part of it, and we will continue to be a part of it. And as the opportunity arises, if there are things that we can learn to advance aviation in general, we will certainly do that. So that's been exciting for the folks that have worked vertical lift for their entire careers to be a part of something like that. And certainly Aaron Ox is happy to work with Science Mission Directorate on those kinds of things, and we will continue to do

so. Yeah, and Dragonfly, I should have mentioned as well, heading out to Titan. Although that one, you might feel like they're cheating. They got a really dense atmosphere and low gravity, so it's like easy mode out there. Once you get there, getting there is tricky, but once you're there, it's like, you know. Are there any other parts of aeronautics that we didn't talk about that we should finish up on, or do you feel like we got a nice cruise through the mission directorate there? Yeah, well, I think just maybe a couple of things to watch for. We are right now in the process of evaluating proposals for a large-scale sustainable flight demonstrator. This will be a transport- size X-plane, essentially.

One that will demonstrate an entirely new configuration that will be much more efficient than the standard kind of tube and wing vehicles that folks get on today. We're really excited about this. This is the path to sustainability. It's the path to reducing carbon, to reducing fuel burn and so forth by getting to much higher efficiency. So we're going to hopefully award a contract. It's actually going to be a Space Act agreement later this year or maybe a little bit into next year and then fly later in the 20s. So that's going to be really exciting to watch. We are already working on megawatt class electric propulsion that's applicable to large transport aircraft. So imagine, you know, you're the next,

you know, getting onto a 737 class airplane, that's a hybrid aircraft, right? That's both, you know, a turbine engine as well as electric combined. Continuing to work on improved turbines and better materials and structures for the vehicles as well. So, and fuel, right? How do we get to, you know, to sustainable aviation fuels and maybe hydrogen and so forth for the future of aviation. So, I'd want to put a, basically, you know, have your listeners look

out for that. There's going to be some really exciting flight demonstrations over the next several years that you don't want to miss. Yeah. I'd like to come out for the, uh, the low boom demonstration. So once you pick a spot, maybe I'll book a flight and head out. Cause that would be super cool. You're welcome. You are welcome to come. Well, thank you so much, Bob. This has been amazing to spend some time with you and talking about the side of NASA that people need to think more about because it is super cool.

And I think, you know, like we mentioned, a lot of these things are things that are in our life today that are less so than other parts of NASA. So a lot closer to you and super cool to hear about everything that's going on over there. So thanks again. Well, thank you for the opportunity. It's been fun.

Thanks again to Bob for coming on the show and a huge thanks to bo holder over at nasa armstrong who helped set this up it was a really really cool conversation i'm happy that we were able to have it here on miko uh very always a special time when you get the associate administrator of a nasa mission directorate to come on the show and i have to say nasa's associate administrators are really amazing they are all doing spectacular jobs i would say across the board and uh it's it's really cool to have that level of leadership, which sustains across administrations, you know, in ways that administrative positions and others do not. It's really cool to have such

a good set there running NASA. So cool to have such a long conversation with them, too, to really see what's going on within their directorate. So thanks to both of them again for what was a really cool conversation. And thanks to all of you again for what was a really cool conversation. And thanks to all of you out there who support Main Engine Cutoff. There are 886 of you supporting every single month, and that includes 42 executive producers who made this episode possible. Thanks to Simon, Chris, Pat, Matt, George, Ryan, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, Moritz, Joel, Jan, David, Eunice, Rob, Tim Dodd, David Ashtonot,

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