EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

Ready for 2017

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FROM THE CORNER OFFICE

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AIAA’s growth plan

TRAJECTORIESSatellite engineer

9211+++  A E R O S P A C E

AEROSPACE+  ++  A

M E R I C A++  +A M E R I C A++  +DECEMBER 2016

2016
YEAR IN REVIEW

aerospaceamerica.org

DECEMBER 2016 | A publication of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics | www.aerospaceamerica.org

E DITOR ’S NOTE BOOK|READY FOR 2017
Blue Origin

The year of living tenaciouslyAs a magazine editor, I’ve never been more eager to chronicle and explore the future than I am now.
One reason is the 2016 work described in this special issue, from development of clean aircraft
technologies to efforts by Blue Origin and SpaceX to master rocket reusability.
Tenacity is the word that comes to mind when I review the articles in this issue. Last year, when weproduced the year-end issue, Blue Origin had not yet reused its New Shepard rocket and SpaceX was 0for 2 on attempts to land a Falcon 9 ﬁrst stage. Now, Blue Origin has proved it can ﬂy its New Shepard
booster again and again, and SpaceX has landed a Falcon 9 ﬁrst stage on land and at sea on a drone
ship. 2017 promises even greater advances.
There’s another reason for eagerness. Aerospace America stands ready to explore the big changes promised by the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump. We’ll examine thosechanges as they relate to your work and the aerospace community. We’ll do that in the same manner
we always do: by putting aside assumptions and exploring issues in a no-nonsense, in-depth way,
always with an eye toward technology and science.
We’ll want to see how the new administration treats funding for the satellites and aircraft that gather
climate data. We’ll look at related issues, such as the potential for global regulation of greenhouse gas
emissions by satellites, and whether an approach like that can succeed without the U.S.
We’ll want to learn whether a Trump administration, and a Republican-controlled Congress, canclear the way for solutions to tracking airliners, and whether expenditures on clean aviation andsupersonic transport will continue. The Trump campaign gave some clues in our “10 questions for thecandidates” article in May. The campaign said the impact of aviation on climate change is “minimal”
and that resources must always “advance and protect” U.S. interests. On supersonics, Trump said:“The free market will determine if supersonic air transport is feasible.”In the space realm, much of what NASA does right now centers on the vision of getting human
explorers to Mars in the 2030s, and honing skills at an asteroid that would be dragged within reach ofastronauts. That idea will have to compete for resources against a proposal favored on Capitol Hill to
robotically explore Jupiter’s moon Europa, which could harbor life of some kind under its ice.
We don’t know whether a Trump administration will share the excitement for Mars and Europa. In the “10Questions” article, the Trump campaign said human exploration depends on the country’s “economic state.”
We’re ready to work tenaciously on these and many other topics. +Ben Ia n not ta, ed itor-i n-ch ief, ben i @ a iaa.org

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DECEM B ER 201 6|

aerospaceamerica .org

Blue Origin’s
New Shepard booster
executes a controlled
vertical landing.

TECHNICAL COMMITTEES PRESENT THE YEAR IN REVIEWSpaceXIn April, SpaceX forthe ﬁrst time landed
the ﬁrst stage of theFalcon 9 on a drone ship.

Launch vehicles get
commercial pushBY RYAN S. PARKThe Astrodynamics Technical Committee
advances the science of trajectory
determination, prediction and adjustment,
and also spacecraft navigation and attitude
determination.

T

his was an exciting year for astrodynamics,
with an emphasis on commercial space industry that pushed the envelope on launchvehicle and space business capabilities.
Followed by a successful recovery of a reusable
Falcon 9 booster on a landing pad on solid groundin December 2015, SpaceX accomplished an evenmore challenging success. On April 8, the company
launched the two-stage Falcon 9 and delivered arobotic Dragon cargo vehicle carrying crew supplies
to the International Space Station for NASA. After
separation, the ﬁrst stage of the Falcon 9 landedback onto a SpaceX drone ship off the Florida coast,
marking a huge step toward development of a reusable launch vehicle that may be a paradigm
shift for the astrodynamics community.
In April, Rep. Jim Bridenstine, R-Oklahoma,
introduced the American Space Renaissance Act,
which is meant to synergize and reform space enterprises across the United States and ensure U.S.
leadership and success across the national spaceenterprise. The bill motivates a shift of space situational awareness from being a government-led
activity to a civil or commercial solution for thatfunction as well as space
trafﬁc management.
In August, NASAapproved the Asteroid
Redirect Mission, ARM,
to proceed to the next
design phase with $1.4
billion in funding. ARM
is a two-step missionthat will send a robotic
spacecraft to bring backa boulder from a nearEarth asteroid, will returnit to cislunar orbit andthen send astronauts tovisit and study the captured object.
Beyond cislunar
space, NASA’s Juno
spacecraft rendezvousedwith Jupiter in July andset a record as the most
distant solar-powered spacecraft ever ﬂown. Juno
will be in a 14-day polar orbit around Jupiter with
its perijove inside Jupiter’s radiation belt, which
was carefully designed to be in view from DeepSpace Network antenna in Goldstone, California,
during perijove passages. Juno will continue tostudy the structure of Jupiter’s interior and atmosphere over its 18-month primary science phase.
In June, NASA approved the plutonium-powered
New Horizons spacecraft to ﬂy by the Kuiper Belt
Object known as 2014 MU69 in January 2019. This
will be the ﬁrst visit to a Kuiper Belt Object, and toachieve this the New Horizons spacecraft had toconduct a targeting maneuver farther from Earththan any other spacecraft. In late June, Dawn surpassed all of the objectives of its primary mission
at dwarf planet Ceres, despite two failed reactionwheels and a very limited supply of hydrazine
available for attitude control. The Dawn teamreceived the prestigious 2015 Robert J. Collier
Trophy in recognition of the overall success in
exploring Vesta and Ceres and the innovative useof ion propulsion.
Europe’s Laser Interferometer Space Antenna(LISA) Pathﬁnder spacecraft, formerly called Small
Missions for Advanced Research in Technology-2,
reached the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrange point inJanuary and demonstrated the ability to detectgravitational waves. While several spacecraft
have incorporated low-energy orbits in their
mission designs, LISA Pathﬁnder is the ﬁrst mission
to demonstrate low-energy, low-disturbanceformation ﬂying between two test masses,
technology that enables detection of gravitational
waves in space. +aerospaceamerica .org|

DECEM B ER 201 6|

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TECHNICAL COMMITTEES PRESENT THE YEAR IN REVIEW

Accelerating change
on systems engineering tenets
BY ERIC E. NICHOLSThe Systems Engineering Technical Committee supports efforts to deﬁne,develop and disseminate modern systems engineering practices.
Virgin Galactic

Virgin Galactic’s
second SpaceShipTwo,
the VSS Unity, takes its
ﬁrst ﬂight with its carrier
plane Eve over Mojave,California, Sept. 8.

Access to space has been limited by theticket cost to Earth orbit since the start ofthe space age. Events over the past year,
however, represent what may be a permanent change to the existing cost structure. While
deceptively subtle, 2016 saw accelerated changes
that affect how we approach two bedrock tenets ofsystems engineering: requirements management
and standards compliance.
System requirements management anddesign standards matured in tandem with theaerospace industry, often in response to tragic
accidents. In the 1920s, airplane construction
required little more than advanced carpentry
skills. Until the 1930s, rocket technology hadchanged little since the Congreve rocket used atFort McHenry in 1814. World War II forced radical
change to both technologies.
Integration of ever more complex systems
ushered in the nascent ﬁeld of systems engineering. Reliance on individual experience andintuition was replaced by operational requirements and design standards. The transition helped
save countless lives but also created impediments
to creative problem-solving; the culture became
conservative. Radical new designs became scarceas system speciﬁcations began to reﬂect safe pointsolutions. The prevalent philosophy became:violate design standards and risk millions ofdollars, years of development and loss of life.

By the 1990s, restrictive standards became thetarget of government reform. As cost-reduction
efforts continued to stagnate, NASA attempted
several programs designed to promote innovation
and revitalize a commercial space sector. The
Commercial Resupply Service contracts began thecurrent trend to limited, grand-vision requirementswith minimal compliance constraints. The intent
was to emulate Air Mail’s impact on aviation’s early
development. These contracts provided the catalyst
for SpaceX and Orbital ATK to develop launchvehicles for a commercial market.
The follow-on Commercial Crew Program
continued the trend to focus on “what” and not“how.” Similarly, the Ansari “X Prize,” modeled after
early 20th century aviation prizes, promoted
maximum creativity with minimal requirements.
The simple requirements to launch a reusablecrewed vehicle into space twice within two weeks
became the inspiration for the space tourism
market. Private ventures, including Blue Origin’s
New Shepard and Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo,
use these basic requirements for their suborbital
spacecraft and proved there was money available
for a purely commercial launch industry.
In 2016 the trend appears to have achieved
critical mass with this year’s revisions to the Air Force
Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle, or EELV,
documents. The new directives support the what andnot how approach to launch services. With therenewed freedom, launch vehicle designers are once
again questioning the existing paradigms and testing
cost-saving technologies. The most visible are thereusable systems ﬂown during the year. Less visible
are the reduced recurring costs from test andintegration changes. The EELV New Entrant
Certiﬁcation Guide accommodates providers with
innovative designs and higher developmental risk.
The guide recognizes possible failure as an integral
part of advancing technology. This represents aradical change in launch systems engineering.
Systems engineering developed in response to
the need to incorporate complex systems into
advanced aerospace designs. System speciﬁcations
and standards provided the written record used topass along knowledge and generate design conﬁdence. As the aerospace industry matured, these
documents began to drive solutions toward the safeand known and discourage the risky and innovative.
The new projects inspiring today’s engineers aredemonstrating you can have both creative and safe.
They are proving the right requirements andappropriate standards can encourage imaginative
designs that reduce the ticket cost to Earth orbit.
The challenge for 2017 and beyond is toimprove on the successes and work on getting theright mix of requirements and standards. +aerospaceamerica .org

|DECEM B ER 201 6|37

TECHNICAL COMMITTEES PRESENT THE YEAR IN REVIEW

Nagoya University

New and existing systems
show progress
BY SCOTT CL AFLIN

The Pressure Gain Combustion Program Committee
advances the investigation, development andapplication of pressure-gain technologies for
improving propulsion and power generation
systems and achieving new mission capabilities.

The state of the art in pressure gain combustion advanced signiﬁcantly this year as numerous government, industry and academic
institutions continued to develop new experimental engines and mature analytical models.
In the U.S., both the Defense Department andthe Department of Energy are supporting PGCdevelopment. Under an Ofﬁce of Naval Researchgrant, the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey,California, explored the impact of engine inlet
characteristics on the delivered performance of a rotating detonation engine, or RDE. The investigation
involved hot-ﬁre testing with detonation zone imaging, optical diagnostics and collaborative computation efforts with the Naval Research Laboratory,
NRL, in Washington, D.C. The Naval Postgraduate
School also supported a DARPA-funded team comprising HyPerComp Inc. of California, the Universityof Connecticut and Aerojet Rocketdyne of California
in developing a continuous detonation turbineengine. The program measured turbine efﬁciency
when driven by the unsteady ﬂow of an RDE.
Under National Energy Technology Laboratory, or NETL, sponsorship, the University of Michigan, Penn State University and Purdue University
have begun RDE development on the University
Turbine Systems Research Initiative. In September, NETL awarded a three-year phase 2 programto Aerojet Rocketdyne to advance air and natural
gas RDE technology.
NETL continued its own internal research that
includes fundamental bench-scale experiments,
lab-scale experiments and computational studies.
The bench-scale rig is evaluating RDE fuel and air
inlet geometries. The 6-inch lab-scale RDE withducted exhaust has been tested with variable backpressure control permitting operation at elevatedpressures. The rig is currently being modiﬁed topermit oxides of nitrogen emissions measurements.
The Air Force Research Laboratory is collaborating with NETL on the testing of an RDE combustor coupled to a T63 gas turbine engine. These tests
are evaluating RDE-to-turbine interface conditions
and potential impact on turbine performance aswell as oxides of nitrogen emissions. At NRL, recent
numerical simulations of an air/hydrogen RDE

using detailed chemistry show that those emissions
can be kept to an acceptable level by suitably choosing the equivalence ratio and engine geometry.
The NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland
continued PGC investigations by demonstrating
performance improvements through simulationof a resonant pulse combustor concept. Also, RDE
modeling, validation and optimization capability
expanded via collaboration with the Air Force Research Laboratory.
Academia made signiﬁcant progress in PGC
development this year. A team from the Universityof Washington demonstrated success in controllingthe spin direction of an RDE detonation wave
using a system that emits circumferentially phased
sequential sparking. Purdue is working on an effort
sponsored by the Air Force Ofﬁce on Scientiﬁc Research that focuses on combustion characteristics inhigh-pressure rocket RDE devices. Three successful
test series have been undertaken: two with gaseoushydrogen and one with natural gas fuels. A NASAand Purdue-sponsored effort in pulse detonation engines, PDEs, completed the ﬁnal round of testing inwhich natural valveless detonative performance wasachieved using high concentration hydrogen peroxide with hypergolic fuels in a nozzleless combustor.
Research on both RDE and PDE technology
is robust outside of the U.S. A Japanese researchgroup from Nagoya University, Keio University, JAXAand Muroran Institute of Technology conducted a
successful sled test of an RDE, and the group has
started development of an RDE-powered sounding
rocket. In Russia, the Semenov Institute of Chemical Physics successfully operated an RDE with airand liquid propane by augmenting the detonation
process with hydrogen. In Saudi Arabia, the King
Abdullah University of Science and Technology
has developed and characterized a novel, activelyvalved and acoustically resonant pulse combustor
with pulsed fuel injection. The pulsed combustor isdesigned to produce meaningful pressure gain withlow pollutant emission in a gas turbine engine. +aerospaceamerica .org|

A rotating detonating
engine developed in Japanis being used to evaluate
engine thrust and conﬁrm
stable operation undervehicle acceleration.

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