But now, at the dawn of the 21st century, aerospace has become a too imprecise, if not overused, word for the challenges facing the aviation and the space communities. The aviation and space disciplines must choose to pursue parallel but separate paths.
Capacity is oversaturated in airports and airways around the world.
Tactical aircraft designs stopped at Mach 2.4, where conventional materials hit the thermal barrier. And yesterday's SST may have flown its last flight, but there is no call for a next generation, or for joining the world's fledgling hypersonic transport design effort. It is time for a revised doctrine of aircraft design and development based on advancing technologies rather than on political or budgetary expediencies. Aviation must get back on its own track. NASA, with its internal struggle for the survival of aeronautics, has neither a charter nor the wherewithal to take on the original NACA mission as keeper of the nation's aviation technology edge.