34

For those who remember (or have read about) the heady days of the Space Race, we live in in-teresting times. On September 17, 2018, Elon Musk announced plans to send a paying passengerand his entourage on a sightseeing voyage around the Moon. If he pulls it off to plan, his “BFR”launch vehicle will be bigger, safer, and cheaper than the mighty Saturn V, and will have been de-veloped for between an eighth and a quarter the cost.In the 1950s and ’60s, space was the front line of an ideological proxy war between the

world’s two great powers. Instead of hills and supply lines, they fought over tons to Earth orbitand operational mastery of the high ground of space. Russia orbited a transmitter; the U.S. sentup instruments that discovered Earth’s radiation belts. Animals followed, then men. Crude cap-sules gave way to two-, then three-seat spacecraft. Orbit counts were supplanted by rendezvous,spacewalks, endurance, and docking. Machines, then humans, buzzed the Moon, landed, sam-pled its pristine mysteries. People died—on the ground and in the skies.Headline after headline, the U.S. and USSR thrust and parried, besting one another like old-

time swashbucklers until Uncle Sam planted his f lag in the lunar regolith. Then, like D’Artag-nan after his muskateering days, he put his Moon boots away and turned his attentionshomeward. The nascent lunar exploration program gave way to comparatively pedestrian “Apol-lo Applications.” Skylab was recycled from a rocket stage, but larger stations and lunar bases

Science Fact

Do We Still NeedNASA?

The Agency and ItsFuture in the Era ofCommercial Space

C. Stuart Hardwick

were financially out of reach, so NASA built what it saw as a step in their direction—a reusablespace shuttle that would put a pound in orbit for the price of a new suit.That didn’t quite work out. The shuttle was a marvel, but a marvel distorted by military re-

quirements and the need to constrain development costs even at the expense of increased op-erational complexity later on. Instead of a hardy, low-cost space truck, it served most of itsoperational life as a temperamental space station that had to be expensively launched over andover again, and since its retirement in 2011, trade-offs made during its development back in the‘70s have continued to dog efforts to build a successor.For nearly a decade, NASA has been forced to lease seats on Russian Soyuz flights while its

shuttle-derived Constellation and SLS programs have tallied up delays, overruns, and criticism.At the same time, upstart entrepreneurs have stepped in to disrupt the whole launch services in-dustry, and now here comes Musk with his “BFR” and talk of colonizing Mars. It’s enough tomake some question why NASA can’t keep up, or whether we even need it anymore. But beforewe can answer these questions, we must first understand what NASA was originally created forand examine our perceptions of its role now and into the future.Before NASA, before Sputnik, even before America entered World War I or Werner Von Braun

started primary school, there was the NACA. At the dawn of aviation, America led the aeronau-tical world with Samuel P. Langley’s steam-powered mechanical Aerodromes and the WrightBrothers’ manned Flier, but these early machines were hardly practical. By 1911, American avi-ation was still an industry of sideshow daredevilry, and advocates saw that U.S. efforts werefalling behind those of European powers in accomplishment, funding, and organization. Theoutbreak of war brought the need into focus, and as mining barons David and Harry Guggen-heim started plowing money into American aviation research and scholarship,1 Congress creat-ed a National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics. The NACA started out as just that, an unpaid committee of twelve volunteers, given a tiny

budget to “supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight with a view to theirpractical solution, and to determine the problems which should be experimentally attacked.2 ”It wasn’t the NACA’s job to build airliners or bombers, to fill the record books, or to fly to exit-ing places; they were concerned with research, with providing the experimental facilities andexpertise that industry needed but couldn’t afford or couldn’t justify in terms of return on in-vestment.By 1920, the NACA had established the Langley Memorial Research Center and built its first

wind tunnel. Then, realizing they couldn’t accurately model flight without accounting for thethin air through which real airplanes move, they added the nation’s first “variable density windtunnel,” essentially a closed loop inside a pressure vessel built by the Newport News shipyard,from which the air could be pumped to simulate conditions at any altitude. Other facilities fol-lowed, a propeller research tunnel, high-speed and vertical tunnels, tunnels large enough to ex-periment on full-scale aircraft, and numerous test aircraft and apparatus. The best and thebrightest, recruited from Europe or trained in one of the new university aeronautical programssupported by the Guggenheim fund, flocked to the new research laboratories.Results poured in. Early NACA research set the basic forms of fixed and rotating wing aircraft

for the next century. Its facilities and research programs saved American industry billions in du-plicated effort, solved safety, efficiency, and reliability problems critical to emerging air indus-tries, and established flight test protocols that would serve well into the twenty-first century.Here is a highly abbreviated list of NACA contributions, all shared freely and proactively with

the American aeronautical industry through regular publications and seminars:• The NACA Cowling: An engine cowling that cut drag over radial and rotary engines whileimproving their cooling. Ubiquitous on air-cooled piston engined aircraft from the 1930sonward, it surpassed similar developments in Europe and improved performance by closeto 30%. It was credited with saving U.S. aviation $5 million in 1928 alone—($75 million to-day)—many times total NACA expenditures to date.

• The NACA Duct: The roughly triangular, recessed scoop used by nearly all aircraft and

JULY/AUGUST 2019

35DO WE STILL NEED NASA?

many high performance cars to efficiently ingest air, often for cooling or sampling, and stillubiquitous today.

• What became the standard design for large fixed wing aircraft after the 1920s—pull con-figuration, the familiar tail, tricycle landing gear with steerable nose wheel, simplified lat-eral control, and high-lift devices (flaps) to reduce landing speed.

• The laminar flow airfoil, f irst used in the P-51 Mustang, which dramatically improved air-craft speed, efficiency, handling, and safety.

• The Transcontinental Airway System, a system of thousands of visual beacons and emer-gency airfields that made airmail service possible from 1924 to 1933.

• Data on use of supercharged engines to substantially improve aircraft service ceilings andhigh altitude performance,3 along with data on choosing the most effective type of super-charging for various applications.

• Data on the optimal shape and construction of helicopter rotors.• Data on aircraft ice prevention and removal.• Data on aircraft stability, and on spin control and avoidance.• Data on thunderstorms and their effects on aircraft.• NACA standard airfoil designs and the corresponding standardized formula for describingairfoil shapes that is today a world standard.

• Data supporting the placement of engines well forward of and below aircraft wings to op-timize handling, safety, and ease maintenance.

• Data on prevention of catastrophic vibration and wing “flutter” in large aircraft.• Data on, and solutions for, effective aircraft control in and beyond transonic flight, includ-ing the “flying tailplane” (or stabilator) which makes modern supersonic f ighter aircraftpossible.

• Data on the design and operational characteristics of ramjets.• Early research into the atmospheric reentry of spacecraft and associated heating—still usedin reentry heat shield design today.

* * *

36 C. STUART HARDWICK

ANALOG

Remnants of Transcontinental Air Mail Route Beacon 37A, atop a bluff in St. George, Utah.

This work may not have rated the headlines of a Moon landing, but it did as much for the safetyand pocketbook of the traveling public as the transcontinental railroad. By mid-century, it had alsohelped defeat fascism and transform the nation’s economy. Then in 1957, Sputnik circled the Earth. Once again, America had blazed ahead only to stumble

out of the blocks. We had rocket pioneers Werner Von Braun and Robert Goddard, but our effortstoward space were scattered between the navy, the army, and a dozen odd universities. Now ourgreatest adversary threatened to rain bombs down from space “like rocks form a highway over-pass.”In the wake of Sputnik, the NACA was dissolved and NASA created, but not to go to the Moon.

Aside from some organizational changes, NASA was the NACA, with all the same employees, facil-ities, and responsibilities plus one: the addition of space to the job description.The new agency was directed to4:Expand human knowledge of the Earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space;Improve the usefulness, performance, speed, safety, and efficiency of aeronautical and space

vehicles;Develop and operate vehicles capable of carrying instruments, equipment, supplies, and liv-

ing organisms through space;Study the potential benefits, opportunities, and problems associated with peaceful and sci-

entific aeronautical and space activities;Coordinate the scientific and engineering resources of the United States in order to avoid un-

necessary duplication of effort, facilities, and equipment; andFoster the American aerospace industry through research and technology development relat-

ed to associated manufacturing processes.In other words, NASA merely extended the NACA’s scientific and economic mandate into space.

It was to aid the nation in solving the problems of traveling in and profiting by this new frontier ex-actly as its progenitor had done with the air. Nowhere in its enabling legislation was NASA direct-ed to go to the Moon or build rockets the size of skyscrapers. That mandate came two years laterfrom a president who sought a galvanizing project to restore national prestige and morale. Natu-rally, it fell to NASA, and it made NASA the exemplar of technological achievement in the modernage—but it was never the agency’s raison d’être.First and foremost, NASA is and always has been a science agency, conducting work that industry

can’t or won’t either because it’s too expensive, speculative, or theoretical, or because importantthough it might be, it lacks an exploitable profit motive. Big capital projects grab headlines, but inscience, the smallest experiments can sometimes have the biggest impacts. Everyone knows the

JULY/AUGUST 2019

37DO WE STILL NEED NASA?

Diffuse reddish tracks in radar image (left) reveal previously hidden ancient roads leading to the once lostdesert oasis of Ubar.

Space Shuttle launched the Hubble Space Telescope and rescued it with on-orbit repair. Far fewerknow that synthetic aperture radar carried by the shuttle helped usher in a whole new branch ofarcheology.NASA didn’t invent Velcro®, TangTM, or the Fisher Space Pen®, but it has dipped humanity’s

toes into the cosmic ocean and inspired generations to boldly follow. It’s also carried on the ba-nal but vital research legacy bequeathed it by the NACA.Early NASA research led to modern aircraft lightning protection standards and to new wing

designs that can reduce small aircraft spin and stall fatalities by 30%. Onboard predictive

38 C. STUART HARDWICK

ANALOG

The Lunar Landing Research Facility enabled Apollo astronauts to train to fly and walk in simulated lunargravity. It’s subsequently been used to study crash survivability and protection in small aircraft.

Doppler wind-shear avoidance radar developed by NASA has effectively eliminated a whole classof airliner crashes. Research conducted on a test gantry built to simulate lunar gravity has im-proved crash survivability for small aircraft and helicopters.NASA research in service of the American airline industry and the millions impacted by its op-

erations is voluminous and varied:• Graphite strip wing deicing saves weight and fuel compared to earlier systems.• Supercritical airfoils improve high-speed fuel efficiency and performance in modern airlin-ers.

• Aircraft winglets reduce drag, improve economy, and reduce wing width, permitting larg-er aircraft to operate from existing runways.

• Da ta on the generation and prevention of aircraft body wind noise benefits the publicwhile improving airliner performance and fuel efficiency.

• Internal acoustic liners and external noise control chevrons (the sawtooth pattern on thetrailing edge of newer turbofan engine nozzles) both permit larger, more efficient, yet qui-eter engines that save airlines millions while easing their impact on affected communities.

This is all just NASA doing its job. So was its extensive investment in the development of Com-putational Fluid Dynamics, which NASA needed to solve some of the thornier problems thatarose while designing the shuttle, and which is now foundational to the development of all air-craft. Likewise the carbon fiber composites used to save weight in the shuttle payload bay doors.The materials already existed, but NASA did the expensive testing and study required to give en-gineers the data they needed to safely use them in aircraft. Today they save a lot more weight inthe Boeing Dreamliner and other new planes and have opened the door to radical design evolu-tion in the future.Naturally, there are practical every day spin-offs from all this work. Grooved runways devel-

oped to stop airliners from hydroplaning are now widely used in highway construction to con-trol both drainage and road noise. Aerodynamic truck fairings developed by NASA improvelong-haul truck fuel economy by over 20%5 and are now ubiquitous. NASA research into im-proved optical sensors for space probes led to the CMOS active-pixel sensor, the miniature,lightweight, high-resolution, low-light-capable heart of most modern consumer digital cameras,from cell phones to GoPros to DSLRs6. Liquid-cooled undergarments for spacesuits have becomecool-suits worn by racecar drivers, nuclear reactor technicians, and others. Insulation developedfor spacecraft now protects arctic pipelines.NASA research has shed light on the prevention of geriatric bone loss7, identified nutrients

critical to infant brain development, and developed technology to enhance mine safety and de-tect food-born pathogens before anyone gets sick. It’s contributed to the development of com-pact florescent lighting, the instant ear thermometer, the ventricular assist device, safer, moreefficient radial tires, anti-terror chemical detectors, computer video enhancement, land mineremoval, lightweight fire retardant rescue barriers, memory foam mattresses, cordless vacuumcleaners, ultra long shelf life camping and emergency rations, solar energy, oil spill remediation,advanced structural analysis software, powdered lubricants—and much more.All these innovations might have come along eventually, but NASA’s patronage helped speed

them into the hands of American industry, and so has helped hone the nation’s competitiveedge. And lest we not forget, the Apollo program forced thousands of manufacturers across thecountry and ultimately around the world to embrace precision manufacturing and automationtechnology that had previously been the sole purview of Cold War defense contractors. Thepractical upshot of that is hard to quantify—or over estimate.Of course not all farsighted research pays such dividends. In the 1960’s, NASA and the Atom-

ic Energy Commission developed atomic thermal rockets that could have taken manned mis-sions to Mars by the mid ’80s. Fear of another expensive space race (and of radiation) killed thatparticular initiative, and newer directions in propulsion make it unlikely that we’ll ever see a realRocketship Ga lileo, but the technology might yet see use in space mining or materials trans-shipment.Meanwhile, NASA is still at it, with research into high efficiency ion and plasma space propul-

sion systems, electric and hybrid electric aircraft propulsion, and advanced adaptive flaps thatcan cut aircraft noise while boosting fuel efficiency. The Commercia l Supersonic Technology8

program is getting ready to fly a full-scale demonstrator of a supersonic transport that producesno destructive sonic boom. The New Avia tion Horizons Initia tive is exploring radical new air-craft designs—hyper eff icient wing designs, blended body aircraft that bring a whole newmeaning to the aeronautical term “wide body,” and innovative tail and engine placement de-signs. Just as the NACA did back in the last century, this work will help set the form of aircraftlarge and small for the coming century of commercial aviation.Which brings us to the future of space. Kennedy directed NASA to take us to the Moon because

he saw it as of strategic importance to the nation. But space was new, expensive, and risky, too

JULY/AUGUST 2019

39DO WE STILL NEED NASA?

much so to be left to the vagaries and profit motives of private industry alone. After Apollo, thenation needed a lower cost, more versatile launch vehicle. A reusable shuttle seemed like just theticket, though in practice, it turned out to be more of a challenge and less of a solution than we’dimagined. Like every large rocket before it, the space shuttle would never have been built by aprivate enterprise hoping to earn a prof it in the open market. Space was, of necessity, theprovince of government. But technology has come a long way. Today, this is starting to change,and NASA is helping with the transition.Back in 2004, the Bush Administration announced a “Vision for Space Exploration” which

was simultaneously criticized as too meek (returning to the Moon before pushing on to Mars)and too ambitious (spending the money to do both). One part of this vision, however, was af-fordable and readily achievable: promoting commercial participation9 in space exploration andexploitation.Using public money to spur private investment is nothing new, but the agency’s response was

refreshingly bold. No longer were American aerospace contractors to compete the way armsmanufacturers do, to equip a deep-pocketed government agency. Instead they were vending theirservices; they were to own and operate their own space hardware which NASA would help themdevelop and then be a customer for. Early results were encouraging, and when President Obamaacted on the Augustine Committee’s post-shuttle recommendations10 to cancel the Constellationprogram and refocus the agency, this initiative was at the top of the list for preservation.The results have been a spectacular success. Under NASA’s new commercial incentive pro-

grams, twenty companies competed for federal money to help develop launch services for re-supply of the International Space Station, then thirty-six vied to develop manned spacecraft.Space-X and Orbital Sciences Corporation have both delivered economical boosters for a totalpublic investment of less than $720 million.11,12 That’s what it cost to develop the Atlas back inthe 1950s ($6 billion today), and it could barely haul a fiftieth the payload.These programs have ignited a nascent space entrepreneurship that has disrupted markets

built up under decades of military style cost-plus procurement. Economy hasn’t been the onlybenefit. Space-X now operates the heaviest and most economical launch vehicle in the world—with Blue Origin hot on its heels and the Boeing/Lockheed joint venture, United Launch Al-liance, scrambling to respond. Boeing, Sierra Nevada, and Space-X all will soon be carryingpassengers—whether NASA hires them or not. And while Musk’s dreams of a Martian frontiermay seem a tad optimistic, one thing’s abundantly clear: his planned booster is credibly withinreach of outclassing even NASA’s giant SLS—in capacity, completion date, and economy.That being the case, it is indeed possible that the SLS might be affected; it’s not NASA’s job to

compete with American industry, but to enable it. If industry really does step up to undercutthe SLS, that will only free NASA resources for other vital tasks—lunar construction technologyand prospecting, deep space radiation shielding and gravity solutions, in-situ propellant pro-duction technology, and one day maybe even biomedical studies of off world procreation—whoknows?Meanwhile, NASA does have other space matters to keep it busy, even aside from the pursuit

of science for science’s sake. Early studies (mostly of Delta rocket upper stages, which had a ten-dency to burst on orbit) led NASA to promulgate worldwide operational guidance to control theaccumulation of space debris. Today, the NASA Orbital Debris Program Office13 manages thetracking, prevention, and avoidance of orbital debris from all nations, and conducts researchinto remediation and spacecraft hardening. Oh, and then there is the catalog of twenty thousandnear-Earth orbiting objects, and the reality that one day, one of them will need to be sent pack-ing.Indeed, arguably, far from the Moon landings and the spin-offs and the spectacular launch ve-

hicles, NASA’s greatest accomplishment to date is no less than its pivotal role in averting a veryreal global catastrophe. NASA’s pioneering Nimbus satellites were a technology incubator fromthe mid ’60s to the late ’70s and created the field of Earth observations. It was the Nimbus 7 satel-lite that discovered the seasonal ozone hole over Antarctica. Other Nimbus data confirmed theglobal degradation of the ozone layer as a whole that had been postulated by scientists since the

40 C. STUART HARDWICK

ANALOG

early seventies, and NASA research planes helped confirm CFCs and other industrial pollutants asthe culprits. NASA data was instrumental in the rapid adoption of the 1987 Montreal Accord andsubsequent controls on the release of these substances, and the subsequent stabilization of thedamage.Most people know that the ozone layer is now recovering. Few have any idea, however, just

how narrowly we dodged the bullet, or how grave the situation truly was. A 2009 study14 foundthat without these aggressive changes starting in 1987, the ozone layer would by now (2020)have degraded by 17% overall, with year-round “holes” over both poles growing toward a glob-al loss of atmospheric UV-B protection by late in the century. The results would not have beenmerely a pandemic of skin cancer. Excessive UV-B exposure has been shown to stunt growth inabout half of crop plants,15 and in the ocean to cause developmental effects in many fish and toincrease mortality in the phytoplankton that produce 70% of the planet’s oxygen.16 Loss of aneffective ozone shield might very well have led to global famine, and might even have threat-ened the habitability of the planet.Far from threatening or undermining NASA, the current blossoming of private space industry

is another feather in the agency’s proverbial cap. Whatever the future holds, and wherever itleads, NASA, despite its faults, is an exemplar of public/private partnership serving the greatergood. If indeed the agency’s next mega program falls victim to entrepreneurial craft, there willbe only one thing we can say: “Thank you, NASA, and keep up the good work.”

* * *Sources:

1Hallion, Richard P. “Daniel and Harry Guggenheim and the Philanthropy of Flight” in Leary, William M., ed.Aviation’s Golden Age: Portraits From the 1920s and 1930s. Iowa City, Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 1989.

2Bilstein, R. E. Orders of Magnitude: a History of the NACA and NASA, 1915-1990. 1989.3De Bothezat, George. Airplane performance as influenced by the use of a supercharged engine, report, May

1920;4United States, Congress, “National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, as Amended.” National Aeronau-

tics and Space Act of 1958, as Amended, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2005.5Space Foundation. “Aerodynamic Vehicle Design - Space Age Design on the Highways.” Space Foundation,

Space Foundation, https://www.spacefoundation.org/what-we-do/space-technology-hall-fame/inducted-tech-nologies/aerodynamic-vehicle-design-space-age

6Dunbar, Brian. “A Picture of Innovation.” NASA, NASA, https://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/home/tech_life_apti-na.html.

7Sara R Zwart, Duane Pierson, Satish Mehta, Steve Gonda, Scott M Smith. Capacity of Omega-3 Fatty Acids orEicosapentaenoic Acid to Counteract Weightlessness-Induced Bone Loss by Inhibiting NF-�B Activation: FromCells to Bed Rest to Astronauts. Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, 2009;

8“New Aviation Horizons Initiative and Complementary Investments” NASA, NASA,https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/nasa-aero-10-yr-plan-508-reduced.pdf

9United States, Congress, Bush, George W. “A Renewed Spirit of Discovery: the Presidents Vision for U.S. forU.S. Space Exploration.” A Renewed Spirit of Discovery: the Presidents Vision for U.S. for U.S. Space Explo-ration, White House, 2005.

10United States, Congress, Senate. “Options from the Review of U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans CommitteeHearing before the Subcommittee on Science and Space of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Trans-portation, United States Senate, One Hundred Eleventh Congress, First Session, September 16, 2009.” Optionsfrom the Review of U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans Committee Hearing before the Subcommittee on Science andSpace of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, United States Senate, One HundredEleventh Congress, First Session, September 16, 2009, U.S. G.P.O., 2010.

11United States, Congress, Hackler, Rebecca. “Commercial Orbital Transportation Services: a New Era inSpaceflight.”

12“Audit of Commercial Resupply Services to the International Space Station.” NASA, OIG,https://oig.nasa.gov/docs/IG-18-016.pdf

13Stansbery, Gene. “Brief ing to the NASA Advisory Council.” NASA, Orbital Debris Program Off ice,“https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/%20OrbitalDebrisProgramOffice.pdf

JULY/AUGUST 2019

41DO WE STILL NEED NASA?

14Newman, P. A., Oman, L. D., Douglass, A. R., Fleming, E. L., Frith, S. M., Hurwitz, M. M., Kawa, S. R., Jack-man, C. H., Krotkov, N. A., Nash, E. R., Nielsen, J. E., Pawson, S., Stolarski, R. S., and Velders, G. J. M. (2009).What would have happened to the ozone layer if chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) had not been regulated? Atmos-pheric Chemistry and Physics, 9(6), 2113-2128.

15Teramura, Alan H., and Joe H. Sullivan. “Potential Impacts of Increased Solar UV-B on Global Plant Produc-tivity.” Photobiology, 1991, pp. 625–634., doi:10.1007/978-1-4615-3732-8_66.

16Häder, D.-P., et al. “Effects of Solar UV Radiation on Aquatic Ecosystems and Interactions with ClimateChange.” Photochem. Photobiol. Sci., vol. 6, no. 3, 2007, pp. 267–285., doi:10.1039/b700020k.

42 C. STUART HARDWICK

ANALOG