Boeing expects NASA to do its R&D for it, and if NASA doesn’t, the response is not to spend its own money on it, but to spend it on lobbyists to make it happen, which is usually much cheaper and provides greater leverage. Since both Boeing and NASA mistakenly believe that practical commercial supersonic flight is impossible, there’s no pressure for useful research on the subject to occur.

Dr. Conway’s chapter on hypersonic research touched on this issue. If I remember it correctly, he covered it because it emerged out of the wreckage of NASP.

I don’t remember all the details, but this was a joint NASA-Boeing research program similar to X-33 in that both were supposed to put their money in at the beginning. But after several years of work, Boeing crunched some numbers and concluded that there was no real market for high speed transport. It was too marginal.

But I disagree with your implication that industry doesn’t do this research because they “expect” NASA to do it and NASA is not doing it. That only works once. After they see that NASA is not doing it, you would expect them to pick up the ball. But they haven’t.

To be a little more precise, they certainly do perform some of their own research. After all, Boeing is putting a new wing on the 7E7 and is obviously doing research associated with fuel efficiency and things like that. But it is a relative thing–should the US (government and industry combined) be doing more aeronautics research than it is doing? If so, why is it not happening?

I have already offered a partial explanation for why the government is not–there is ideology at play (“This is not a proper role for government.”) and also tight budgets. But what explains industry’s lack of attention to this? One possible explanation is that the US has really lost a lot by reducing to only one commercial jetliner manufacturer and that Boeing is now so diversified that it is no longer as interested in maintaining its edge in commercial jetliners as it once was. They can make more money on other things. That is one explanation. I don’t claim that it is the only one.

It’s not, because it expects NASA to do it, but NASA’s not doing it either (and it’s not just because of funding–they pissed away over a billion dollars on High-Speed Research in the nineties, in a program as disastrous as X-33, both in its failure and the utter predictability of it).

Eric Conway, the contract historian for NASA Langley, has written a history of supersonic research at NASA. I have not read it, but have heard him discuss NASA’s hypersonic research (NASP) which was one chapter in the book. He discussed how aeronautics research used to be tossed back and forth as administrations changed. Some thought that funding aero research through NASA was vital to maintaining the US lead in aeronautics. Others thought that this should be left to the very large aero industry (Boeing, etc.). But now nobody really discusses it much, although I have met some people in government who are convinced that industry is not performing the kind of basic research that it needs to be performing. I don’t believe Eric’s book has been printed yet, but it undoubtedly goes into these things.

Regarding NASA’s aeronautical work, your sentiments match those I’ve heard from other folks, one of whom works in aeronautics at the agency.

My thinking was that a separate agency to handle aeronautical RDT&E would prevent the dwindling interest in a critical area of research and development. Aviation and the system to keep it alive are undergoing a transformation that is expected to be radical during the 21st century. I’m concerned not enough attention is placed on this issue from the government outside of the FAA, and even then I wonder.

Perhaps I’m naive, since erecting an agency, even if it is derived from an existing one, doesn’t necessarily mean the mission will be handled adequately.

Unfortunately, aeronautical research at NASA has been a tennis ball, constantly bounced back and forth from one side of the court to the other (how’s that for an analogy?). A big part of the problem has been ideology, different interpretations of the role of government in fostering high technology research. Should the government perform research that will lead to better jet engines for commercial use? Or better flight control surfaces for commercial use? Or better wings, etc? In the past, people have tried to define “pre-commercial research” as things that commercial airplane and engine manufacturers would not develop on their own, but it’s really hard to define these.

This is less of a problem now as it seems that the Bush and Clinton administrations have apparently decided to not fund much aeronautical research at all–they made a simple budget calculation and never really had to consider ideology. But in the past a change in administrations, or in Congress, could lead to a change in views on whether NASA should be conducting this kind of research at all or whether the “market” would take care of it. Nobody really uses the term much anymore, but aeronautical research is part of an industrial policy.

Mr. Smith also wrote:
“This Aldridge Commission report will collect dust on a shelf somewhere, along with so many of its cousins.”

I am pretty familiar with a lot of these reports, although it has been a long time since I’ve read any of them in detail. But it is true that few of them actually translate into real change. The Stafford commission report of 1992, for instance, made a number of recommendations concerning the Space Exploration Initiative. The only problem was that SEI was dead by the time it came out. The Augustine commission report largely sank without a trace and is perhaps most remembered for its suggestion that NASA receive budget increases that it never got.

I have to sit down and read the Aldridge commission report cover to cover, but so far I think that there are some useful recommendations there and some that are really useless. O’Keefe has stated that he intends to implement the report’s recommendations. Of course, some of them are beyond his ability to implement (like a space council), some are going to be decided elsewhere (FFRDCs in Congress, for instance), and some of them are essentially empty. And NASA has no ability to implement any of them before the election, and the election will determine if any of them get implemented at all.

The report seems to be filled with a lot of wishful thinking and empty recommendations, like saying that everybody should be thinner and should floss regularly. They state that the vision for space exploration should be a national priority–at the same time that we have abundant evidence that it is _not_ a national priority. And they state that it should receive more attention from the White House, when the White House has clearly decided not to pay attention to it. (Where is that presidential speech that was supposed to happen when the report was produced?) I’m not willing to totally write off the report yet, but I admit to being somewhat disappointed at its recommendations and findings.

Did I say they shouldn’t be concerned?

“But the commission did not propose FFRDCs in order to allow the centers to then fire people. They proposed FFRDCs as a means of achieving efficiencies, but I’m not sure that there is demonstrated efficiency to FFRDCs as a rule.”

One of the ways of improving efficiency is by removing deadwood. Surely you’re not claiming that such is non-existent at NASA centers?

It is a cop-out and it is being perceived as such. During the press conference at the rollout of the report the reporters asked questions along those lines, saying things like “isn’t this just another way of saying that one or more centers should be closed?” They lacked the courage of their convictions on this, which is admittedly troubling–after all, independent commissions are created to make tough calls like this, but they ducked this one.

You many, or may not be, surprised to hear that many of the civil servants at the non-FFRDC centers are concerned about this…”

Why shouldn’t they be concerned? And isn’t their concern just as valid as the concern that someone at a private company has when their company is bought out, or taken over by incompetent management? It is not illegitimate to be concerned with job security.

But the commission did not propose FFRDCs in order to allow the centers to then fire people. They proposed FFRDCs as a means of achieving efficiencies, but I’m not sure that there is demonstrated efficiency to FFRDCs as a rule.

I believe that a couple of studies of this subject were performed during the 1990s, although I have nothing more than vague recollection about that. I’m scratching my head to think who studied this. I think it might have been the Air Force and the National Research Council separately evaluating whether the nation’s large number of Cold War era FFRDCs made sense anymore. I think their general conclusion was that there are good FFRDCs and mediocre ones and simply because an organization was an FFRDC did not mean that it was more efficient than a dedicated government lab.