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Do NASA's Wind Tunnel and Propulsion Test Facilities Serve

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Do NASA's Wind Tunnel and Propulsion Test Facilities Serve NEWS RELEASE RESEARCH BRIEF CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS Do NASA’s Wind Tunnel and Propulsion Test Facilities Serve National Needs? RAND RESEARCH AREAS he nation has invested billions of dollars in CHILD POLICY CIVIL JUSTICE wind tunnel and propulsion test facilities— Abstract EDUCATION investments that have created a testing NASA’s wind tunnel and propulsion test facil- ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT infrastructure that has helped secure the PROJECT HEALTH AND HEALTH CARE ities continue to be important to U.S. com- Tcountry’s national security and prosperity through INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS petitiveness across the military, commercial, MEMORANDUM NATIONAL SECURITY advances in commercial and military aeronautics and space sectors. But management issues POPULATION AND AGING and space systems. are creating real risks. This research shows PUBLIC SAFETY Many of these facilities exist within the National SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY that NASA needs to develop an aeronautics SUBSTANCE ABUSE Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). test technology vision and plan, analyze the TERRORISM AND Over the past two decades, NASA has reduced the HOMELAND SECURITY viability of a national test facility plan, iden- TRANSPORTATION AND number of these facilities by one-third, has identi- tify and maintain its minimum set of facilities, INFRASTRUCTURE fied additional facilities to be closed, and is experi- and identify shared financial support to keep encing patterns of declining use in some facilities its underutilized but essential facilities from that suggest they too may face closure. entering financial collapse. Given these trends, the RAND Corporation was asked to clarify the nation’s aeronautic testing needs and the continuing place that NASA’s facilities have in serving these needs. The research in reducing some empirical test simulation needs, RESEARCH answered five basic questions: (1) What are the it is not yet reliable for predicting the characteris- HIGHLIGHTS nation’s current and future needs for aeronautic tics of the complex separated flows that dominate prediction capabilities? (2) What roles do NASA’s most critical design points for an aircraft. More- facilities play in serving these needs? (3) How well over, while CFD technology may become a compre- aligned is its portfolio of facilities with national hensive solution in the future, we will not realize needs? (4) How “healthy” is its portfolio? and (5) that potential for decades. Attaining that potential How should it manage that portfolio? will, ironically, require many precise facility experi- This product is part of the RAND Corporation research ments; thus, we cannot replace test facilities alto- brief series. RAND research briefs present policy-oriented Despite Aeronautic Maturity, gether without maintaining existing high-quality summaries of individual Test Facilities Are Still Critical testing facilities during CFD development. published, peer-reviewed documents or of a body of Some argue we do not need the testing capabilities published work. that have been built up over the years. This view is Nearly All NASA Facilities Serve Corporate Headquarters based on the beliefs that the aeronautics industry Strategic National Needs 1776 Main Street P.O. Box 2138 has matured and that whatever test capabilities We examined how well NASA’s portfolio of 31 test Santa Monica, California we need can be met through other means, such as facilities aligns against national strategic needs in 90407-2138 sophisticated simulation technology. each of six categories: subsonic, transonic, super- TEL 310.393.0411 FAX 310.393.4818 Research confirms industry maturity, but that sonic, hypersonic, hypersonic propulsion integra- © RAND 2004 maturity relies on our workforce and test facility tion, and direct-connect propulsion. infrastructure. No vehicle classes have gone away, Nearly all existing NASA facilities serve at least and for each class, we will continue to need to one strategic need category (i.e., are primary facili- predict airflow behavior across a range of design ties serving at least one need) important to the considerations. nation’s continuing ability to pursue aeronautic And while simulation technology, like compu- vehicles. We found very little overlap and very few www.rand.org tational fluid dynamics (CFD), has made inroads gaps in coverage. NASA’s Portfolio Is in Mixed Health But some in the minimum set that should stay “open for busi- In looking at the health of NASA’s test facilities, we see two key ness” are financially unhealthy. For the facilities in the most danger, dimensions: how technically competitive the facilities are and how NASA should identify shared support to keep them from entering well utilized they are. By these measures, NASA’s portfolio is gener- financial collapse because of variable utilization, FCR accounting, ally in good condition. The table shows that more than three-quar- and lack of program support for long-term national benefits. Shared ters of its facilities are competitive and effective with state-of-the- support would be relatively small. Even the total operating costs of art requirements and that more than two-thirds are well utilized. about $130 million per year for these important facilities make up Overall, about two-thirds are both technically competitive and well less than 1 percent of NASA’s overall budget and are even smaller utilized, with this number varying across the six test facility catego- than the $32–58 billion the nation invests annually in aerospace ries. But there is room for improvement, especially in reducing the research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E). backlog of maintenance and repair across the portfolio. Technical Competitiveness and Utilization by Facility Category Recommendations Percent- For NASA leadership, the most critical issue is to develop a specific Facility Number of Percentage Percentage age TC and clearly understood aeronautics test technology vision, to continue Category Facilities TC WU and WU to support developing plans to very selectively consolidate and Subsonic 8 75 50 50 broadly modernize existing test facilities, and to prescribe common Transonic 5 80 80 60 management and accounting directions for NASA’s facilities. This Supersonic 3 100 33 33 vision cannot be developed apart from other critical national deci- Hypersonic 3 100 100 100 sions. It must be informed by the long-term aeronautic needs, visions, Hypersonic and capabilities of both the commercial and military sectors sup- propulsion ported by NASA’s aeronautical RDT&E complexes. integration 9 78 66 66 While generally not redundant within NASA, a few of the NASA Direct-connect propulsion 3 100 100 100 facilities’ capabilities are redundant with those of facilities main- Overall 31 84 68 65 tained by the Department of Defense (DoD). Whether these redun- TC = technically competitive; WU = well utilized. dancies amount to the “unnecessary duplication” of facilities prohib- ited by the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 was beyond Using a third dimension of health status—financial health— the study’s scope. Further analysis of technical, cost, and availability we found that the full-cost recovery (FCR) accounting practices issues is required to determine if consolidation and right-sizing NASA has imposed have serious implications for the financial health across NASA and DoD would provide a net government savings. of currently underutilized facilities (about one-third of the facilities NASA should work with DoD to analyze the viability of such a in general, with variation across the facility types). Average-cost- national reliance plan because it could affect the determination of based pricing, decentralized budgeting, poor strategic coordination the future minimum set of facilities NASA must continue to support. between users and providers of NASA facilities, and poor balanc- NASA should keep pursuing all three approaches—facility, ing of short- and long-term priorities inside and outside NASA are CFD, and flight testing—to meeting national testing needs; estab- creating financial problems that leave elements of the U.S. testing lish the minimum set of facilities important to retain and manage capacity underfunded. With declining usage and FCR accounting, to serve national needs; reassess poorly utilized facilities for strategic, these facilities run the risk of financial collapse. long-term needs rather than eliminate them out of hand; identify financial support concepts to keep its current minimum set of facil- NASA Should Provide Shared Financial Support ities healthy for the good of the country; and continue to invest in for Its Minimum Set of Test Facilities CFD, eliminate the $128 million backlog of maintenance and repair Of the 31 existing major NASA test facilities, 29 constitute the at its facilities, and address hypersonic air-breathing research challenges. “minimum set” of facilities important to retain and manage to serve Unless NASA, in collaboration with DoD, addresses specific national needs. Thus, the test complex within NASA is both respon- deficiencies, investment needs, budgetary difficulties, and collabora- sive to serving national needs and mostly “right sized” to the range tive possibilities, the nation risks losing the competitive aeronautics of national aeronautic engineering needs. advantage it has enjoyed for decades. This research brief describes work done by the RAND National Defense Research Institute documented in Wind Tunnel and Propulsion Test Facilities: An Assessment of NASA’s Capabilities to Serve National Needs, by Philip S.
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