Air traffic management plans advanced

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ACE panelist sees very different skies ahead
In the 100-m dash, record-breaking performances are measured in fractions of a second. When Maurice Greene broke the world record in 1999 by 0.05 s, it was the largest single improvement since electronic timing was introduced at the 1968 Olympics, and only 0.16 s better than Jim Hines's record-breaking performance at those Mexico City games. That equates to an average annual improvement of only about 0.005 s.

What makes engineers believe they can go any faster in terms of technological advance?

In answering that question, NASA-Langley Chief Scientist Dennis Bushnell doesn't even bother to cite the apples and oranges argument. Instead, he points to trends. Since 1959, he noted, computing power has increased 1-million-fold, with a factor of 10 increase possible using silicon. "We'll come off silicon in the next 20-25 years—we're already beginning to do it now—into bio computing, optical computing, quantum computing, molecular computing, and nano computing—that's another 100 million to go," he said.

In materials, development is under way on carbon and nitride nano tubes that are up to 600 times as strong as steel, Bushnell noted. "Smart dust," spheres of up to 1-mm diameter into which are incorporated communications, sensing, and photovoltaic capabilities, is another example of numerous nascent technologies that hold fantastic promise. In short, he said, "We haven't seen anything yet."

ACE attendees will get a chance to see and hear Bushnell during the September 13 plenary panel on "Changing Paradigms." One of his messages will be that the aerospace industry can use these new technologies to make drastic improvements in air transportation. But it will require some forward thinking. "There's very little advance planning in the aerospace industry, and there hasn't been for 25 years," he said. "Aerospace companies are very near-term, very evolutionary, very driven by the stock market, the bottom line, Wall Street, what's-going-to-happen-in-the-next-quarter."

With the information technology revolution leading the way, air transportation may look very different than it does today. IT is enabling more and more people to eschew crowded airports and skyways in favor of working at home. IT is also paving the way for skies filled by what Bushnell calls personal vertical takeoff and landing convertible ground/air vehicles. This potential $1 trillion/year market depends on high-volume manufacture of the mobility devices, something that is feasible, he believes, because they can be made totally automated for use by young, old, and every other demographic. "You just punch in where you want to go, and the system takes you there," he said. Moreover, he added, they would be of tremendous appeal in developing nations that cannot afford to develop an expensive ground transportation system.

Among the enablers for these personal mobility devices are GPS, 650 broadband Comsats, a change in the regulatory mind-set, and the military's increasing reliance on unmanned combat aircraft, according to Bushnell. The IT revolution could bring about a world of "telecommuting, tele-education, tele-medicine...tele-everything," giving reason for the masses to move far away from urban areas and clearing the airspace for these machines.

IT, bio, and nanotechnologies "are in a feeding frenzy off each other," Bushnell said. While these technologies will no doubt bring about improvements in many areas of life, including aerospace, turned the wrong way, the potential consequences can be pretty scary. He said a Nobel laureate working in a NASA astrobiology lab predicts that within the next 30 years, the human lifespan will be double today's. "Beyond that, perhaps, there's really no reason to die," said Bushnell.

"It gets scarier," he said. The IT revolution by some projections will make machines "smarter" than humans in terms of brain clock speed, which he said is believed to be about 20 petaflops. It's not implausible that robots eventually will "take out" humans, he said. Even scarier is the deadly damage that biotechnology in the wrong hands can produce, Bushnell added.

To the world's good fortune, these issues can be addressed now before they get out of control, said Bushnell, adding that if the aerospace industry wants to help shape the future, it cannot afford not to develop long-term vision.

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