'National Aerospace Initiative' Pushes Dual-Use Technology

Aviation Week & Space Technology | May 20, 2002

[Magnum44]

Aviation Week & Space Technology May 20, 2002 Pg. 32

'National Aerospace Initiative' Pushes Dual-Use Technology

The U.S. Defense Dept. is spearheading an interagency efficiency drive that could see hypersonic weapons technology evolving into air-breathing first stages for space launch vehicles. Ultimately, the push could extend into other dual-use items like sensors, communications and space nuclear power.

Ronald M. Sega, a former astronaut who serves as director of defense research and engineering, is pushing a "National Aerospace Initiative" (NAI) that aims to draw on research across the federal government to meet military needs. Mean-while, NASA and other agencies would also be able to satisfy their space-related requirements without duplicating ef-forts--and spending--elsewhere in the federal government.

Interagency working groups started studying the problem last fall, Sega said, and the resulting concepts and technology road maps now are making the rounds of industry for some cost and schedule input. The NAI, which covers hypersonics, access to space and space technology, foreshadows similar efforts in "surveillance and knowledge systems" and energy and power technologies.

"National security objectives are converging on . . . the technologies we certainly need to acquire for exploration and dis-covery objectives," NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe told the National Aerospace Commission May 14.

Since joining NASA at the first of the year, O'Keefe has been a big player in the NAI discussions, along with Defense Undersecretary E. C. (Pete) Aldridge, Jr., Air Force Secretary James G. Roche and Peter B. Teets, director of the Na-tional Reconnaissance Office. NASA's Space Launch Initiative (SLI) will be a key source of technology for the aerospace initiative Sega's office is organizing, as will the multiagency "National Hypersonics Strategy" drafted last year (AW&ST Mar. 26, 2001, p. 28).

In briefings to the Aerospace Commission and at the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs last month, Sega described an approach that pulls together an inventory of available technology and ongoing programs with a range of space operations applications. Technology needed to meet near-term goals can be improved over time to satisfy com-pletely unrelated needs.

For example, in Colorado, Sega cited the need across the military services for hypersonic weapons that can strike moving targets before they get away while allowing commanders to position launch platforms--ships, airplanes and even ground batteries--at safer distances from the battlefield. But the ramjet/scramjet propulsion and materials technologies that could enable a Mach 8 missile could ultimately be pushed to the Mach 14 range, which would be optimal for an air-breathing first stage in a two-stage-to-orbit space launch architecture that uses a rocket for the second stage. Sega said NAI could push hypersonic technology by "a Mach number a year" until Mach 14 is available in the 2010-12 period.

"As we look at faster munitions and supersonic/hypersonic kinds of missiles, that is useful, and adds military value and also starts us marching up the steps here, up to hypersonic cruise types of vehicles, and we get to a reusable launch vehi-cle that may in fact have a hypersonic first piece that's air-breathing," Sega told the Colorado audience. "But in any case we are learning as we go in a stepping-stone approach."

NASA and the Air Force were already working together on the National Hypersonics Strategy when Sega's office began the round of workshops and planning meetings that evolved into the NAI. Other efforts incorporated in NAI include the Pentagon's 1995 New World Vision study, the space commission study headed by Donald H. Rumsfeld before he became Defense secretary, and the 120-day study of reusable launch vehicle (RLV) requirements that led to an agreement among NASA, the Air Force and the National Reconnaissance Office to cooperate in NASA's SLI (AW&ST Apr. 15, p. 30).

Teets said that "working level" experts from the Defense Dept. would continue to refine military RLV requirements through the summer to see where there is common ground. A NASA/military "partnership council" of top space leaders will be expanded to include Sega, Teets said, and will begin making decisions on specific cooperative efforts in Septem-ber.

In general, the military has a lower payload-weight requirement than NASA and the commercial sector, which would also use a future RLV. The military has a launch-on-demand requirement to replace or deploy critical satellites that might play well into a hypersonic first stage, at least for small payloads, Teets said. Beyond that, NASA's decision to focus on liquid oxygen/kerosene first stages in a two-stage-to-orbit rocket would probably work for the military too.

"I think you could actually use something akin to an airplane to launch a first stage if you're talking about small weight to orbit," he said. "If you're talking about larger weight to orbit, then I personally think we need to look at a broad range of technologies, but LOX/hydrocarbon is probably an attractive way to go."

In addition to hypersonics and access to space, the NAI will tackle in-space technologies like microsatellites and multi-function satellites. Sega said some NAI activities could be reflected in the Fiscal 2004 federal budget request that will be assembled this fall for release early next year. Although Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) has suggested that the Defense Dept. pump funds into SLI to help NASA with its other funding problems (AW&ST May 13, p. 23), the NAI will not be funded by any one agency.

"There's been a history of NASA and [the Defense Dept.] collaborating in technical areas, and I believe it's the desire of both agencies to collaborate in areas that make sense," Sega said. "I think as we move forward on some of the projects that we have, you would see both organizations providing some investment."

While work on NAI is moving along--last week Sega's office organized a workshop to discuss infrastructure needs for NAI activities--planning for science and technology cooperation in two other "transformation initiatives" is less ad-vanced. Ultimately, Sega's office plans to pull together federal efforts in surveillance and knowledge systems, which in-cludes sensors, unpiloted vehicles, high-bandwidth communications and cyberwarfare. A Defense Dept. "tiger team" is already running an inventory on energy and power technologies leading to an all-electric force, and is talking to the En-ergy Dept. about fuel cell technology.

A cornerstone of the Bush Administration's plans for NASA is a push to develop nuclear sources for space propulsion and power generation, which includes both radioisotope thermoelectric generators and fission reactors. So far the De-fense Dept. has not discussed possible cooperation in that area with the civilian space agency, Sega said, although discus-sions are likely eventually. "We just haven't gotten to that point," he said.