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Aviation History
1999
1999 - 3110.PDF
NASA is set to turn an experimental project into full- scale scientific and commercial work GUY NORRIS/LOS ANGELES AS SHOPPING EXPEDITIONS go, vis iting NASA's display of Environmental Research Aircraft and SensorTechnology (ERAST) project aircraft on 13 October has to rank as one of the strangest. On show, under the appropriate banner of "ready for busi ness", were five of the oddest aircraft ever to grace the ramp at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center on Edwards AFB, California. In contrast with the obvious utility of con ventional aircraft, the ungainly and fragile look ing ERAST vehicles could be a tough sell - as NASA readily admits. "We're inviting science people and some potential customers to go out there and touch them, feel them, see some of them fly. We want to reassure them that they can put their expensive scientific instruments, or 'babies', on them, and they will return safely," Scaled Composites' Proteus is likely to be the first ERAST contender to enter large scale service says John Del Frate, project manager for the ERAST solar-powered aircraft. "I'd love it if someone was to call me up and say 'I need this mission doing. What sort of aircraft could I have?'." The event also marks a significant in the five- year-old ERAST project, which was first intended to develop technologies for a new fam ily of remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs) for envi ronmental research. Performance goals for the aircraft were extraordinarily ambitious: speeds as slow as 13kt (24km/h), altitudes up to 100,000ft (30km) and an endurance of up to 96h. Wth these goals well on the way to being met, the RVPs' commercial and scientific appli cations are becoming the ERAST project's primary focus. NASA and the industrial partners in the pro ject believe the long-duration, high-altitude aircraft that come out of ERAST will be unique ly capable of missions that are impossible or prohibitively expensive to achieve. These range from upper atmospheric science missions to help collect, identify and monitor environmen tal data affecting the global climate, to carrying telecommunication equipment to high alti tudes to act as "atmospheric satellites". Other potential uses include low-cost sur veillance and wide area coverage for applica tions as diverse as tracking packages or stolen vehicles. Together with goals to extend endurance and payload capacity, ERAST main tains a desired cost objective of around $5,000 per flight hour, or a fraction of the cost of rival air and space platforms. Getting to the point of offering the services of the ERAST platforms for "real" missions has been a combined effort of the project partners. NASA Dryden, which leads the effort, is sup ported by NASA's Glenn Research Center, which is developing propulsion concepts and NASA believes the aircraft that come out of ERAST will be uniquely capable FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 20 - 26 October 1999 51
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