>> Hi, welcome to the aviation airspace systems web challenge.
I'm Kathy Lee, a NASA researcher.
As you can see in the introduction we've had some interesting responses to our challenge.
Today we're going to take a look at some of the entries in the challenge and announce the winner and also learn more about NASA and the aerospace systems program.
There is more.
We'll show you how it might be possible for you to become pilots and air traffic controllers for a day right in your own school.
This webcast is coming to you from NASA Ames Research Center in mountain view, California.
Here with us in the auditorium are project managers from Ames Research Center and folks on the phone coming to us from Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio and Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
When you have the question use the chatroom.
I want to thank all our viewers today.
Did you know that there are over 1,000 of you out there from 25 schools across the United States and in four countries around the world?
Here is a list of all the participating schools.
If you don't see your schools on this list, just send us an email and we'll make sure your school is included.
What I want to know right now is how many of you have ever been on an airplane that has been delayed where you've had to wait before you could take off or land?
Have you ever been stuck on the runway, in the terminal or been on a flight that had to circle the airport?
Raise your hand right now and have one student let us know from the chatroom how many of you have had your flight delayed and how it was delayed.
Was it in the air or on the ground?
This time we gave you a big challenge.
How do you redesign the national airspace system so more people can travel with fewer delays?
Do you change the airplanes or how the airplanes fly through the airspace?
Should we redesign the national airspace system or build different kinds of air  -- airplanes.
Hopefully today we'll have some answers for you.
Don't forget, you can send us questions during the webcast using the chatroom.
Please remember not to use your last name when you sign in.
You may use your teacher's name or your school's name.
We will get our experts here to answer as many questions as possible.
On today's webcast, we'll learn more about NASA, we'll meet NASA scientists from across the United States and we'll learn about a new NASA program that makes learning math and science fun.
And, of course, we'll announce the winner of our challenge.
Some of our scientists couldn't be with us today so we put them on tape.
If you have a question for them, remember, some of them are available by phone to answer your questions.
I know for most of you when you think about NASA, you think we only work on things that have to do with space.
But NASA does more than space.
We have four mission directors and each one has a different job.
Here are the names and what they do.
The aeronautics mission director works on enabling a safer, more secure, efficient and environmentally friendly air transportation system.
The exploration systems mission director looks at identifying, developing exploration systems.
The other one  -- finally the space operations mission director extends the duration and boundaries of human space flight to create new opportunities for exploration and discovery.
Sometimes people forget that the first A in NASA stands for aeronautics.
Here is what we're doing in aeronautics research at NASA.
One of our goals is to protect the air travelers and the public.
We'll do this by helping to decrease aircraft accident rates reducing the vulnerability of air transportation system to hostile threats and mitigating the consequences of these threats and also protecting the environment to reduce aircraft noise and emissions.
We also want to increase mobility.
That will enable people and goods to travel faster and farther with fewer delays.
We're working on ways to improve our national security and we're also exploring revolutionary air nautical concepts including applying our knowledge to designing aircraft for other planets.
This looks like a lot of things to do.
So where does the airspace systems program fit in all this?
If you look at the aeronautics research and all the things we just talked about we have several programs working on all of this.
They are the airspace systems program, aviation safety and security, and vehicle systems.
Our job is to increase mobility in the national airspace system.
So we're the part of NASA that is working on enabling more goods and people to travel faster and farther be fewer delays.
And that's what this challenge was all about.
We're asking you to think about how that could be done.
In just a moment, we're going to find out more about these projects and meet some folks responsible for helping them work.
Our first project is the virtual airspace modeling and simulations project.
Can we role the tape, please?
>> For those who travel regularly, airport congestion and flight a delays are a fact of life.
But imagine a future of air travel that allows you to go where you want, when you want, with time to spare.
NASA's virtual airspace modeling project is exploring that future.
Right now the project is evaluating concepts for redesigning our national airspace system and improving the way we manage air traffic.
NASA an industry researchers are created new approaches or operational concepts.
Exciting ideas for airspace are emerging like an architect builds a model of a building before creating the final structure, researchers will build computer models of the national airspace system to show how it runs.
Using these models they'll imitate or simulate the new concepts and evaluate how they'll operate in the system.
Because they're dealing with revolutionary ideas, concepts and emerging technologies researchers need to develop new modeling and simulation tools.
The final step in this process will be to build technology roadmaps that identify the facilities, tools and technology required to create the airspace system of the future.
>> Back in the auditorium with layton, the deputy project manager.
Why do we need to design the national airspace system?
>> One of the reasons -- the main reason we need to redesign the airspace system is just as we see traffic jams around all the big cities in the country today, we have a similar problem in the air transportation system with traffic congestion.
The system is full during the peak hours.
If we want to increase mobility, move more people and goods faster and farther with less delay, we're going to need to change the system.
And so we're looking at new concepts which will allow us to do that.
One of the ways we do that is through computer modeling and simulation to see which ideas are working for us.
>> Could we also solve the problem by making bigger planes that can carry more people?
>> That would be just part of the system and part of the system we're looking at.
One of the things we need to take into account, though, is maintaining the flexibility we have in our system.
If we have only just large airplanes, there will be -- they won't necessarily be able to serve some of the smaller areas in the country that only a few people need to get to.
So we need that flexibility in the system.
And there are other issues with respect to large aircraft which I think you'll hear about from some of the other colleagues that are here today relating to aerodynamics and some of the issues we have to deal with there.
>> Great.
Thanks, layton.
Next we're going to hear about the efficient aircraft spacing project.
Have you ever wondered why planes can't fly as close together as cars that travel on the road?
I think this next clip will give you an idea why.
Let's take a look at it now.
>> OK.
The efficient aircraft spacing project develops ways for aircraft flying within the national airspace system to operate in a more efficient fashion and we developed the technologies that are required for these new ways of operating.
They're essentially horizontal tornadoes that spin off the wing tips of airplanes whenever an airplane is flying.
One of the things that we're doing is looking at better ways of predicting the behavior of the vortexs so we can time arrivals and departures.
The idea is to be able to land and depart more aircraft per hour from the airports.
We're also looking at ways of improving the efficiency for transAtlantic flights so the airlines can reduce your operating costs and hopefully pass that along to the public.
We know that we have a part in bringing about a change which will be for the public good.
I think that that is one of the main things that causes NASA people to be so excited about the work that we do.
>> We have Wayne Brian on the line from Langley Research Center.
Are you there?
>> Yes, I am.
>> We have a couple of questions for you.
Can you tell us, do all airplanes create wake vortexs or just the big ones?
>> All airplanes create it whenever they're flying, when they're creating lift.
So the answer is all the airplanes are creating vort exs but the real issues is that the hazard is a function of a lot of characteristics but mostly the weight of the generating aircraft and how fast it's going and the larger the wake that is generated, the more hazard it is to smaller airplanes.
>> OK.
So you're saying not all wake vortexs are the same.
>> No, they're not all the same.
In fact, as the weight of the aircraft increases, the vortex strength or hazard increases.
As the wing span increases the vortex decreases.
Interestingly as the speed of the aircraft increases the vortex strength decreases.
The hazards to the aircraft is dependent on a lot of things.
The vortexs are not very large and the hazard only exists if a trailing airplane has sufficient time in this horizontal tornado to actually change its position in space, change its attitude.
>> Great.
Thanks for those answers.
We're now going to take a look at our next project.
Strategic airspace usage.
One of the tools they're working on.
Can we roll the SMS clip, please?
>> Ever notice that most of the delay in air travel involves sitting on the ground waiting to take off?
Or circling above your destination waiting for clearance to land?
In the competitive environment of air transportation delay on the ground can sometimes make the difference between profit and loss.
Although we don't often think about it, controlling traffic on the airport surface is as big a job as controlling it in the air.
If we look at a busy airport, there is a lot going on.
Airplanes pushing back from the gate, taxiing in after landing, lining up for takeoff and crossing active runways where other planes are arriving for departing.
Keeping up with all this traffic as well as weather conditions, airline schedule changes and unexpected delay is a lot of work.
To safely blend arriving and departing flights and make sure the airport is running efficiently controllers and traffic managers need to know the exact location of all aircraft on the airport surface and what the surface will look like up to an hour into the future.
The surface management system developed by NASA allows FAA controllers and commercial carriers to collaborate and share vital information.
This coordination improves the controller's ability to predict and manage airport ground traffic quickly and efficiently.
Also SMS can communicate with other NASA-developed systems.
It helps scheduling for individual aircraft.
FAA air traffic controllers can see all information about the location and intentions of an airplane in the airport.
All of this information is available on screen so decisions can be made based upon more complete and accurate data.
The surface management system is working to help controllers and air carriers to increase efficiency on the airport surface.
>> Let's meet the project manager for strategic airspace usage.
Around NASA you're better known as PK.
We saw a movie about airplanes on the ground.
A lot of people might not understand why NASA is working on something like this.
Tell us, what kinds of problems can airplanes on the ground have?
>> Airplanes on the ground typically have problems associated with delays, so the departing aircraft and arriving aircraft try to use the same airspace and same airport surface, which is the runways.
It is a very complex job for air traffic controller to figure out the schedules for departures and arrivals, so they have minimal delays.
At the same time the utilization is maximum.
>> OK.
Why can't we just use traffic lights to manage airplanes on the airport surface?
>> That's a really good question.
As a matter of fact they do use traffic lights for surface operations.
Lights are used to show the status of active runways, closed taxi ways and so on and so forth.
You can find lots of creative uses of runway lights on WWW.FAA.GOV and search for runway lighting you'll see a lot of good information.
In addition to that, we really need to manage the traffic on the surface and just into the airports very carefully.
There is an intricate balance between departures and arrival so controller assisted with software technologies have to schedule arrivals and departures carefully so the utilization of runways is maximum and delays are minimum for both arrivals and departures.
>> Can you tell me what is the strategic airspace usage project about?
>> We develop technologies and concepts for better traffic flow management in the sky.
You can imagine that the traffic management is a problem on the surface when you're driving around, roads are closed, construction is going on.
Similar things could happen in the sky with poor weather, thunderstorms or a lot of traffic.
You need to plan the traffic in and out of the sky and on the runways.
We develop new technologies and concepts that will be used by the airlines as well as FAA for better traffic flow management.
>> Great.
Thanks very much, PK.
>> You're welcome.
>> Next we'll talk about the small aircraft transportation system.
I notice some of you out there maybe thinking of becoming pilots.
Not all pilots fly commercial airliners.
There are thousands of pilots who own their own planes and fly in the national airspace system.
There are about 5400 airports in the United States and many of them are smaller airports.
Only a small number of these smaller airports get much use.
So let's take a look at the next movie and see what kind of problems are experienced by smaller airports and what is NASA doing to solve these problems?
Could you roll the clip, please?
>> The United States faces an enormous crisis in transportation.
98% of air traveling Americans travel through about 460 airports.
70% travel through 30 airports.
At the same time there is unused airport capacity in the United States.
Some 5,000 airports which aren't used by regularly scheduled airlines which could be used by non-scheduled or on demand types of air transportation.
The situation is that we can connect all those underutilized airports located in remote and rural communities across the country.
We could then with this distributed transportation system increase mobility and access for Americans providing an equity of access similar to what clove leaves did for the interstate.
The significance of the demonstration is really a beginning of a new era in personal transportation.
The technologies that we'll be demonstrating here have the ability to transform the way that we fly in today's airspace by using advanced technologies to enable people to go where they want when they want.
>> We take people to places that they don't want to go so they can get to places that they do want to go.
What SATS is about is provide the point to point go when you want to go capability and I think it excites people.
Do it at a cost that everyone can afford.
>> When the economic development opportunities occur, it's critical that an airport be able to support the general community's interest as an aviation opportunities.
It's one of the most critical pieces to economic development for any community in the United States.
>> The future will be a smaller than a large commercial aircraft but a very safe aircraft capable of flying you between selected destinations on short notice.
In other words, fly when you want it and to where you want to go without stops along the way.
>> We have Sally Johnson on the phone with us from Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
Sally, are you there?
>> I am.
>> How are you doing?
>> Good.
>> We have a couple of questions for you.
Are the FAA rules and regulations different for small planes?
>> Well, many of the FAA rules and regulations are the same for all planes that carry passengers for hire, but these small planes are operating out of small airports and so you can't take advantage of the technologies that you might have at a big airport.
For example, many of these small airports don't have control towers or radar coverage.
When there are clouds and the aircraft can't see each other, only one aircraft can operate near the airport at a time and other aircraft have to wait.
That works fine as long as there are only a few airplanes trying to land.
But once you get significant traffic going into an airport that becomes a real problem.
So we've developed technologies and procedures so that pilots can keep a safe distance from other aircraft even when they're in the clouds because they have technologies and displays that show them where the other aircraft are.
Also, many of the small airports can't afford expensive ground equipment such as instrument landing systems so we've developed aircraft systems and displays based on GPS navigation so pilots can land safely.
The focus has been developing technologies suitable and affordable for small aircraft operating out of small airports.
>> Great.
We have another question which is to describe what is an air taxi.
>> Well, an air taxi gives you point to point on demand air travel so you can go anywhere you want whenever it's convenient to you.
Today if you think about it, when you fly somewhere you typically drive to a big airport and it may be an hour from your house and fly in a large airplane with a lot of people to another big airport and then maybe you drive another hour to where you're really trying to go.
In the our project we're trying to enable a new transportation system.
With that system you would have the option to drive just a short distance to a small airport near your home where a small airplane would be waiting for you and your family to take you to another small airport that is very near to where you want to go.
And you can schedule that small aircraft to show up at the airport near your home whenever it's convenient for you the fly, not when the airplane is schedule.
In that way you might be able to take trips that maybe you couldn't schedule in if you were trying to meet the airline schedules.
>> Thank you for those answers.
Our next movie shows how NASA is helping air traffic controllers to land airplanes.
The name of the project that is conducting this research is efficient flight path management.
This one I know something about.
Let's take a look at the clip.
>> It helps folks called traffic managers to better plan and organize the aircraft in their facility.
It provides oft ware to help them visualize the traffic and produces a schedule for the controllers to follow.
You're looking at some displays that controllers would be using or traffic managers would be using in the facilities that help them to plan.
This is a radar display that controllers would typically see all the aircraft in their systems and which ones they will be under their control.
And typically traffic managers would have a number of these displays to help them visualize what traffic is coming.
So we had a couple of questions from the web about this one.
>> OK.
One of the questions is can't the airplanes just line themselves in the air like cars do on the ground?
>> Yes.
Actually aircraft do fly along routes.
They don't fly willy-nilly in the airspace.
Controllers provide aircraft with instructions keeping them on the routes and a safe distance apart from the other aircraft.
>> I was not sending my voice out, sorry.
The second question is is how do they get planes coming from different directions into one straight line for landing?
>> Again, air traffic controllers give instructions to the aircraft in their airspace.
They typically line them up by letting them know when to speed up or when to cross certain fixes which are points in space.
At certain times and keeping with established separation rules to make sure that they can be in an efficient order for landing.
>> I think we have a couple more but let's see if we can hit them at the end of the broadcast.
Thank you.
>> All right.
Our next project that we'll talk about is space-based technologies that works on communication, navigation and surveillance.
Suppose you want to look up something on the Internet while you're in a flight.
Look at this next clip and find out how this might be done.
>> Space technologies project was originally envisioned to use satellite technologies to increase the through put of the national airspace.
Presently approximately 20% to 25% of the aircraft experience some type of delay.
While many delays are caused by weather or caused by equipment problems, many of these delays are caused by the complete usage or saturation of the present airspace system and the communication frequencies available for the airspace system.
The challenge of the project involve finding a consensus between all the various stakeholders.
Thousands of aircraft that fly internationally and any proposed change to the national airspace system and the national airspace system takes years of very careful planning and implementation.
>> On the phone we have Ron with us from Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio.
Ron, are you there?
>> Yes, I'm here but actually I'm at our annual meeting here in Washington, D.C.
>> Oh.
>> The integrated surveillance conference and I'm glad to be with you.
>> Our video was very interesting.
Can you tell our viewers how this will make their lives easier?
>> Yes, I can.
The present system for communications navigation and surveillance was really built in the 1930's and 1940's and some of the newer equipment was built in the 1950's and 1960's and it was built when there were many fewer aircraft in the air and the airlines were predominantly what we call now the legacy carriers, the united and American airlines.
It's projected now that in the very near future that communication and navigation system will be saturated or completely used up.
And there will be certain areas of the aerospace that will not be available cause of these problems.
It is hoped that through the use of Internet technology or with the use of new satellite technology we'll be able to upgrade the communication systems on aircraft and be able to accommodate what we see as an explosion in the use of the national airspace to accommodate some of the things we discussed, air taxis and also eventually such flying vehicles as unmanned vehicles.
And be able to accommodate the growth that is projected for the next century.
>> Ron, we have a couple of questions for you.
One is, why do I have to turn off my cell phone when I get on a plane?
>> Well, that's a good question.
The last time I was flying, in fact, I had to ask the person sitting next to me, after we had pushed back to turn off their phone.
I did not do that to be rude.
But I did it for safety.
And the reason that rule is in place is for safety.
Really any device that emits a radio frequency energy, a cell phone, is a good example, has the potential of interfering with the communication systems of the radios in the aircraft.
The navigation system, which is used to show where the aircraft is, and also potentially will interfere with the landing systems and in particular the landing systems on aircraft are very, very sensitive and could be affected by any type of transmission.
So it's a rule that cell phones have to be turned off after the cabin door is closed and I believe you can use them again after you've landed and pulled onto the taxiway.
>> Right.
OK.
Another question we have is, my brother and I have walkie-talkies, why can't we use them on our flights?
>> Well, that is very much in the same thinking as the previous question.
Walkie-talkies transmit radio frequency energy through the air and that energy spreads out uniformly from the transmitter through an aircraft there are many sensors and radios, many of them are located near  the aft of the aircraft and the wiring pass a few inches from where the passengers sit.
If someone were to key the Mike of a walkie-talkie and they happen to be sitting in that seat where the wiring for the navigation system passed near their head or near where they were sitting, there is a high potential for interference.
In fact, there has been documented cases where not for walkie-talkies but for cell phones there has been pilots who have had to change their landing because they observed their instruments were acting funny and it was proven that people in the back of the aircraft, the passengers, were using some type of transmitting device.
>> OK.
Thanks very much, Ron.
>> You're welcome.
>> Do we have some questions from the chatroom?
>> OK, yes, we do.
They're accumulating here.
One question asks, on really long flights, can pilots take a nap?
See if one of our experts in-house can answer that, or if you're on the phone and have a good answer.
>> I do know a little bit about that.
>> Good, Kathy.
>> There are researchers at NASA that have done a lot of work on fatigue counter measures which is how do you help pilots who have to fly really long flights stay alert.
Some of the research has suggested that you should have a couple of crews on these really long flights so the crews can be fresh for longer.
So one group would take part -- take care of the aircraft, the flight during part of the flight and the other group would take over after a certain amount of time.
I think it is recommended that for really long flights that pilots get an opportunity to rest.
But if that's the case, then you do need to have extra pilots on hand.
>> OK.
Great.
Let me ask one about -- I found a great one here on the FAA.
Does the FAA have anything to do with space flight?
>> Yes, they do.
PK will give us the answer to this one.
>> Well, the FAA has a lot to do with the commercial space flight.
In fact, they have a group called commercial space operations and technology.
A lot of commercial space aircraft that want to take off they need approvable from the FAA.
There is a lot of paperwork involved to make sure it's safe and not interfere with the rest of the operation that are undergoing the national airspace system.
You can find some of that information on FAA's website, I believe.
>> Great.
Another one here.
Somebody was doing some real designing.
If you are making computer programs that help manage aircraft, how do you know where the aircraft are and where they're going at all times?
>> Well, there is radar that's used to track the aircraft.
Commercial aircraft have transponders to indicate where they're located in the airspace.
This information is all collected onto the radar screens that air traffic controllers use and that's how they keep track of where everybody is.
>> Great.
OK.
I think we touched on this one but maybe not enough.
How do airplanes stay apart when they get close to the airport?
Do we have someone wanting to handle that?
We're arguing over who gets to answer.
>> Layton will answer for us, thank you.
>> When the aircraft come into the airport areas, just as Kathy mentioned here, the radar systems provide the information to the air traffic controllers and the air traffic controllers are actually communicating with the pilots by radio.
And giving them and providing them instructions and information on where and when they need to be so that they don't get too close to other aircraft.
So that's how the spacing is done currently today.
>> OK.
Great.
Thank you.
Another question, will there soon be small airplanes that people can park in their driveways or small airports?
I think we talked a little bit about some small airports.
Sally, I think that one is yours, right?
>> Yeah, I can answer that one.
I think that we're a long way away from routinely having small aircraft that you can park in your driveway just because I don't think communities are ready to deal with the noise or safety issues of aircraft taking off right out of neighborhoods.
However, I do think that as airplanes are getting less and less expensive, more and more people will be owning them and so you're going to see more and more airplanes right at a nearby neighborhood airport that you'll still be driving to but they'll be pretty close by.
>> OK.
Follow-up on that same question was will anyone be able to fly them without a pilot's license?
>> They have to have a pilot's license.
However, with the new technologies, we can make flying a lot easier than it is today.
Today you have to look at a lot of little tiny gauges and you have to be thoroughly trained so if some of your gauges aren't working you can figure out what's not working.
There is an awful lot of technology out there that we can apply to making flying easier, but right now the regulations for getting a pilot's license mean you have to be able to fly even the airplane with the least technology.
So right now in order to get a pilot's license you have to go through a huge amount of training and it's very expensive and time consuming.
We believe that in the near future there will be a movement towards developing perhaps new classes of pilot's licenses or somehow taking into account the fact that with technology you can make flying a lot easier.
You'll still have to have a license because you're still flying around over other people's houses and you just need to be sure, just like you have to have a driver's license.
>> Sounds very sensible to me.
I have another interesting one here that says what will happen when we run short on fuel for big aircraft?
Are there other fuels that we can use?
Like hydrogen?
>> My name is Kevin James from NASA Ames, of course.
The problem with hydrogen it doesn't have the specific energy density.
If you think about gasoline there is a lot of power and energy in the gasoline itself and you can get a lot of bang for not a lot of weight.
Hydrogen itself is very hard to contain.
It has -- it makes metals very brittle.
It's a complicated fuel to use and it doesn't provide a lot of energy.
So when we run out of gasoline we'll have to look towards may biodiesels.
There is work on electric airplanes but when we run out of kerosene and jet fuel it is going to be a real challenge.
>> OK.
We need to be thinking about that, though.
Do controllers and pilots help NASA to design their new systems?
>> Yes, they absolutely do.
>> I can answer that.
I'm Richard in the human factors area here at NASA Ames.
A lot of us could address this question, too.
But yes, we like to make sure that controllers and pilots are involved from the very beginning in designing any new system because they can give us good feedback on whether the design works or not and can help us test it later on.
>> Great.
How does NASA figure out what projects to work on?
Richard?
>> Well, it's -- I was going to say this later when I was talking about the students' projects but one of NASA's jobs is to think new thoughts about the future and it's what is fun about working here.
So we have people who work with other people like the systems like the FAA, air carriers, air frameers like Boeing and so on and we keep up on the problems.
Attend conferences.
We try to envision what might solve the problems that we learn about and work with people who might use the solutions later like the same group, the FAA and air carriers and so on to see if they think these ideas might work because we often rely on them to take our ideas further and put them out into the system or build equipment that flies or controls airplanes.
It is complicated but we rely on them to tell us or ask us for help and we also generate solutions ourselves and we all work together and choose the solutions we think should go forward.
>> OK.
I have a couple of questions at least here about work.
How would you get a job at NASA is one of them.
Another says are there job opportunities for students with NASA like summer jobs, for instance?
>> Well, Linda you can probably answer the question about the summer jobs from the students, right?
>> I'm not entirely sure.
There are -- I know there are several programs and depending on where you're located, if you're located locally here you might want to look at the Ames Research Center's website to find out about possibilities of any kind like sharp student or different internships that are done.
But NASA centers are all over the country so look at the one closest to you or the one you're most interested in and go to their website and check out the possibilities there.
Most of them have an education component and sometimes you'll find opportunities in there as well.
Let me see.
We get a lot of questions and I'm trying to find the best ones to squeeze into the time we have.
I have a question here specifically on VAMS.
How is VAMS used to test out new ideas for the national airspace system?
And who gets to see the results of these tests?
>> What we utilize in the VAMS project are computer simulations and computer modeling.
One of our simulations tools is the air concepts evaluation system.
It is a system of computer simulations.
And we implement the concept ideas and run them through with a day's worth of traffic to see how they perform.
Those results are typically reviewed and analyzed by an analyst team here that we utilize on site.
>> OK.
Great.
I'm watching the time here and I notice that we have several people in the chatroom who were amongst our designers.
And I just have a strong feeling that they are going to want to know something about the next portion of this webcast.
We'll go ahead and reserve time to possibly get back to questions later.
But let's move on.
>> OK.
You've already met Dr. Richard, our project manager for human measures and performance and he'll talk to us about the design challenge.
>> Thank you.
As I said earlier, I work in the human factors area and a lot of us also work in that area in terms of like we said, supplying or getting controllers and pilots to participate if helping us design our systems but what human factors focuses on is make sure the systems are user friendly.
You've probably had software that wasn't so user friendly.
When safety is involved we need the software to work well, it's been tested and we get the eventual users involved.
I looked over the -- several of us looked over the various ideas submitted by the schools.
I want to thank the groups, the teams for doing that and again this is what we get to do at NASA so you get a little flavor of what we do.
We look at a problem and try to imagine and invent ways of solving it which you all did.
Looking at the designs, you identify pretty much together across the teams pretty much all the problems and issues that we're working with, too.
Maybe as you saw it's not so easy sometimes to figure out what the right solution is.
The six students from Westport middle school, the war monkeys they call themselves on the mission.
>> They're online.
>> Hello.
They identify -- I'll highlight one or two things out of each one and forgive me if I didn't cover everything.
They suggested that the issue of crowded roads is important that it's hard to get two  -- to and fro the airport and it's something very important.
Since we focus now on a few major airports or quite a few, but not all of the airports, we focus on main airports it's an issue to get to and from it.
They talked about putting a check-in areas away from the airport and having more efficient transportation systems to and from.
They also talked about differently designed airports.
Bigger airports and it's true.
Airports are a bottleneck.
We can look at the work that VAMS does, for example, in modeling and see that the airports are a problem.
We need to focus on that.
We try to focus -- address this in our SATS project as you can see by looking how to use the smaller airports more efficiently to reduce the load.
These students were trying to help us with major airports.
Maybe as you can see many solutions have pros and cons and I will talk more about that later.
You have to think about the environmental issues, cost issues and all kinds of things.
The students from Patrick J. Kennedy elementary school suggested a new airplane called the dart airplane.
Something that everybody is working on.
A couple of companies like Boeing and airbus have come out with larger airplanes.
The airbus is a two decker airplane so they just put more people on one airplane, right?
They looked at the idea of something that might be bigger and faster but they talked about also maybe not needing a runway.
Could we look at airplanes that would reduce the need for -- have some kind of vertical takeoff.
That would solve the airport congestion problem.
An aeronautics engineer says it requires a lot of energy and not easy to solve but people are thinking about it.
They also talked about the pollution problems which is something we don't think about a whole lot since we think about cars on the ground and industrial pollution but that's another issue.
The Austin high school team won.
You did a good analysis of the issues, looked at quite a few factors and they also looked at the issues of airports, the problems of moving the passengers in and out.
They also talked about and wanted to know about the job of the air traffic controller and that's really important.
As you can tell by now the controller really runs everything.
The pilot flies the airplane and certainly is responsible for getting the airplane from departure to arrival.
They need to ask the controller for any changes and they have a lot of work to do.
Knowing what they do is important.
They talked about this levels of flight idea to segregate the types of aircraft like military and xher  -- commercial.
It's a good idea in terms of maybe looking at different kinds of airplanes at different levels and we had an idea, for example, that has been discussed for a while called free flight where you let airplanes at a certain level freely maneuver to do their own air traffic control, if you want but maybe put them on a different level and have the airplanes still controlled by the controller lower down.
They also mentioned the procedures and regulations are important.
If you will have the airplanes in the air they need to know what the rules are when they do all these things.
That's a lot of work to design those rules and test them.
The Austin high school team 2 talked about a whole bunch of factors, fuel, big airports, the effect of terrorist.
As you know in 2001 the air traffic dropped considerably and we are really still coming back from that.
Things like that can really affect the whole transportation system.
They talked about the business issues like not full airplanes and looked at what pilots and what the mechanical issues of the aircraft might be.
They covered a lot.
They mentioned the issue about fuel.
And how do we get airplanes to be full?
How do we get the air carriers to make sure they're using the system more efficiently and I want to make another plug for human factors?
How do we make sure the pilots are doing what they're supposed to be doing and they don't forget things or their attention doesn't lapse.
Good system design in the cockpit helps pilots do their jobs quicker and information to do their jobs at a certain time and we have to make the information easy to get.
That's a good point.
There is an aircraft design by 10-year-old Eric called it the Boeing 555.
This is a neat design and it gets at the issue of how can we make airplanes better to make the system work better?
Again I had mentioned the new 777 and the airbus 380.
Eric also talked about the need to maybe make an airplane that didn't need an airport.
That could take off on a short runway or vertically take off.
Looking at maybe alternative ways of propelling the airplane using alternative fuels or energy sources.
So I want to thank you again for all of the submissions and it was really interesting to review them.
>> OK.
Drum roll.
And the winners are.
The levels of flight by Kay Lee, Jessica and Maria.
Austin high school's team one level of flight.
Richard, can you give us a description of why they won?
>> Well, the laws of flight we looked at -- all the ideas were good.
What we thought about was an analysis of several factors in terms of what factors they looked at in terms of the problem and then trying to look at the airspace as it was now and design something new that hadn't -- that didn't exist and trying to -- we felt they did a bit of a deeper analysis to look at the different types of airplanes, really consider what their needs might be to fly at different altitudes.
And that's why we thought it was maybe the most evolved idea.
>> Great.
Well, here to talk a little bit more about the winning solution is Kevin James, a NASA engineer working on advanced project called aces that stands for the airspace concept evaluation system.
Kevin, can you explain what that means and what you do?
>> I would love to.
The easiest way to describe how it works as I'm sure most of you have played video or computer games of some sort.
Not that this is a game and that we have a lot of fun with it, but if you think of sim city where you create houses, people, streets, create whole cities or worlds.
We've created a simulation environment where we have agents.
These agents represent either airplanes, airports or air traffic controllers and we make the agents perform like they would in the real world.
They have real rules.
The airplanes have to fly by the laws of physics.
We have a 4 degree of freedom generator.
Airplanes fly like airplanes.
It allows us to try different ways of managing the aircraft through the air transportation system to see how it all works.
>> Great.
Can you describe how the team one plan would work in today's system?
>> The winning proposal had actually two components that were interesting.
The first was that they addressed traffic flow to the airport and they nailed it.
There is a real problem with getting people and vehicles into and out of the airport on the ground side.
How you feed the airport and they suggested that you either use trollies or mass transit.
Different ways of getting the people close to the airport and then controlling the traffic flow of people into the airport.
It's a really good idea.
The other component that they had was a stratification of the flight levels.
If we expand on that we look at air traffic in five categories.
There is a commercial transport.
Air cargo or air freight and general aviation which would be the smaller aircraft that people fly for fun.
We have business jets and then we also have military jets.
We already strat is file the aircraft to various levels to a certain extent and when you look at the airspace away from the airports, as equipment gets better there is actually a lot of space out there.
Airports are the areas where all the airplanes are coming in and all the airplanes are going out.
It gets crowded right there.
If you get away from the airports as equipment gets better we're squishing the airplanes down.
We're trying to drive the vertical spacing down.
But that goes back to how well do we know what airplanes are?
We don't want them to be at the same place see same time.
>> Could you possibly show us the -- how you simulate that on the--
>> If we look at the video there should be a small segment of a simulation run.
>> OK.
>> With all these little lines.
They're tra John  are -- trajectory.
The domes on the ground are airports.
You see a dot hanging out in space, a meter fix point.
Someone asked how do we line up airplanes to follow each other into the airports?
That would be a point up in space where you reference the other airplanes to fly over that or through that.
You can see here that some of our aircraft are descending onto an airport and you can see that in the region of the airport itself things can get actually very crowded.
So a lot of our effort is looking at how do you handle the flights into and out of and around the airports?
One of the things that they mentioned was freight and one of the nice things is that if you look at when airplanes fly, generally when you Fed Ex or UPS a package it shows up in the morning and so those aircraft generally fly at night.
There is not a huge overlap.
Pretty much any time you look up in the sky at night and see some airplanes, large aircraft flying at night it is probably already a commercial cargo aircraft.
There are a few problems with stratifying putting the flights to different levels.
I brought two little props.
These are -- this is a Boeing 777 which is a very modern, well design aircraft and this is an F-18 hornet which is a fighter.
These are not to scale.
This airplane holds about 400 people, close to 500 people.
This aircraft holds one person so you can see this is way too big.
If you look carefully at the wing shapes, this aircraft has a different wing and aircraft shape compared to this aircraft.
It goes back to some of the problems we have.
If you look at any aircraft, they want a cruise climb.
As they burn fuel the airplane gets  lighter and wants to climb up through the airspace.
You have to establish a very clean protocol on how airplanes fly through each other's zones and that becomes somewhat difficult and somewhat dangerous.
The Boeing 777 which carries passengers travels at about 8/10 of the speed of sound and can probably do about 7,000 miles.
The F-18 and actually this airplane likes to fly at about 36,000, 40,000 feet.
This airplane will fly close to two times the speed of sound and can go as high as 60,000 feet or higher.
If you're traveling that much faster and flying through the other traffic it can be very dangerous.
>> Thank you very much.
I think we're getting to the point in the webcast where we need to wrap it up.
We're going to run those?
No.
We wanted to talk about what was next.
Why don't we just briefly give a descriptor and we'll let people check online to find out the answers.
>> OK.
Well, so we won't be talking about smart skies, sorry about that.
So we want you to check out this website here for more information about smart skies and that's about it for this webcast.
Thank you for joining us and have a great afternoon.