NASA Green Aviation Workshop Report Published

A “Green Aviation” weekend workshop was held at NASA Ames Research Center on April 25–26, 2009 to stimulate dialog and foster collaboration among the nation’s aviation and energy technologists. Approximately 80 representatives from government, industry, and academia were in attendance.(including Ron Hochstetler, one of our Founders) The workshop was organized into three serial sessions on advanced transportation concepts, advanced propulsion systems, and operational concepts, followed by three parallel sessions on technology priorities, organizational strategies, and metrics. The serial sessions opened with an overview talk on the relevant NASA activities, followed by shorter technical talks relevant to the session’s theme. Ample time was provided for discussion following each presentation. The program for the workshop is included in the report.

The cornerstone of NASA’s current effort in “Green Aviation” is the Subsonic Fixed Wing (SFW) Project in the Fundamental Aeronautics Program and the newly initiated (to start in FY10) Environmentally Responsible Aviation (ERA) Project in the Integrated System Research Program (ISRP). For the SFW project, the focus is on developing concepts and technologies for enabling dramatic improvements in noise, emissions and performance. The goal of the ERA project is to increase the technology readiness level (TRL) of promising concepts identified in the SFW project and conduct system level experiments at sub-component, component, and aircraft level to identify integration challenges and verify various corners of the design trade space. To keep emissions at or below current levels with the projected growth in aviation will require not only the technology enhancements from the SFW and ERA projects, but will also require improvements in air traffic management and the introduction of low-carbon fuels. The workshop was forward looking and focused on the longer-term options that could provide breakthroughs in meeting aggressive noise and emissions reductions. ( Please note reference to Airship Z-Prize Project on page 18) NASA Green Aviation Workshop Report Published