AIAA PROPULSION & ENERGY FORUM – Day 2
Forum Theme: Trumpeting the Future of P&E
Day 2 Theme: Connectivity / Integration
As the participants in yesterday's opening plenary were discussing the commercialization of space, they were asked about the possibility of community expertise being diluted as companies, who are doing more and more work with their own funding, hold their work in private. This has been my favorite question of the Forum, given my belief that openly publishing results of research and advanced development has been foundational to our healthy aerospace industry. I thought about this as Kathy Lueders talked this morning about the challenging Artemis Program, and how it is driving the development of technologies to accomplish that program's mission. The government does have leverage with intellectual property where they are the funding organization. But for commercially funded activities in space, the private entity decides. I've heard Elon Musk speak poignantly about the importance of the technical papers written by the giants of the rocket industry to his ability to start SpaceX. As we go forward, how the founders and principles of the companies commercializing space balance the need for competitive advantage with a responsibility to let future generations know why, what and how they did it, could make or break opportunities. I'm curious to know your thoughts on this question?
Day 2 - My Top Three Take-Aways (don't let me have all the fun - AIAA would love to hear about your top take aways).
- Kathy Lueders kicked us off with a compelling rundown of the Artemis Mission to the moon. To get the hardware elements and systems where they need to be will be a challenge. To provide the power necessary for the lunar orbiting Gateway or for operations on the lunar surface will be a challenge. If the Artemis Program is to be successful, the power and propulsion communities need to step up in a big way. How exciting is that?
- I listened in on the Forum 360 Panel on maximizing the power of intelligent systems in energy and propulsion, which had representatives from the nuclear power and medicine and energy production industries, in addition to aerospace. It was painfully obvious that those who are conversant in enabling technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, autonomy, etc., speak a language, that if not foreign to aerospace engineers is, at times, confusing, And yet, these enabling technologies are crucial to realizing aerospace related opportunities, from space commercialization to on-demand mobility. It seems that AIAA has a role to play in the training and continuing education of the aerospace workforce in these enabling disciplines.
- Given the ever-increasing integration of propulsion and power subsystems with other vehicle systems, whether space or aeronautics vehicles, the Forum 360 panel on the relative contribution of technology or integration to "next breakthroughs" was thought provoking. The panelists, focused narrowly on gas turbine engines, came down decidedly on an answer of "both!" That many themes and topics are being addressed across multiple AIAA Forums, is an indicator that integration – regardless of whether it is a driver of innovation, per se – is critical to fielding viable systems-of-systems that meet mission requirements.
Quote of the Day: "This NASA mission (Artemis) can help us solve problems that we will face in the future as a species." – Kathy Lueders, responding to a question about remaining optimistic about human space flight, on days when nothing is going right.
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Thomas B. (Tom) Irvine
Consultant
TBI Aerospace Consulting LLC
Cedar, MI
tbirvine3@gmail.com------------------------------