Birthplace of Aviation Feats Faces Cuts
For aviation buffs, hangar 4802 at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center is the modern equivalent of the bicycle shack where the Wright brothers built the first powered airplane.
It is here in the Mojave Desert where the world’s newest, fastest and highest-flying aircraft, from the first sound-breaking X-1 rocket planes to the faster-than-a-bullet SR-71 jets, were prepared for their record-shattering flights.
But last week the hangar was home to a pair of 20-year-old F/A-18 fighter jets, which stood side by side as NASA aircraft technician Jeff Doughty and his crew meticulously took parts from one to install in another.
It was a stark reminder that the glamorous days of pioneering flight were long gone at Dryden, where years of cuts in aeronautical research had reduced NASA engineers to cannibalizing parts from a discarded jet. The most recent high-profile experimental plane, Boeing Co.’s X-43 hypersonic aircraft, set the world speed record last fall by flying 6,500 miles per hour before the research program was grounded for lack of funds.
The biggest blow may be yet to come. With President Bush’s focus on space and calls for sending people back to the moon as a steppingstone to human exploration of Mars, NASA has proposed sharp cuts in the aeronautics budget.
Under the agency’s plan, annual funding for aeronautics -- the study of flight within Earth’s atmosphere -- would be slashed 20% to $728 million over the next two years, after being cut nearly 60% since 1994.
At Dryden, the budget cuts would mean severing an additional 100 engineers from its payroll. The center’s workforce had already declined from 635 three years ago to 500 this fiscal year, as its budget sank from $221 million to $161 million. NASA wants to cut Dryden’s budget by an additional $31 million to $130 million next year, for a reduction of more than 40% since fiscal 2002.
The proposed additional cuts, the deepest so far, have alarmed the aviation industry, which credits research at Dryden for widely used advances in aviation such as winglets, upright wing extensions used to help aircraft fly more efficiently, as well as a digital system to control an airplane’s flight.
The plan to slash spending at Dryden and two other aviation facilities, Langley Research Center in Virginia and Glenn Research Center in Ohio, has prompted some NASA engineers and members of Congress to consider what seemed unthinkable. If the cuts continue at the current pace, they say, there will be little economic reason for the aeronautical research centers to remain open.
“The budget is a disaster,” John M. Klineberg, a 25-year NASA veteran and a retired chairman of satellite maker Space Systems/Loral, said at a recent congressional hearing. “This program is on its way to becoming irrelevant to the future of aeronautics in this country and in the world.”
Aviation industry officials fear that the cuts could cause a permanent brain drain that would leave the U.S. trailing other countries in aeronautical innovations.
“The alternative [to restoring funding] is conceding dominance in aerospace to Europe and the rest of the world, a choice the U.S. cannot afford for national defense reasons as well as economics,” said John Douglas, president of the Aerospace Industries Assn.
But NASA officials scoffed at that possibility and insisted that aeronautics would still play a part within the agency. While spending on aeronautical research has declined considerably over the last decade, the agency was originally created 60 years ago to conduct both aeronautical and space research.
“It’s always a concern but I have no indication that they’re going to eliminate the aeronautic centers,” said Kevin L. Petersen, Dryden’s director. “I don’t think the reductions are life-threatening.”
Petersen acknowledged that things didn’t look good in February when the budget was proposed. Previous cuts had been more gradual. This time, it was “dramatic,” he said.
But since then the proposed reductions have fueled outcries and an intense debate, including discussions in Congress about pumping more money into the budget, which could keep Dryden from retrenching further.
“NASA’s aeronautics program has now reached a crisis point,” said Rep. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), ranking minority member of the House subcommittee on space and aeronautics. “All of this troubles me. We seem to be headed down a path that could result in the loss of a vital national capability.”
The proposed budget has also prompted calls for a national policy debate.
“I think we need a discussion within the technical and research community about what we intend to do with aeronautics,” said Michael Griffin, who last month became NASA’s administrator.
But until then, Griffin said, he is determined to boost funding for space projects, because in “the president’s program going forward, aeronautics is not as high a priority as returning NASA to a path on which space exploration is prominently featured.”
With fewer high-profile experimental aircraft in development, Dryden has focused on seeking more outside research work that could help soften the cuts. Last year, it created a business development office to go after projects that would have gone to other government, university or private-sector facilities.
The initiative has so far generated about $25 million in additional work, including helping the Navy test its Northrop Grumman E-2 Hawkeye airplanes, which are used for early detection of enemy aircraft at sea. Dryden is also overseeing the test flights of Boeing’s X-45 unmanned fighter aircraft.
Other work could include flight demonstrations of high-altitude, unmanned airships and planes that could be used by telecommunication companies as flying cellphone towers as well as for military surveillance and atmospheric research.
“We’ll be doing different things and in different ways to remain competitive,” Petersen said.
