Small Business/SBIR: 1997 Year in Review
new section focusing on small business research and commercialization was introduced in early 1997 as a regular section of Innovation, featuring NASA's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs.
The SBIR program increases opportunities for small businesses to participate in federal research and development, foster and encourage socially and economically disadvantaged persons to participate in technological innovation, increase employment, improve overall U.S. competitiveness and stimulate U.S. technological innovation. The year 1997 gave SBIR Phase II awardees the opportunity to increase their chances of commercializing their SBIR-funded research with the first SBIR technology commercialization review.
The STTR program requires cooperative research between a small business concern and a nonprofit research institution and awards STTR contracts to small businesses for cooperative research and development through a uniform, three-phase process. Although it is similar to the SBIR program, STTR is a separately funded activity.
The pace of change in the programs was rapid in 1997. SBIR and STTR piloted many projects and research that affected lives globally. For example, children with cancer now have hope through a new treatment technique, called photodynamic therapy, that uses tiny pinhead-size light emitting diodes (LEDs) to activate light-sensitive, tumor-treating drugs. Experiments of a NASA plant growth light probe were conducted under the SBIR program grant managed by the Technology Transfer Office at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and indicate that when special tumor-fighting drugs are illuminated with LEDs, the tumors are more effectively destroyed than with conventional surgery.
Surgery in the dark can be done with a new battlefield care system, allowing doctors to be able to see patients in the dark using body-generated heat via a head-mounted infrared camera and monitor. It was developed by former Stennis Space Center employee, Jim Davidson, who received his initial education in thermal infrared image analysis while working with Stennis in 1995 on an SBIR contract to develop a pavement survey and management system.
Work through Stennis and the SBIR program continued to result in positive developments, such as the revolutionary system that provides color images of invisible hydrogen fires, making it easier to detect, locate and extinguish. Duncan Technologies, Inc., of Auburn, California, conducted this research.
Another SBIR company, Accurate Automation Corporation of Chattanooga, Tennessee, is a member of the team selected by NASA to design and construct four Hyper-X research vehicles under a $33.4 million performance-based contract. In 1997, the vehicles were tested at Mach 5, 7 and 10 at 100,000 feet altitude to validate airframe-integrated, dual-mode scramjet performance in flight. The Hyper-X program is being conducted by Langley Research Center and Dryden Flight Research Center. Accurate Automation's expertise in sensor technology is a result of ongoing NASA and Air Force SBIR programs.
Safety was another focus area for the SBIR program in 1997. An SBIR contractor successfully crash-tested a small airplane, designed to protect occupants against fatal injuries using airbags and energy-absorbing composite structures. All of the crash dummies on board during the final test "survived" the crash—a first for general aviation crash tests.
A new insulation technology, developed through the SBIR program by Steve Miller of S.D. Miller & Associates in Flagstaff, Arizona, uses a honeycomb concept to convert plastic milk bottles into an effective material that is better than wool or fleece. This material is nonallergenic, dries five times faster and is four times warmer than wool in cold and damp conditions. This is a spinoff from NASA's research into the development of lightweight metal insulation for future spacecraft, which could significantly reduce launch weight and costs. It is estimated that 70 jobs to make spacecraft insulation would be created, and the production of rescue blankets might result in 15 jobs.
The first tests of an SBIR project to make aircraft easier to operate and reduce pilot workload were completed by Aurora Flight Sciences of Manassas, Virginia, using single-lever control in a modified Cessna 02-A. The company's device took the three standard engine control levers—throttle, fuel-air mixture and propeller pitch angle—and had them computerized to make an air-cooled aircraft engine work much like the accelerator pedal in an automobile, similar to a car with automatic transmission.
A new measuring device at NASA's Lewis Research Center developed environmentally friendly engines that give off fewer emissions. The Phase Doppler Particle Analyzer (PDPA) was developed by Aerometrics Inc. of Sunnyvale, California, through an SBIR contract with Lewis. PDPA can optically determine the size and velocity of spherical particles, such as fuel and water, without interfering with the flow. Older measurement techniques required intrusive probes that changed the environment.
A portable and self-contained reflectance spectral radiometer, developed under an SBIR contract managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is expected to surge as researchers continue to recognize the importance of oceans in determining weather patterns and atmospheric composition around the world. This natural fluorometer radiometer calibrates satellite ocean color data to measure the concentration of microscopic marine plants or phytoplankton, the primary food source for sea animals and an important factor in the exchange of gases between the atmosphere and the world's oceans. More costly, earlier methods required sample collection for laboratory study.
NASA received 215 STTR program proposals during the 1997 solicitation. Research topics include Earth remote sensing, advanced technology for space science, human exploration and development of space, general aviation, advanced space transportation and nondestructive evaluation of material properties and structural integrity.
SBIR/STTR program activities continue to seek ways to provide the small business community opportunities to develop technology that meets NASA's needs and commercial applications. As we progress into 1998, Aerospace Technology Innovationwill continue to report updates of past highlights, as well as feature new and exciting stories about NASA's SBIR and STTR programs.
For more information, you may access 1997 issues of Innovationat
NASA's Commercial Technology web site at http://nctn.hq.nasa.gov Or
contact Carl Ray at NASA Headquarters. Call (202) 358-4652, Fax: (202) 358-3878, E-mail: cray@hq.nasa.gov
Please mention you read about it in Innovation.
This is a simulation of surgical implantation of the light emitting diode (LED) probe at the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. The probe was developed for photodynamic cancer therapy under a NASA SBIR program grant.
The use of a single lever for power control in retrofitted
and future aircraft reduces the number of flight-related displays
in the instrument panel, thus increasing pilot awareness.
Aerometrics Inc. developed the Phase Doppler Particle Analyzer
via a contract with Lewis Research Center.
The system consists of a laser and an optical system.
