Volume 8, Number 6     November/December 2000

NASA System Increases Runway Safety

On-the-ground collisions at the nation's overcrowded airports are occurring more frequently, but NASA engineers have developed a way to keep aircraft on track and away from dangerous encounters.

The Runway Incursion Prevention System (RIPS) is an advanced cockpit display system, developed at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. It would provide pilots and air traffic controllers with an early warning if another plane or a ground vehicle is about to intrude onto the runway.

Close calls between aircraft and ground vehicles or other planes, often called runway incursions, have grown steadily during the past decade. In the last five years there has been a 60 percent increase in near-collisions, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, with 320 incidents reported in 1999 alone. Reducing runway incursions has become the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) number one safety priority.

Harry Verstynen, the chief pilot from Langley, said the RIPS display has multiple uses. "Even for the large percentage of the time that you are not having a runway incursion," he said, "the displays that are being developed as part of this project will give the pilot significant improvements in situational awareness on the airport and taxiing in low-visibility conditions."

Technicians equipped a NASA 757 aircraft with the experimental displays and computer systems. NASA and airline pilots made a number of overnight flight tests at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport to evaluate the technologies. Their observations will be used to help refine the displays for possible use in airliners.

Airline pilots have given the system high marks. "We have made several recommendations on some changes, but overall it's a well thought-out system," said John Penney, Advanced Maneuvers Program manager and Standards Captain B-757/767 of United Airlines. "With a few minor adjustments, I think it's something commercial industry and aviation industry should take and grab hold of."

NASA's RIPS integrates several advanced technologies into a surface communication, navigation and surveillance system for flight crews and air traffic controllers. It combines a head-down display of an electronic moving map of airport runways and taxiways with a head-up screen that gives the pilot real-time guidance. The system shows and sounds alerts if another plane or vehicle is about to encroach onto the runway. RIPS also uses specially developed computer software, GPS signals and ground technologies developed by the FAA's Runway Incursion Reduction Program.

This research is part of the NASA Aviation Safety Program, which is a partnership with the FAA, the Department of Defense, aircraft manufacturers, airlines and universities. The partnership supports a national goal to reduce the fatal aircraft accident rate by 80 percent in 10 years and by 90 percent in two and a half decades. Researchers at four NASA field installations are working with the FAA and industry to develop advanced, affordable technologies to make flying safer: Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia; Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California; Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, California; and Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio.

For more information, contact contact Katherine Barnstorff at NASA Langley Research Center. Call: 757/864-9886, E-mail: K.A.Barnstorff@larc.nasa.gov Please mention you read about it in Innovation.

FURTHER X-33 ENGINE TESTS PLANNED Two engines designed to propel America's X-33 into high-speed, suborbital flight in 2003 have been mounted side by side in a Mississippi test stand for qualification firings, slated for the end of the year. Engines on stand, awaiting testing. Photo provided by NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. At NASA Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, tandem test firings of X-33's Linear Aerospike XRS-2200 engines will begin with short bursts and will eventually lead to full firings for the durations needed to send the unpiloted vehicle from a launch pad in California to landings in either Utah or Montana. X-33, being developed under a cooperative agreement between NASA and Lockheed Martin, is a half-scale prototype of a commercially developed and operated, reusable launch vehicle of the future. It is designed to demonstrate new, reusable, single stage-to-orbit technologies. One goal of the project is to provide safe, reliable and affordable access to space. Fourteen single-engine test firings of an earlier version the unique Aerospike engine developed by the Rocketdyne Propulsion and Power Unit of the Boeing Company were successfully completed earlier this year. The difference between the linear Aerospike engine and conventional rocket engines is the shape of the nozzle. Unlike conventional rocket engines that use a bell nozzle to constrict expanding gases, the Aerospike nozzle is V-shaped and called a ramp. The hot gases are shot from chambers along the outside of the ramp's surface. This unusual design allows the engine to be more efficient and effective than today's rocket engines. At least nine test firings of the twin flight engines are planned at Stennis before they are delivered to Lockheed Martin's X-33 assembly facility in Palmdale, California. The X-33 Program is managed by NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. For more information, contact Dr. Donald J. Chenevert, P.E., X-33 Project Manager, at NASA Stennis Space Center. Call: 228/688-3126, Fax: 228/688-7885, E-mail: Don.Chenevert@ssc.nasa.gov Please mention you read about it in Innovation.

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