Sunday, December 31, 2000		Article

RAPID MOBILITY

THE Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) is conceived to be a safe travel alternative, freeing people and products from existing transportation ystem delays and creating access to more communities in less time. NASA is in a unique position to lead this innovation.

The vision for SATS is bold. As a first step to respond to this vision of increased accessibility and mobility, NASA has proposed a research initiative to prove the SATS concept will work. This initiative covers a five-year period from 2001 to 2005, with proposed funding of $69 million. The research will culminate in an integrated technology demonstration from which future small aircraft transportation system investment decisions can be made. This focused demonstration, will prove that emerging technologies enable innovations in airspace operations and architecture. The SATS concept is based on a new generation of affordable small aircraft as computer-based "clients" on an airborne internet, operating in a fully distributed system of small airports serving thousands of suburban, rural, and remote communities.

Electronic commerce and the information revolution brought about by the Internet are placing new demands on transportation. These new demands are emerging in an era when time has become a scarce commodity.

NASA’s proposed investments in SATS technologies would stimulate 21st century innovations for transportation of people, products and services.

Small aircraft transportation vision

The small aircraft transportation vision is a safe travel alternative freeing people and products from transportation system delays by creating access to more communities in less time. This new transportation system concept targets the stimulation of latent markets of consumers for whom the transportation choices are dominated by the ways they value time. In contrast, the current aviation markets are driven in the hub-and-spoke system by ticket-price. In addition, current general aviation markets are driven by consumers motivated by enthusiast-and-romance-based values as well as those for whom small aircraft possess great utility. The latent market for transportation is defined as trips not taken (for reasons of time, cost, convenience, comfort, or other factors), trips not imagined (because consumers have never been able to experience the service or product), and trips not possible (in the absence of enabling vehicles and infrastructure).

Can you imagine a Chattanooga e-commerce consultant calling on clients in Jackson, Crossville, and Pidgeon Forge, Tennessee, in a single business day and returning home for dinner with the family?

Can you see a family of four from Winchester, Virginia, making an affordable 800-mile weekend trips to visit the grandparents in Lake Placid, New York?

Can you picture same-day transportation 300 miles from Chester, Illinois, with no scheduled air service, to the Northwestern Medical Center on Chicago’s north side, for a unique outpatient medical treatment?

Can you envision a same, or next day small package delivery from a dot-com book company to smaller communities like Wisconsin Rapids or Stephens Point, Wisconsin, like Fort Pierce, Naples, or Marathon, Florida, or like Nacogdoches, or Port Arthur, Texas?

Can you picture the shipment of circuit boards from a print shop in Silicon Valley over 150 miles to an assembly plant in Chico, California, and back again in the same working day?

Can you see an extension service agent from your land grant college teaching a new lab course on genetic plant practices three days a week at the far-flung corners of your state?

Can you foresee the day when you can choose to live in Michigan’s UP, Northern Minnesota, Upstate New York, Northern California, East Texas, Western Kansas, and yet work or go to school near the urban centers of your state?

Now imagine that the aircraft and the airports needed for these transportation visions are readily available to the public, with jet-like performance and safety at affordable prices. Imagine hub-and-spoke-like accessibility to the smallest of neighbourhood airports, without needing radar and control towers, and without needing more land for protection zones around small airports.

The SATS concept of operations utilises small aircraft for personal and business transportation, for on-demand, point-to-point direct travel between smaller regional, general aviation and other landing facilities, including heliports. The SATS architecture contemplates near all-weather access to any landing facility in the USA. SATS would leverage Internet communications technologies for travel planning, scheduling, and optimising and would minimise user uncertainty regarding destination services, including intermodal connectivity. SATS research is intended to create the possibility of using landing facilities that would not require control towers or radar surveillance.

The past 7 years of investment by NASA in Advanced General Aviation Transport Experiments (AGATE) and General Aviation Propulsion (GAP) technologies have led to the emergence of a new generation of small aircraft. Entirely new entrant firms are creating many of the new aviation products and services. The new aircraft include twin turbofan-powered, four-to six-place pressurised aircraft with revolutionary safety and

affordability. There are also many new single-engine aircraft entering the fleet, also with safety features and costs previously unimagined. These new aircraft will possess near all-weather operating capabilities and will be compatible with the modernisation of the National Airspace System, including free flight. In addition, a new industrial business strategy is emerging, to create innovations in delivering transportation services to the marketplace. It appears likely that the early adopters will have access to "jet-taxi services" with jet performance at propeller prices, as well as affordable, safe, quiet advanced

propeller aircraft. The aircraft will incorporate state-of-the-art advancements in avionics, airframes, engines, and advanced pilot training technologies. However, these new aircraft will not make the SATS vision for transportation available to the general public, unless new concepts for airspace architecture and operations can be developed. The innovation will enable affordable small aircraft to

operate like computer "clients" on a mobile airborne internet, in a distributed system of small near all-weather airports serving thousands of suburban, rural, and remote communities. The central message is that the enabling technologies can now be developed to create the next major innovation in the way our citizens travel, our products are delivered, and our services are transported.

The proposed NASA funding for SATS is guided by a mandate to "prove SATS works." The SATS proof of concept planning has been framed by a set of hypothetical statements. These hypotheses serve to guide the investigation of technology options. These four hypotheses are:

1. The public can safely operate a SATS vehicle in three dimensions, in near all-weather conditions, including abnormal operations.

2. The public can afford to travel by SATS.

3. SATS infrastructure is an affordable option for transportation system investments.

4. SATS benefits all suburban, rural, and remote communities in terms of accessibility, mobility, economic opportunity, environment and quality of life.

The good impacts of a SATS occur at four levels: community/airport, personal/business, regional/state, and national. The anticipated public benefits accrue from a revolution in mobility and safety for citizens. These benefits are enabled by a revolution in accessibility for vastly more suburban, rural, and remote communities. The SATS operating capabilities will also benefit and serve the needs of small cargo providers, public service aviation, law enforcement, disaster relief, and

emergency medical services. These benefits all draw from the effects of higher-speed, more affordable, intermodal transportation to more destinations. Anticipated benefits in cost, airspace efficiency (or throughput), and environmental effects of SATS will be assessed. SATS enables access to air transportation at about one-half the cost of current regional carrier prices for

many people living in rural and remote communities. SATS capabilities would enhance the abilities of a community to attract economic development.

A recent study was commissioned by the State of Michigan Department of Aviation to determine the economic effects of adding near-all-weather instrument landing capabilities to a general aviation (i.e., non-commercial-service) airport. This study by Wilbur Smith Associates demonstrated that in Michigan, a near-all-weather non-commercial airport generates, on average, an additional $10 million annually in economic impact, compared with a non-all-weather airport. These results imply that significant economic benefits would accrue to more widely distributed air accessibility to potentially thousands of communities.

The technologies envisioned for SATS have the potential to redefine the land use requirements for airport protection zones. The use of cockpit computer graphics to display simple and intuitive flightpath guidance (virtual highways in the sky), along with synthetic vision to show terrain and obstacles may enable the use of airport approach patterns that do not require the use of traditional protection zones. This innovation in near-all-weather flying has the potential to enable safe access to any runway end or helipad. If this can be proved, the cost of acquiring land for these protection zones may be avoided.

If the SATS program is successful in demonstrating new technologies, in the nearer term (seven to ten years) SATS infrastructure deployment could more than double the number of communities with air transportation. On a longer-term scale, SATS technologies may increase the number of communities with superior air transportation accessibility by 10-fold or more. This untapped capacity can both mitigate the gap between transportation demand and supply in the 21st century and create new economic growth opportunities for more communities.

The next major innovation in the choices available for personal or business transportation, shipment of goods, and delivery of services is now a possibility. The Small Aircraft Transportation System technologies have the potential propel advancements in transportation mobility and accessibility, as we cross the threshold into the Information Age. Specifically SATS technologies may enable reducing intercity travel times by half in many markets, while increasing the number of communities served by air transportation ten-fold. In the process, SATS enables distributed transportation capabilities that support the economic growth potential of the knowledge-based industrial expansion driven by e-commerce. SATS investments can lead to innovative alternatives to existing land-use strategies as communities struggle with urban sprawl. SATS represents an opportunity to create an affordable and safe transportation alternative that frees people and products from today’s system delays by creating access to more communities in less time.

(Downloaded from www.sats.nasa.gov)