Office of the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academics

Distinguished Lecture Series

Title: Forty Years of Space Travel: A Pathway to the Future"

Daniel S. Goldin, Ph.D.
NASA Administratory

Monday, February 22, 1999, at 7:30 p.m.
Auditorium, Presidential Conference Center
Texas A&M University

Abstract

A one hour multimedia presentation providing the long-term vision of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and a pathway to achieve future goals.

Summary

The challenges that face NASA and the country as we move into the next century will push our technology and system performance well beyond current capabilities. NASA, in particular, will expand observation of Earth from the vantage point of space to provide continuous, real-time coverage of all scientifically interesting phenomenon as well as events with economic and social impact. NASA will further expand our exploration of space to create a virtual presence throughout the solar system and toward the stars beyond. We will search for life around other solar systems and understand the history and destiny of the universe. We will have humans living and working in the International Space Station on a continuous basis and, at some point, beyond Earth orbit. Within the Earth's atmosphere we will apply our knowledge to enable safer, cleaner and more economical air travel. We must do all this and more at lower cost, at a faster pace and with less risk than is possible today.

In meeting these challenges our scientists and engineers must work more closely, in a fully integrated and interactive environment and the systems we create must be much more capable than we can build today. Future systems will be more autonomous and more reliable with the ability to self-repair, self-adapt and "re-supply" from what is available in space. They will be distributed in interactive networks across vast areas, but function as a single intelligent entity. They will also be highly efficient, consuming minimal energy while moving rapidly from destination to destination, operating in the harshest environments and communicating information rich messages at high data rates to millions of people.

The pathway NASA is taking to meet these challenges is through the development of new science and engineering tools to create an entirely new working environment for the development of complex systems. It will encompass total product life cycle from requirements through design, manufacturing and operations. It will define uncertainties, bound risk, and predict total life cycle cost and performance far better than is possible today. It will also eliminate unnecessary hardware prototypes. Scientists and engineers with diverse backgrounds and distributed around the world will work collaboratively in highly immersive and interactive environments as "virtually" co-located teams. To accomplish this we will seamlessly combine the power of ultra-high speed computers and networks, analysis methods 100X faster and more accurate than today, knowledge-based engineering concepts, and advanced human-computer interfaces. This represents a fundamental cultural change in science and engineering. It cannot be done by any one organization or sector of society, but requires the combined effort of government, industry and academia. The concept of life-long learning and the development of required skills to develop and work in this new environment will be a major challenge to universities. The need to overcome both technical and management barriers to achieve this future vision represents a major challenge for the next century.

About the Speaker

Daniel S. Goldin became the ninth NASA Administrator in April 1992 and immediately began to earn his reputation as an agent of change in bringing reform and revitalization to America's space agency. His first initiative was to bring NASA's budget process under control by streamlining major programs and reinvesting some of the savings in improvements to NASA's science and planetary exploration missions.

Among Goldin's accomplishments are the redesign of the Space Station program and a number of significant cooperative endeavors with the Russian Space Agency, including Russian participation in the International Space Station program. However, Goldin's reforms have not been limited to the Agency's space agenda. Early in his administration, he identified the environmental monitoring to be done through NASA's Earth Science as one of the Agency's most important programs.

He also spearheaded the revitalization of NASA's aeronautics program as one of his top priorities. A critical industry for America, aeronautics is responsible for almost a million high-tech jobs. To help the industry regain its competitive manufacturing edge, Goldin has worked intensively to form a consensus for a national aeronautics agenda. The plan proposes to increase investments and technical progress in general aviation, subsonic transports, supersonic and hypersonic flight technology, and to revitalize aging research facilities such as wind tunnels.

Before coming to NASA, Goldin was Vice President and General Manager of the TRW Space & Technology Group in Redondo Beach, California. During a 25-year career at TRW, he successfully managed the development and production of advanced spacecraft, technologies and space science instruments.

Goldin began his career as a research scientist at NASA's Lewis Research Center in Cleveland in 1962, and worked on electric propulsion systems for human interplanetary travel. He is a Fellow in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a Fellow in the Institute for the Advancement of Engineering. In 1993 the received the John F. Kennedy Astronautics Award from the American Astronautical Society and the Space Pioneer Award from the National Space Society.