Abstract
The Center of Excellence for Commercial Space Transportation (COE CST) is a research consortium, sponsored by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST), started in 2010, and with a planned life-span of 10 years. All COEs pursue three principle goals (research, training, and outreach) and have a 1:1 matching requirement for all federal funding, making the R&D investment a good value for the U.S. tax payer. The COE CST was originally comprised of nine member universities, selected through an open, competitive process. Today, the COE CST is one of six active FAA COEs, and is now a collection of 10 universities, supplemented by affiliate and associate members, including private organizations and research institutions. The first five years of COE CST operation (2010–2015) were focused on building the various types of relationships (e.g., research, administrative, financial, personal, etc.) between many individuals at each of the original member universities and government offices. Although the annual budget of the center may be relatively small (approximately US$1 million), the complexity of the relationship network makes the smooth operation of this center a challenge. Despite this complexity, the COE CST has successfully emerged as a fully functional, cohesive unit. During the second half of its 10-year life (2016–2020), the COE CST placed a major emphasis on raising its profile with industry members in order to understand the needs of the evolving commercial space marketplace better, and to be better understood by the major marketplace actors. One way of achieving this goal is to highlight the COE CST research in the New Space journal.
To that end, this is the second issue of the New Space journal that has dedicated all the peer-reviewed articles to research conducted by the FAA COE CST. The first all-COE CST issue of New Space was published last year in March 2018. It is tempting to hope that the first issue of every coming year will be dedicated to COE CST research, but I am neither authorized nor qualified to impose that commitment upon those researchers just yet. The fate of the COE CST past 2020 is still uncertain, including options of renewal for another 10-year period (after another open competition), being disbanded entirely, or perhaps, being folded into a larger consortium of innovation activities.
What I can say at this time, however, is that this issue of New Space features notable examples of the best cutting-edge commercial space research in the industry being conducted anywhere in the world today. The COE CST has helped create and has adopted a typology of four research areas, each one with an focus upon an entire academic field: operations research (encompassing the space transportation system), engineering and technology (surrounding space transportation vehicles), medical research (centered on the human in the system), and the social sciences (including markets, policy, laws, and regulations). The first three of these research areas directly focus on activities supporting AST's safety mission goal. The fourth research area primarily addresses AST's mission goal of “encourage, facilitate, and promote.” Three of these four research areas are represented by articles in this issue. There is one article on air and space traffic management operations (Efficient Aircraft Rerouting during Commercial Space Launches by Tompa and Kochenderfer), three articles in the technologies research area (Utilizing GEO Fixed Satellite Services for LEO Communication Relays with Earth by Kopp et al., Control of Flow Separation in a Rocket Nozzle Using Microjets by Khobragade et al., and Advances in Sapphire Laser Machining for High Temperature Pressure Sensor Development by Bal et al.), and one article in the human research area (Vehicle Restraint Considerations for Commercial Spaceflight by Speicher et al.). There is no article included here in the social science research area. These articles give an in-depth sample of some of the research being conducted by the COE CST. For a high-level summary of the full breadth of COE CST research tasks, you can download any of the COE CST Annual Report Executive Summaries, available at www.coe-cst.org.
The success of the COE CST would not have been possible, however, without the leadership of certain important individuals. Specifically, Dr. George Nield, former Associate Administrator of FAA AST (until his retirement in March 2018), and Dr. Patricia Watts, National Program Director of the FAA COEs, are two individuals without whose support the COE CST could not function today. The COE CST recognizes them as driving forces for any success the COE CST has attained. Of course, within each of the COE CST universities are the people who make the center what it is—the principal investigators, the students, the financial officers, the contractors, the business women (and men), the executives, the administrators, the contractor support, and the government technical monitors and administrators. It is the collective effort of these individuals that makes the research possible, provides matching cash and in-kind contributions, posts the extensive technical and financial data for government-required reports, and fundamentally makes the overall system function efficiently, through the coordination of their actions. It is the daily work of all COE CST participants, representing the dozens of organizations and institutions, that make the consortium vibrant and relevant. The COE CSCT would like to thank and recognize them for their contributions of time, effort, and creativity. This issue is dedicated to them as an embodiment of the work made possible by their efforts.