[ Jet engine revving up ]
[ Sonic boom ]
[ Music/Radio chatter ]
[ Radio chatter ]
>> Ok glider RC is up.
>> Good for engine start.
>> Engine start.
[ Music ]
>> I'm an airplane geek.
I grew up reading about NACA and NASA
and Edwards Air Force Base, Rogers Dry Lake.
I think it's beautiful, I love the arid, dry landscape.
I love the flyable weather 300 plus days a year.
>> How's the tow line look? Come
on back, Derek, I'm having a hard time seeing it.
>> I have no degree.
I learned my craft from on the job training and self-education.
My name is Red Jensen and I'm the Chief Pilot
with the Armstrong Flight Research Center for small UAS.
I work in the model lab day to day using sub scale aircraft.
We use those for a variety of reasons to test things
like new technology which could be hardware or software,
or even a completely new vehicle.
>> Coming through, guys
This morning is something you don't get to see too often.
This is the first flight of a brand new airplane
so that also means it's a lot more dangerous
than it normally would be.
Especially for the first several flights be on your feet,
not sitting down, probably
between the cars is a great place until we prove
that it's air worthy and everything is going to go fine.
[ Music ]
3, 2, 1, release.
[ Wind/Music/Background noise ]
Heads up guys.
>> Essentially what my job entails is making sure that the fleet
of subscale aircraft we have here at Armstrong are capable
of flight, are safe and are ready to support the center
for the various needs.
>>We're not supposed to break above 30 knots
for some structural issues.
>> Right.
>> So the trick is to touch down, roll the throttle...
>> Each one of the aircraft supports a variety
of different programs.
Any one program at any time could have a certain set
of milestones they need to hit and we need
to make sure that can happen.
So we support the buildup, the integration and the execution
of the actual flights.
[ Subscale aircraft taking off ]
>> I'm part fabricator, I'm part engineer,
I'm part integrator and I'm flight crew.
So I have to manage all of those elements sort of all in one.
>> We could almost use that, not quite.
>> Yeah except we're going to have to angle it.
>> A typical day is you come in and I usually make a list
of the things that we want
to accomplish during the week and then also daily.
On non-fly days we have ongoing projects,
things that need maintenance.
>> Basically case 5.
>> Case 5 yeah.
>> Alright so is that our max design intent?
Is that what that is now?
>> I work on drawings for layups
and engineering calculations for load.
We are setting up, mounting components,
testing them, getting ready to fly.
>> Often I have to make a one-off part.
I also have the capability to 3D print parts in house,
which has been a blessing because it allows me
to design something in the morning,
build it in the afternoon and then install it in the evening,
it's really that quick.
[ Music/Background talking ]
>> Flight day usually starts two days before.
I don't like to rush, I want to make sure
that we don't miss anything because on a flight day
if you do miss something well that's just making everybody
wait and that's not cool.
If the system hasn't flown in a while,
or it's got a new component in it we do a CST,
which is a combined systems test where we turn everything on just
like in flight environment, including starting the engine
if applicable, run it and do all of these ground tests just
like we were going to go fly and make sure that everything works
and plays nice together.
That way when we get out on the lake bed
to fly there's no surprises.
[ propeller turning ]
[ Background talking ]
>> So when that's done let's say on a Monday we finish our CST,
Tuesday is prep and loading day where we'll maintenance all
of the batteries, make sure the generator has gas in it,
make all of the arrangements for frequencies
and whatever else we might need on the lake bed.
Load up the vehicles and be prepared for the next day.
[ Music ]
The third day, flight day, usually starts
at 6 am in the model lab.
I like to get there again a little bit early,
go over my checklist, make sure I have everything loaded,
everything is prepped and ready to go.
I typically like to be airborne by 9 for weather reasons
and that gives us the best chance to fly as much
as we need throughout the day.
>> It's airborne.
A little bit of right aileron trim,
a little up elevator trim, here comes a flap check,
1 notch, no pitch change,
2 notches, very nice, no pitch change, flap fall.
[ Radio chatter ]
>> ...first stall is clean.
>> 28
>> Keep them coming, Clue
[ Radio chatter ]
Alright I'm going to start setting up for an approach.
>> And we're down.
[ Music ]
>> The largest project that we're working
on right now is the T-GALS concept
which is the towed glider air launch to orbit concept
where we use a glider to carry a rocket launch vehicle
up to an altitude, release that rocket
and then it will head on into space.
The idea is cheaper cost per pound launches to orbit.
So by air launching the launch vehicle, we gain somewhere
in the order of 50% performance increase to get the same amount
of payload into orbit.
We have built and are flying a quarter scale, roughly, model
that eventually could turn
into a hundred foot wingspan full scale X plane type program.
Another program that we've been working on is called PRANDTL.
PRANDTL is looking at a new way to design a wing
to reduce induced drag.
Induced drag is the by-product of creating lift.
So when you create lift you create drag.
This particular wing uses twist to reduce that drag
at the wing tips and manipulate that for control.
>> 3, 2, 1, release.
>> It has huge long range potential benefits.
Things like airliners where you see the winglet
on every air liner that increases efficiency.
PRANDTL looks to do much of the same thing
but even on a bigger scale.
Flight days they can be an hour, they can be six hours,
just depends on what we're doing.
We'll bring everything back to the lab, unload what we need
to unload and then gather any data that's necessary and send
that out to the proper folks.
I don't do too much of the data analyzing
but I definitely facilitate the downloading
and we certainly look at the data but that's left
to other folks on their respective projects
to analyze the data.
My job is to gather the data, make sure the data is good,
and then disseminate it.
I love to design.
I design a lot of my own aircraft
and you just simply can't do that easily in a manned world.
Timeline, cost, risk, all of those things play a factor.
With subscale aircraft you can do almost anything you want
without much risk and you can realize those gains
very quickly.
[ Subscale aircraft taking off ]
>> Being that we're not putting out a product,
we don't have a product at the end of the day that we have
to sell; that gives us a lot more latitude to research things
that maybe a for profit company wouldn't bother to research.
[ aircraft flying ]
>> You know, the winglet may not have come
around if it hadn't have been for NASA.
Some guy looking for a few percent advantage looked
into it and figured it out.
Dale Reed was a pioneer of using subscale aircraft
and he was sort looked as sort of a crack pot around here.
He got the idea of a cone shape as a re-entry type vehicle,
cut it in half into the half cone
with is the classic lifting body shape that we know now
and those early trials led directly to the space shuttle.
So we look into sometimes the minutiae of how
and why things work that doesn't necessarily make sense
for a for profit company.
Everything that we do benefits the public,
nothing is held back, everything is published
and available for anyone to use.
NASA is a fantastic environment to work in.
It's just being part of an R & D environment and part
of something that maybe someday somebody else might remember
that was something cool and I can say "oh," you know
to my grandkids, "oh yeah I worked on that"
that would be pretty cool.
I would probably be unhappy sitting behind a desk somewhere
if I wasn't flying airplanes.
[ Music/Wind ]
[ Glider scraping along ground ]
>> I really enjoy working here a lot.