Dingser og kontroll av disse - NASA har en plan - EASA også - AW&ST

Jeg må si at det har vært sparsomt med informasjon om hvordan en har tenkt å kontrollere alle "dingsene" som er på tegnebrettet eller som allerede flyr. Først må en ha et sertifiseringsprogram, dernest et kontroll program, altså hvor skal de fly og luftrommets beskaffenhet. Til sist: Hvem skal fly dem? Målet er uomtvistelig at slike innretninger skal vær like sikre som dagens fly. Det krever litt det, men NASA har gjort seg noen tanker . Du vil også se at EASA er i sving i artikkelen helt nederst. (Red.) NASA Rolls Out Urban Air Mobility ‘Grand Challenge’ Plan Guy Norris Widely viewed until recently as bordering on science fiction, the age of urban air mobility (UAM) is fast approaching reality and is poised to transform both aviation and society, says NASA. Now, with international activity in this new market accelerating, the agency has unveiled plans to cultivate the development of a U.S.-led urban air revolution. Launching the UAM Grand Challenge plan in Seattle on Nov. 1, NASA Aeronautics Associate Administrator Jaiwon Shin said the advent of urban air vehicles “holds an enormous amount of promise, to a level not seen since the introduction of the jet engine, but we have to do this right.” Noting the growing pace of UAM developments in Europe and Asia, he said, “If the U.S. doesn’t develop scalable, profitable and safe operation, then somebody else is going to eat our lunch.” Initial Grand Challenge GC-1 phase in 2020, with more complex GC-2 in 2021 Early tests will evaluate UAM aircraft and systems through varying scenarios Addressing an audience that included airspace, avionics and traffic management companies, as well as government agencies and representatives of 47 different vehicle developers, Shin stressed the need for a broad, consensus-based approach to producing a road map toward a viable UAM future. “This is not a NASA or FAA event; it’s a community event,” he said. “If we work together, these things could happen.” Unlike earlier Grand Challenges, however, the UAM plan does not include prize money. “This is the community learning together and trying to raise the water level together,” says Shin. “Looking at these challenges, no one company or government entity will be able to overcome them all. It shouldn’t be addressed by any one of them. I can’t think of any other country that can do this first and get this right.” However, he warns: “If we are not methodological and use best practices, this will become a total disaster. There are lots of system-level issues, and public perception is a big question mark.” Based partly on results of two NASA-funded UAM market studies that found “air metro” operations could be profitable by around 2028, with up to 750 million passenger trips in 15 metro areas possible by 2030, the agency believes the emerging sector could be a commercial game changer. This rosy forecast also applies to nonpassenger traffic. Studies by Crown Consulting and Booz Allen Hamilton also suggest that by 2030 “last-mile package” delivery could be profitable and result in 500 million deliveries annually.

NASA’s Grand Challenge ultimate vision is to test aircraft and systems in a UAM scenario involving hundreds of simultaneous operations that will pave the way for a mature system with tens of thousands of flights under optimized, automated control. Credit: NASA

"We are doing this to enable a real market,” says Shin. “It’s not a one-off stunt that would take another 15 years to scale up and become profitable and safe. We want that from the get-go. I’m very hopeful we are in a good position as a country to do this. I get questions a lot from Congress and the White House about whether we are too late, and what we need to do. What we are doing here is what we do best. We have the government working with industry and the community to methodically and steadily put together the necessary capabilities for real.” The FAA also stresses that public acceptance and safety remain underlying requirements for a viable urban aviation industry. “UAM will not fly without it. Do not underestimate the need to work with local communities,” says FAA unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) integration office executive director Earl Lawrence. Appealing to would-be participant developers to present their safety case rather than business case, he adds, “Safety is the key to get your business off the ground, literally.” Overall, he says: “[The FAA] is committed to this dynamic shift and doing it in a way that continues the safety of our airspace system. We need to know what it will take to bring this technology to market and meet society’s expectations for safety.” Advising the airframe and systems providers, Lawrence says, [the fundamental requirements for UAM] “won’t be too different from those already established to fly an aircraft in the national airspace system today.” He adds, “We are shifting from prescriptive compliance-based rules to performance-based regulations, and our focus is on what can already be done under the existing regulatory framework until we can update regulations where we need it. “If you are looking for the formula, it is research plus operations in the real world. The research comes first, then operations in a real environment and in volume. Then we will know how to update regulations,” Lawrence says. Under the Grand Challenge plan, aircraft and system developers have until Nov. 16 to respond to NASA’s request for information, says Davis Hackenberg, UAM strategic advisor for NASA’s aeronautics research mission directorate. Based on initial feedback, the agency expects to hold webinars early next year to set up working groups and, shortly afterward, plans to draft a series of Space Act Agreements (SAA) with initial participants that will identify baseline airworthiness and qualification requirements. By the end of 2019, SAA participants are due to begin a series of qualification scenarios that will be used to prove the basic capability of their vehicle designs to meet safe operations as well as to begin NASA’s airworthiness process. This must be completed prior to flying in Grand Challenge 1 (GC-1), which is the first of an anticipated series of tests in various scenarios aimed at paving the way for foundational UAM vehicle design readiness and operational robustness.

NASA’s initial state-of-the-art assessment for technology maturity levels needed for an intermediate, passenger-carrying intrametro air shuttle.

GC-1 is due to start in January 2020, with a more sophisticated GC-2 planned for the same period in 2021. NASA, which will provide access to a UAM test range to be set up at Armstrong Flight Research Center in California, says the second series of challenges is expected to address “key safety and integration barriers across the UAM ecosystem while also emphasizing critical operational challenges.” The agency also has outlined additional GC-3 and GC-4 phases, which will add further levels of maturity to the UAM system through scenarios that increase in number, complexity, technology and operational readiness, standards and regulatory emphasis. To provide a basic framework for the initiative, NASA has developed six UAM reference missions, three nonpassenger-carrying and three passenger-carrying. These range from initial technology-state missions such as public safety vehicles and medical transport to intermediate-state tasks such as small package deliveries and intrametro air shuttles. Then, in a mature state, these progress to the most sophisticated reference missions including UAS multipackage delivery and ubiquitous intrametro taxi services. During the formation of the reference missions, “we stumbled on something we got excited about,” says Hackenberg. “For each of them, we have defined what is the required UAM maturity level [UML],” he adds, referring to the creation of a series of notional steps toward large-scale, fully developed urban air mobility systems with tens of thousands of simultaneous operations. The initial state, which will be addressed in the early GC phases, will focus on UML-1 and UML-2. The first step toward maturity will involve early operational exploration and demonstrations of a small number of aircraft in limited environments, while UML-2 will add low-density and-complexity commercial operations with some assistance from automation. The testing of intermediate state-level maturity will focus on UML-3 and -4, the former covering low-density, medium-complexity operations in an urban area with closely spaced landing areas and automation for scalable, weather-tolerant operations. The move to the next level, UML-4, will evaluate medium-density and -complexity operations with collaborative and responsible automated systems. These and later tests are expected to be undertaken on other ranges across the country. “Our sweet spot is UML-4. You are talking about 100 vehicles or so, and it covers trip distance, the turnaround time of vehicles and time to recharge batteries,” says Hackenberg. With hundreds of simultaneous operations, a 100-strong fleet would have capacity to transport 5,000-10,000 passengers per day. “That’s good, because when you get 200-300 vehicles, you start to get closer to 60,000 passengers. That’s around 10% of the Washington metro system, and that starts to be significant. So that’s where we focused our Grand Challenge,” he adds. The overall time line runs largely in parallel with much of the baseline development schedule already outlined by Uber for its Uber Air UAM plan. However, Shin says there is no specific area of overlap and hints that NASA, which is already partnered with Uber on modeling and simulation of the UAM environment, may be exploring additional cooperation with the ride-hail company. NASA believes the initiative also will provide a more sustainable platform for growth than the isolated demonstrations planned in cities such as Dubai and Tokyo. “I’m pretty sure they will succeed, but is that going to be scalable. That’s the question,” he adds.