Hot Concepts

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The center's 2,400 civil-servant researchers have been given the opportunity to pursue innovative concepts -- including potentially classified technologies. They will be able to apply each year for grants up to $300,000 to support their project.

Called the Creativity and Innovation Initiative, the program is "an attempt to try to have our researchers come up with tomorrow," said Joe Heyman, senior technologist at Langley and head of the program.

"The major impact," said Dennis Bushnell, Langley's senior scientist and one of the program's founders, "will be a clear signal to the staff that imaginative, creative, high-risk (pursuits are) something to be desired."

The project is then evaluated by "the best technical people we have," said Bushnell.

Since most projects will run in the less-than-$50,000 range, the program's $7 million pot may support more than 100 projects each year.

Langley administrators have already begun working out how qualifying scientists will switch from their current responsibilities to the new program. Those not working on critical tasks will be allowed to devote up to 80 percent of their time to the new endeavor.

The hope is that the center can use the initiative to revive the spirit of its legacy of innovation.

Langley was the first of the nation's aerospace centers, opening in 1917 when the agency was known as the National Advisory Council on Aeronautics.

Over the last 83 years, the center has worked on projects ranging from the training of the Mercury Seven astronauts to the F-22 Raptor, the Air Force's newest stealth fighter jet.

In its kickoff of the Creativity and Innovation program last month, Langley brought in Jordan Ayan, a "creativity expert," to urge employees to think big.

Ayan has spoken to groups ranging from automobile executives to dentists and is author of the book, Aha! -- 10 Ways to Free Your Creative Spirit and Find Your Great Ideas.

Ayan's message, said Joel Levine, a senior research scientist, was that "you have to think outside of the box...and bring new technologies to bear on old problems."

Heyman thought that Ayan's lecture helped "set the stage for creativity at a technology center."

So far, Langley has already received more than 60 letters from researchers interested in participating.

"This is a great initiative," said Levine. "They're giving researchers an opportunity to initiate their research at a grass-roots level."

According to Bushnell, the program grew out of the realization that researchers had begun to spend too much time on near-term missions and not enough time on long-range projects.

"We need to become more proactive in working future issues," Bushnell said.

For Heyman and Bushnell, the point was driven home when they evaluated the High Speed Civil Transport (HSCT) program of the 1990s.

An unsuccessful U.S. attempt to design a supersonic passenger plane, the HSCT effort failed in part because the necessary breakthrough technologies had yet to be conceived.

Designers had not devoted enough time to brainstorming novel technologies, so they were stuck working with contemporary materials and structures.

For the projects of the future, innovation will be equally important.

"We've got to pull an awful lot of the costs [of flying] out," said Bushnell, particularly since he sees virtual-reality teleconferences eliminating over a third of business travel in the next couple decades.

But, virtual reality presents both a competition and an opportunity, he said. If air travel is going to remain a viable option, competition will breed a far less expensive and more convenient aerospace industry.

"Maybe we ought to look at a different paradigm," said Bushnell, "We see a need to at least pioneer a bit."

The program will allow researchers to tackle such problems.

Another area that the new program could help is the automated piloting of aircraft -- a technology that could someday lead to personal air transportation.

Already in production, personal, car-sized VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) craft could become a $1 trillion industry -- once totally automated flight allows the average person to fly, Bushnell said.

The impact of some new projects may not be as obvious for the average American as personal helicopter cars.

However, Langley engineer Steve Yaros emphasized that what "may be just a wacko idea" at first could be "not just a trickle-down, but a deluge," for the public.

"Great truths are usually the result of this type of thinking," Yaros said.