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 Tom Romer

Looking for Easy Answers in a Difficult Space

Today Romer is searching for the easiest way to unclog an increasingly jammed airspace system.

After graduating from Embry-Riddle, Romer went to work at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, south of San Francisco, Calif. For the next 14 years, he worked with the supersonic wind tunnels, first as a test engineer, then a controls engineer, picking up a master's degree at Stanford along the way. In 1999, he transferred to the Ames air transportation group, where he is one of the leaders in NASA's virtual airspace modeling and simulation (VAMS) project, a five-year effort that will run through September 2006.

The VAMS effort has three objectives: define future air traffic control and air transportation system concepts; define measurements and scenarios to use in assessing those concepts; and develop virtual airspace simulation technologies (VAST) that can model those concepts, assess scenarios, and take measurements. Romer is in charge of VAST. Four sub-task managers and their teams, a total of 35 people, report to him.

"Everyone is aware of the air traffic problem," Romer said. "For a long time we've had delays at airports and flight cancellations, especially caused by summer storm fronts. Now there are security problems. It's been getting worse over the years, because more people are traveling, and a delay anywhere affects all of the airspace system."

Based on FAA predictions that air traffic demand in the continental United States will increase 4.2 percent per year on average, the mission of Romer's group is to develop scenarios for the number of flights and route possibilities for the year 2020. The overall goal is to develop a concept and model for expanding capacity in the nation's airspace system.

Because technology development is so expensive, the simulation capability that Romer's team is developing will be used to model concepts, giving decision makers and stakeholders the guidance they need in deciding which ones are best to spend money on. "You can't turn the old airspace system off at midnight and turn the new one on the next day and expect things to work perfectly," he said.

And the decisions they make will lead to a future airspace with fewer delays and more flexible flight schedules and routes. "The average person won't be sitting in an airport for hours waiting for a flight that ends up being canceled because of a storm half a continent away," Romer said. "Air cargo shipments are also continuing to grow. These new models will allow more time and space for them, too, and reduce conflicts between cargo and passengers."

The challenge faced by Romer's group is an interlocking puzzle involving technology and politics.

"Major stakeholders like the FAA, Boeing, and the airlines each have developed their own goals and plans for the future," he said. "Trying to get buy-in and consensus in the concept area from all these stakeholders is a big challenge."

Add to that the fact that everyone defines airspace capacity in different ways. "For us, just understanding what we have to measure is a challenge." Capacity can be measured in different ways, depending on the sizes of planes and passenger loads. Simulation designers have to consider not only the prevalent hub-and-spoke route structure, but also a point-to-point system. They have to consider not only large jets, but also recent trends toward mid-sized regional jets and even the increase in traffic around underused airports that could result if NASA's proposed small aircraft transportation system (SATS) takes off.

The myriad modeling and simulation packages on the market are only good for the existing airspace system, Romer said. "We have to develop a more flexible system."

Using Department of Defense technology for highly distributed simulation, his team is working to create an open system into which other modeling organizations will want to incorporate their systems. "Individual agents such as persons, airports, and airlines will be able to exchange information and messages throughout the system - closer to what the actual system is," Romer said. "You can break our system into small elements, making it easier to pull out a small entity and replace it."

So far, he is encouraged that VAST is on the right track. "We've held two technical interchange meetings to introduce our initial concepts, exchange information and knowledge, and seek guidance from stakeholders such as the FAA, NASA, and contractors, and we've gotten positive responses."

Now that he's seen both sides of engineering, he does not hesitate to declare his true love. "I prefer hands-on work to management," he said. "The reason I put in long days is because I delve into the engineering aspects and then have to catch up on my management work. Once I get things on their way, I hope to return to more active engineering, to dive down and work with the details of the plan I've helped to create."

Seventeen years later, he says his Embry-Riddle education still measures up. "Working with people who've come from prestigious aeronautical programs, I've found that the engineering I learned at Riddle was so much more useable in the day-to-day world," he said. "I got my master's in mechanical engineering at Stanford, and I still think my education at Riddle was better. When I sat in those theoretical courses I had a better understanding of how those theories were applied in the real world."

The Leader magazine thanks Lisa Reuss (BSAE'94), editor of NASA Aerospace Technology News www.aerospace.nasa.gov/curevent/news), for recommending Tom Romer as an "Innovator."

Tim Van Milligan 

Rocket Man Has Model Career

Standing more than 62 inches (1.6 meters) tall and weighing about three pounds (1.4 kilograms) at launch, the most detailed reproduction of a Saturn 5 readily available today is 1/70th the size and 1/2,166,666th the weight of the original.

"It's just a matter of scale as far as the rockets are concerned. The laws of physics don't change," said Tim Van Milligan (BSAE'88), president of Apogee Components of Colorado Springs, Colo., the company responsible for producing a model rocket that has hobbyists and space enthusiasts alike buzzing with excitement.

Other versions of the rocket exist, mostly as smaller plastic models or as toys. But this version is designed to look as much like the Saturn 5 that launched Apollo 11 toward the Moon 33 years ago Tuesday as possible, Van Milligan said.

"Finally, someone has given the attention to detail that these amazing vehicles deserve," said Wes Oleszewski, a self-described "child of the space program" who used to stay home from school while growing up in Michigan to watch the Saturn 5 launches on television.

"Using common sense, Apogee has created kits that can be flown or displayed, or both. They have taken the time to research the actual vehicles and then used that information correctly in creating the kits," said Oleszewski, who is producing historical CDs on lifting body research and the Saturn family of rockets.

And what makes this particular Saturn 5 even more interesting is that it is the carefully crafted product of a real rocket scientist who once helped launch Delta 2 boosters.

"I was hired by McDonnell Douglas right out of college as a launch operations engineer. My job was to help see the rocket from the factory, help the engineers get it ready and keep track of things like the schedule and push paperwork," said Van Milligan, a graduate of Embry-Riddle in Daytona Beach, Fla. After a few years, Van Milligan gave up a reasonably secure job at Cape Canaveral to design flying models instead.

"By the time I left we had launched about 35 Delta 2s, and I was looking for a new challenge," he said.

Moving west to Colorado, Van Milligan joined Estes Industries - the aerospace giant of model rocketry - where he soon designed the wildly successful Skywinder, a rocket that launches normally but, instead of popping out a parachute for the "return to Earth," it deploys three blades and "helicopters" to a soft landing.

His reputation for designing quality rocket kits established, he soon struck out on his own and wound up the owner of Apogee Components. Responsible for paying all the bills, Van Milligan decided it was time to expand the product line in a bold fashion with a highly detailed kit. The choice of rocket was a no-brainer.

"We needed a rocket that was easily recognized, something that everybody knew and loved. And the Saturn 5 was at the top of the list," Van Milligan said. "Only one rocket put man on the Moon, and that was the Saturn 5."

Thirteen of the boosters flew from 1967 to 1973, all successfully. Ten flew with astronauts onboard, while three flew unmanned - Apollo's 4 and 6 were test flights while the final Saturn 5 to fly was a modified two-stage version that carried the Skylab orbital workshop into Earth orbit.

After almost three decades since its last launch, the memory of the 363-foot-tall, three-stage monster booster still evokes a basic sense of wonder among those who were alive when they flew, said Brian Nicklas, a deputy reference chief at the archives of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

"The Apollo-Saturn combination looks like a rocket should when you go deep down in our memories," Nicklas said. "We can't help but have thoughts based on inept science fiction movies and tawdry novellas, but we do. Saturn may not have had huge fins, but it is sleek and shiny white, and it produced lots and lots of flames."

"The new Saturn models look simply outstanding and are a scale-model builder's delight," said Marc "Moose" Lavigne, a Boeing engineer who worked with Van Milligan on the Delta program at the Cape and is often heard during launch coverage as the voice of Delta 2 telemetry. "Knowing the designers who assisted Tim in the scale reproduction work, I wasn't surprised to see the outcome. It has details not found in any other kit."

Those details add to the complexity of building the model, as well as the cost. The Saturn 5 is a pricey $225 and the smaller Saturn 1B is $175.

"These new kits are part of the new breed of scale model, one in which the producing company is going to the nth degree to obtain scale realism," said Nicklas, himself an accomplished modeler with several aircraft on display in museum exhibits.

"Models like this are priced somewhat beyond the means of most kids, but adults with a bit of spare cash are eager to recapture the fun modeling times they had in the past. When this can be done with a subject like the Saturn 5, which they hold in such high regard, so much the better," he said.

For science teachers, scout leaders or parents, the investment in a kit such as Apogee's Saturn 5 - or in any model rocket - can pay big educational dividends for kids, said Patrick McCarthy, a manager of program control with CSR Inc. at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and a long-time space modeler.

"I've yet to meet a student who flies model rockets who has trouble finding a science fair topic - they're made for each other."

In terms of the Saturn 5, model builders can learn more than just science, he said.

"Aside from the history of the vehicle, they'll learn an appreciation for the complex nature of a moon rocket. The same kinds of engineering that Wernher von Braun and NASA put into the real Saturn 5 went into the design and construction of the model Saturn," McCarthy said. "And Apogee's Saturn is just plain spectacular-looking, on display or in flight. It's way above the usual three-fins-and-a-nose-cone."

For more information about the kits or to order the Saturn 5 or Saturn 1B models, see the Apogee Components web site, www.apogeerockets.com.

By Jim Banke (BSBA'87), senior producer at the Cape Canaveral bureau of SPACE.Com. This article was published online July 17, 2002.

Behind the Story

Each of the alumni worked together on the Avion, the Daytona Beach campus student newspaper, during the 1980s. Van Milligan was a photographer, entertainment editor, and editor-in-chief; Nicklas (BAST'87) was an aviation editor and historian; McCarthy (BSAM'86) was a space technology editor and editor-in-chief, as was Banke; and Oleszewski (BASC'88) was creator of the Klyde Morris comic character, which continues to entertain the university community.

NOTE: Let us know who in the Embry-Riddle community -- alumni, faculty, staff, students -- you think should be featured as an "Innovator." Contact the editor, Bob Ross, at (386) 226-6198 or robert.ross@erau.edu.

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