Once upon a time, everything in aerospace was designed with nothing more complicated than the slide rule. How many people even know what a slide rule is anymore? Those tools and a bunch of people crunching numbers with a calculator and pen and paper put men on the moon. To this day we haven’t built a rocket more powerful than the legendary Saturn V. We still have not made an aircraft that flies higher and faster than the equally impressive SR-71 Blackbird, a plane that first flew in 1964 and was retired back in 1999. The base designs for aircraft and rockets haven’t really changed much since then.
So what is left for our massive improvements in computing power as well as data gathering and analysis to accomplish? There are certain obvious things like making improvements to those base designs. There have been massive gains in engine efficiency, tweaking the aerodynamics of aircraft and the incorporation of stealth technology. Rockets of course haven’t seen many improvements in those fields but recent advancements from companies like Blue Origin and Space X have greatly improved the reusability of rockets, especially the recent successes by Elon Musk’s Space X in landing first and second stage boosters to be refurbished for reuse. Thanks to extensive use of data to build and refine their designs, those stages can land on something a little bigger than a helicopter pad. This is much more efficient than the space shuttle’s reusable boosters that would just fall into the ocean and have to be picked up by a large ship with a crane before they sank.
Even here though, in some ways, things have been pushed to their limits. In the realm of fighter craft, the human body is the limit now, as demonstrated by the existence of ‘Raptor cough’. It was discovered years ago that pilots of the F-22 Raptor had developed respiratory issues due to the stresses that flying the craft and the oxygen system used to help keep pilots alert while doing so put on the human body. Data will help design better support systems but it’s clear that physical limits are now the barrier, not our imaginations.
So again, what is left for data in aerospace and defense? Much of the best and most exciting uses of data is happening in low earth orbit, thanks to improvements in satellite technology. One of the reasons we haven’t make anything bigger than the Saturn V is because our satellites can be made smaller and still accomplish a lot more. One of the recent things that data analysis and satellites did was uncover and break up a human trafficking operation. Thanks to analysis of patterns and satellite imagery they were able to find where the traffickers’ boats were operating in the middle of the ocean.
Of course there is also the various intelligence uses of data. The ability to rapidly collect and analyze data has grown exponentially ever since 9/11 and has been used effectively to track any number of terrorist operations, including the Boston Marathon bombers. Of course, there is a whole other side to that, but that’s a different article.
Cyberwarfare has also increased dramatically since then and being able to track the spread of viruses and other malware across the internet will only become more important in the years ahead.
Finally, there is the issue of space junk. There are millions of satellites and pieces of satellites in low earth orbit right now and tracking them is a full time job. NASA has to be aware of every bit of stuff floating around up there to prevent collisions. Data analysis is essential to that operation as they don’t just have to predict where an old satellite will be tomorrow, they have to predict where it will be in ten years. Not to mention the various bits of bolts, frozen fuel, and even paint chips that can’t be so easily tracked and yet can still cause considerable damage.
While most of the major physical designs have already been nearly perfected, there are still plenty of uses for data in the world of aerospace and defense. From learning how to push the human body to its limits, to stopping human traffickers, to figuring out how to best handle our space garbage, data and the analysis of it will be a big part of the future.
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