The Wright brothers' enduring legacy: vision and innovation

By SHANA DALE
MCCLATCHY-TRIBUNE
Today marks a seminal milestone in aeronautics, one that demonstrated the power of innovation and the will of the human spirit to overcome nature's mysteries in our quest to master the skies. On Dec. 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright became the first in flight with a piloted heavier-than-air aircraft.
The Wrights' methodical approach enabled them to master the key to piloted flight, control of the aircraft and thus surpass more prestigious and well-funded efforts to become first in flight. It is a study in how an incremental approach to solving problems can lead to revolutionary discoveries. Through innovation and a singular vision, this small team with limited resources redefined aeronautics and reshaped our world.
Eye on space
We are seeing a similar scenario play out today. NASA is leveraging the power of innovation to enable a viable commercial enterprise in space. This approach is a radical departure from tradition for NASA, which previously has relied on major aerospace contractors and its own engineering talent and resources to acquire their own space capabilities. The demands today, however, are for more efficient, more affordable access to space, something the Wright brothers of today are keen to deliver.
The flagship program for this endeavor is COTS, the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program. Through competitive proposals, COTS puts 500 million of NASA funding on the line in challenging U.S. industry to enable commercial capability to deliver cargo -- and eventually crew -- to the International Space Station. Recently NASA awarded the Phase I COTS award to two space newcomers, SpaceX, founded by Internet entrepreneur Elon Musk, and Oklahoma-based Rocketplane Kistler. The spacecraft will be owned and financed primarily by the companies themselves and will be designed to serve both the government and private, commercial customers.
Sharing the risks
At its heart, COTS is an investment intended to spur innovation through competition, and it enables NASA to provide seed money that private industry can compete for, encouraging collaborative competition and sharing the risks of this highly challenging endeavor.
With the Vision for Space Exploration, which includes human and robotic missions to the moon and Mars, NASA will need to free its resources to focus on long-range highly complex engineering challenges. Routine yet necessary missions to bring humans and supplies to the Moon, to service the International Space Station, and for other purposes will need to become more of a streamlined, turnkey operation. Building this essential infrastructure for space exploration, however, will require a dedicated and strong commercial sector.
The goal is to develop dual-use technologies for Earth-to-orbit space flight. For NASA, the payoff will be the capability of routine, cost-effective access to orbit. For the commercial sector, particularly the companies that have been selected to share in the half-billion-dollar award, the benefit is in opening the frontier of space to long-term commercial development.
NASA is also building on a long history of prize competitions in aviation, from Charles Lindbergh's successful solo flight across the Atlantic to Burt Rutan's X-Prize win for SpaceShipOne in 2004, to spur innovation and achieve its long-term exploration goals including developing the kinds of take-off and landing systems needed to return to the moon.
Lunar challenge
Enabled by the 2005 NASA Authorization Act, NASA can now sponsor prize competitions worth millions or even tens of millions of dollars. Partnering with the X-Prize Foundation, NASA held its first competition in October, in Las Cruces, N.M., as part of the 2 million Lunar Lander Analog Challenge.
We believe that competition and these prizes can have an enormous catalytic effect in spurring our most adventurous entrepreneurs and inventors to tackle the critical challenges that lie ahead.
In Las Cruces, Armadillo Aerospace's "Pixel" vehicle got half way to meeting the challenge, with a 90-plus second flight that took them to an altitude of 50 meters and covered a distance of 100 meters. This was a flight not much longer or farther than the Wright Brothers' first flight, which lasted all of 12 seconds and went 120 feet, but that first flight sparked a revolution in aviation technology, a lofty goal we still aspire to today.
Shana Dale is NASA deputy administrator in Washington, D.C. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.