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>>Flashing across California desert skies, the airplanes you see

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here are writing new chapters in the story
of man made flight....there she goes!

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>>This is my first opportunity
to greet you as deputy administrator

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of the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration.

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>>Together, you and I must make our new agency

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>>A most unusual place

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>>An organization that can challenge
conventional wisdom.

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>>We can engineer anything we can write the requirements for.

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>>We're going to make your idea work.

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This particular idea is quite disruptive.

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>>A typical flight, of course, starts
under the wing of the B-52 mothership.

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>>This sleek, high speed machine
would have made Rube Goldberg proud.

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>>The manner in which we fly
reentry from space,

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on the space shuttle was
pioneered on the X-15.

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>>The X-31 pretty much wrote the book on thurst vectoring, along with its sister program, the F-18 HARV.

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>>An observation of an occulation is

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one of the more challenging
missions that SOFIA can do.

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[Music/Background sound]

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>>Right now, we are looking
at the dawn of a new era of aviation.

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[Music/Background sound]

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[Music]

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>>Pull up!

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>>K, we finished our climb check-

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Now it's time for a Chesterfield!

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>>Small general purpose planes outnumber
the world's transports by a hundred to one...

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>>and there are thousands of privately
owned airplanes all over America...

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>>the number of mistakes
I've seen private pilots make over

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the years is astonishing...

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>>A man must know the limits
of his machine...

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>>Engineers continually assess
the technological limits of safety

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and aggressively
seek out those advancements,

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which offer a significant promise.

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>>The built-in dangers of flight testing

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showed up during this evaluation
of the PA-30 Twin Comanche.

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>>The plane had a serious flutter problem,
which appeared unexpectedly

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>>As  speeds and performance of light aircraft
increase,

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much more attention must be given

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to flutter and aero-elastic behavior.

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>>The introduction of wide-body
airplanes in the 70s

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was instrumental in satisfying
the public's desire for traveling.

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Along with this increased

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mix of aircraft comes an increased concern
about wake turbulence.

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>>Wake vortex is a turbulent
air condition that forms at an airplane's

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wingtip.

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>>Violent whirlpools of air called vortices...

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...one of these disturbances could last
for as much as several minutes in the air-

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-an invisible hazard.

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>>The wake vortex from a large transport
can throw a smaller plane

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out of control,

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an effort to reduce its hazards
became a matter of national priority.

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By comparing upsets of probe aircraft flying in the wake,

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they proved that using selected
combinations of wing flap,

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spoiler and landing gear positions,

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they could effectively reduce
the strength of the vortex.

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>>Separation standards were developed
that established aircraft

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weight categories and distances.

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>>Escape technology

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is having a hard time

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keeping pace with the demands placed
upon it by improved aircraft performance,

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more complex missions and more low level
flying now required in the current

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training environment.

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>>Today, man's life more than ever before depends

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on complex man machine inter-communication;

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he must be aware of the soft-spots.

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>>When the Enterprise performed
its approach and landing tests at Dryden,

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it discovered a problem in
maneuvering of all fly-by-wire airplanes.

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It happens when the aircraft's controls
don't respond

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to the pilot's
commands as fast as he expects.

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The pilot
automatically assumes the controls

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didn't get the message,
so he repeats his commands.

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Meanwhile, the computer is executing
the first command,

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so the pilot reacts
by trying to compensate

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for the extra command. To solve the pilot
induced oscillation problem.

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Engineers programed
the F-8's computers to make the plane

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particularly susceptible to PIOs.

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The pilot flew the plane
in the oscillation vulnerable mode

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and tried a series of PIO suppression
filters to find which one worked best.

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>>It would be a fighter pilot's

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ultimate dream to be able to maneuver
care-free at extremely high alpha.

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>>But what happens to the total
aerodynamics when we increase

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alpha beyond that recommended?

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Stall.

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The result of an alpha so great
that the air can no longer flow

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smoothly over the curved

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top surface of the wing.

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>>Air is not moving over the control surfaces as it should, which renders
the plane's controls virtually useless.

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>>Ok, spinning one half mile
northeast of the spin point, Bill.

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>>Thanks, Gary.

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[Music/Background noise]

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>>The F-14 is a Navy high-

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performance fighter. While performing
certain extreme maneuvers,

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pilots have had problems
with spin and loss of control.

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>>Stall on the right-

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>>-it shut down-

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>>-and I've got recovery!

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>>Control modifications done here
have made the F-14 easier to fly.

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>>We were

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able to assist the Federal Aviation
Administration in testing a new aviation

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fuel, which was not supposed to burn
if the aircraft crashed.

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Unfortunately,
the tests showed that the fuel did burn.

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>>Two of the technologies
of the second half of this century.

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That affected major changes in aerospace
are the jet engine

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and the digital computer.

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[Music/Background noise]

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>>We had no ailerons to bank the airplane.

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We had no rudders to turn it.

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No elevators to control the pitch.

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We had no leading edge slats
for slowing the airplane down.

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No trailing edge flaps for landing.

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>>NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center
began to investigate ways to safely land

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crippled airplanes,
using only throttle controls.

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>>To see what we could do
with just the engines

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if all the flight controls were gone.

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>>Things you do here
may prevent a lot of disasters.

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>>Central hydraulics systems
tend to be very vulnerable.

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These power
by wire systems aren't as vulnerable.

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>>These experimental actuators operate
independently of the F-18's

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hydraulic system.

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They could greatly reduce the costs,
weight and maintenance of future aircraft.

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The real time flush air data sensing
system used a group of eleven tiny

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pressure orifices
arranged on the nose of the F-18.

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The system eliminates the need
for external air data probes or booms,

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which are sensitive to vibration
and alignment errors and can be easily damaged.

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Another experiment will evaluate a newly
developed air mass flux sensor device.

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The sensor may enhance safety
by rapid detection of hazardous

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airflow conditions, which could lead
to in-flight engine stalls.

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[Radio chatter]

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>>Fly up! Fly up!

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[Radio chatter]

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>>The HISTEC program
evaluated a computerized system

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that can sense and respond to high levels
of engine inlet air flow turbulence.

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This system could successfully prevent
sudden in-flight engine compressor stalls

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and potential engine failures,
and thereby increase aircraft safety.

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>>Clear-air turbulence is turbulence that give no indication of their presence...

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...can be very dangerous to fly through
because it moves the aircraft around

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and damages
the aircraft and the people inside.

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And even the most conscientious pilot
has really no warning that it's present.

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>>The garment I'm currently wearing
protect me against both partial pressure

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and high G-force, and as you can see,
the coverage is pretty extensive.

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In modern aircraft,

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heat stress becomes a very big problem.

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APECS is a prototype cooling

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garment.

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>>The next generation in microclimate cooling.

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[Music/jet taking off]

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>>The Intelligent Flight Control

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Project is a project where we take
a highly advanced F-15 aircraft

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and we add another computer to it
that has a neural network in it,

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that neural network
will actually take the errors to control

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surface failures and aerodynamic failures
and augment those failures

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with self-learning neural network software.
We don't tell the neural networks

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what actually failed.

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It just knows that
there's an error in the system

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and it sends pitch, roll, and yaw commands
to the flight computer and

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commands the aircraft properly.

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>>If the research that we do right now results

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in just one saved aircraft, I think it's
well worth the effort that we spent.

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>>This research makes aircraft
more safe because what it does is it

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makes the aircraft more smart, able
to adapt to failures.

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This computer
would be able to take over the airplane

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and be able land it safely
and stabilize it.

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>>This research has a lot of applications. Using the flight

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controls to help
reduce the stresses on the structure,

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we could use it for active load
alleviation or possibly active flutter

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or LCO suppression.

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>>With lightweight wings,

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they are prone to flutter,
which is a phenomenon where you go

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too fast,

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and then the wing just falls apart.

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The X-56A project is intended, by
development of flight control technologies,

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to suppress flutter,

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to use other control
surfaces to counteract that vibration.

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[Music/Background noise]

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>>Since the dawn of aircraft,

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the ground has been an enemy of the pilot.

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>>ACAT is the autonomous collision
avoidance technology program,

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ground collision avoidance
and air to air collision avoidance.

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>>We decided let's see how we can adapt
this technology to other platforms.

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We moved the software from high dollar
fighter hardware processors

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to cell phone.

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>>Two recover! Two recover!!

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>>From general aviation
to airlines to military aviation,

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we can make it safer.
The technology's there.

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We just need to put it all together
and make it happen.

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>>We're
trying to correlate our radar readings

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with the actual readings

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that we're getting from in-situ
measurements to see if we can figure out

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if you can predict this high ice water
content.

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>>Right now, our flight tracks

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are overflying the coldest temperatures
that we can find,

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which correlates
to the deepest convection going on.

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>>Basically,
what the scientists are trying to do

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is get a baseline of how pilots
breathe in tactical airplanes.

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>>This program is going to help develop
new equipment, new systems and expand