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This transcript is based on a tape-recorded interview conducted by Erik M. Conway on 11 September 2001. Copies of the tape and transcript are deposited indefinitely at the NASA History Office in Washington, DC and the History Office at the NASA Langley Research Center. I have read the transcript and have made minor corrections and emendations. The reader is asked to bear in mind that this transcript is a record of a spoken conversation rather than a literary product, and that it may contain unintentional faults, lapses, or inaccuracies.

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Howard Wesoky Interview with Erik Conway

11 September 2001

WESOKY: Why don't you do that again. Let me put you on speaker

phone since we're going to be here for an hour or so. Let me see if that

works.

CONWAY: Great.

WESOKY: Okay?

CONWAY: Yes, I can hear you.

WESOKY: I'll sit so I'm looking right at the speaker phone. I think it's

directionally sensitive.

CONWAY: Just to make sure that you know what I'm doing I was hired

by the former HSR folks to do a history of supersonic transport research

by NASA. I started with the early XS-1 stuff in 194 7 and I've finally

reached HSR itself. What I'd like to do today is talk to you about your role

in getting HSR started and in the AESA portion of the program, noise

stringency standards and that sort of thing. I need your permission to

record this.

WESOKY: Okay.

CONWAY: The first question I ask everyone is for a brief biographical

sketch of yourself. Where did you go to school? What your post graduate

education was? Who have your worked for? That sort of thing. Go

ahead please.

WESOKY: Let me preface my remarks by saying this is a somewhat

painful experience. I appreciate the opportunity. I'm happy you called.

Because the High Speed Research Program had wonderful

consequences for me personally, but in the end I believe that it had

negative consequences for the agency. That's unfortunate.

I began work for NASA in 1964 after receiving a masters degree in

mechanical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh where I also

received an undergraduate degree in aeronautical engineering. While in

graduate school I had worked one summer at the then-Lewis Research

Center in Cleveland and came back there permanently in 1964, where I

began work as a rocket scientist, believe it or not, doing heat transfer

studies in rocket nozzles. Eventually within five years or so I moved in to

aeronautics. I guess I spent most of my career in aeronautics and

enjoyed that greatly. Around 1977 or actually earlier, I went into project

work and was a project engineer on what was called the QCSEE effort,

quiet, clean, short haul, experimental engine. V\lhen that ended I moved

over to the variable cycle engine project which was an element of, I think

you know, the Supersonic Cruise Research effort, the second time that

NASA was involved in a major effort to develop supersonic technology.

had witnessed the first effort as a young researcher at Lewis in the late

sixties, when for example the propulsion systems lab at Lewis was built to

test the GE4 engine that was to power the Boeing 2707 that unfortunately

never happened.

Around 1977 I joined the Variable Cycle Engine project and had my

first experience with combustor work again dealing with production of

oxides of nitrogen that could disturb stratospheric ozone. I'll get back to

that later. That project ended in 1981, again unfortunately. But after that I

wandered around some through theE-cubed program that was a result of

the energy crisis in the seventies. In 1983 I was fortunate enough to be

sent off to Washington on a career development program and spent a

year there as liaison for the Lewis Research Center in the office of what

was called the Aerospace Technology Office. I returned to Lewis and

spent some in institutional work at Lewis, returned permanently to

headquarters in 1987 through a merit promotion.

I spent a couple of years in facilities work with Lou Williams, a

name I'm sure will pop up here. Lou and I conducted a study of the need

to revitalize the agency's wind tunnels, something that's been done many

times also. Within about a year and a half or two years I wound up back

with Lou on the beginnings of the High Speed Research Program. I pulled

out a file I still have for the High Speed Research Program . I think the

only file of a particular program I've kept in retirement. It's been fun going

through the briefing books.

As you know I was involved in the early days of the program, in

particular in connection with what became known as the Atmospheric

Effects of Stratospheric Aircraft element of the program. -l-estab#sf\ee-tt:laL

eJemeRt-eveAt-Hal4y When the Advanced Subsonic Technology program

~· '' was conceived) 1/Ve joinfed-tflat-with a similar element of AST looking at

\t~r~v~rt'

the climate effects of aviation. Thathbecame the Atmospheric Effects of

Aviation project. In effect I left the High Speed Research Program

although I continued to manage an element of that program through

AEAP. As you know eventually the management of the [HSR] program

also moved from headquarters to Langley. I continued to manage the

atmospheric work, the environmental work from headquarters. Eventually

that work also was transferred to a field center, Goddard Space Flight

Center. I went off and did a few other things for a short while. But I still

stayed primarily involved with environmental effects.

When I left NASA in 1998 my title was team leader for

environmental assessment. In 1998 I was promoted to a position at the

FAA as irS' chief scientific and technical advisor for environment, a position

which I undoubtedly ){at because of the experience received beginning

with the High Speed Research program. As I said I had wonderful

personal consequences as a result of that. I'm sitting here in my den at 6l~J

home in our computer room,l'my wife's sewing room. We have family

photographs and certificates on the wall. One of them is a NASA medal

for outstanding leadership that I received. It says, "For your outstanding

leadership in developing and managing the Atmospheric Effects of

Aviation project which is providing a greatly improved scientific basis for

aircraft emission standards." Next to that is a certificate that I received

when I was elected as a foreign associate member of the French National

Academy of Air qnd Space for similar reasons. I'm very proud of these

accomplishments and they all reflect back on the opportunity I received in

the High Speed Research program.

CONWAY: Great. It sounds like you had a very positive experience.

WESOKY: Wonderful experience. Again it is somewhat painful

because I believe that the program did have negative consequences on

the agency because when the program was terminated, it took a large part

of the NASA aeronautics program effectively with it. The aeronautics

program has been smaller after the termination of HSR and then AST.

think we all have to learn something from that.

CONWAY: We'll come back to that, but I want to start in with the

/ beginnings of HSR. You said you were involved in it's initial planning.

Down here I have some other people who were. The program Langley

first put forward in 1987 is not the one that was finally approved. Can you

say anything about how the program evolved from what Langley wanted

towards what finally gets approved.

WESOKY: Probably not in an authoritative way. I joined the program at

the very end of 1988. I certainly remember meetings at the very beginning

of 1989. I do recall the system studies that Langley ran which looked at a

broad range of technologies including hypersonics. I guess eventually

from those studies it was determined tha~~ an airplane that

would fly at Mach two point something was more practical for the

immediate future. That's where the technology focused. I honestly don't

recall what Langley may have objected to in that decision.

CONWAY: Fair enough. Let's talk about the AESA program. Whose

idea was it to have a separate and very detailed assessment of

stratospheric impact for the HSR program?

WESOKY: It was certainly a necessity because of what happened

actually around the time that the Boeing 2707 was cancelled in 1971.

There was some confusion in many people's minds about the chicken and

egg. But a paper was published by a University of California at Berkeley

chemist, Harold Johnston, which associated [depletion of ozone with]

oxides of nitrogen from the then projected supersonic fleet. That

hypothesis slowed the growth and interest in supersonic transport

technology for many years.

Lou Williams, who was the headquarters program manager for this

effort, and I forget the exact details, but Lou was introduced to in some

way Bob Watson who was a division director in another NASA office, an

office that is now called the office of Earth Sciences. Bob was, even at

that point, a world renowned atmospheric scientist who had managed a

program that was largely responsible for discovering the Antarctic ozone

hole. Because of the similarity in the science, he and Lou determined that

a relationship should be established between the two headquarters offices

and that the aeronautics program should fund an effort that was actually

staffed by the scientists involved in the strat-ozone work to look at

specifically what a fleet of high speed civil transports might do similar to

what the chloroflurocarbons were at that time being sho~to do to

stratospheric ozone.

It was interesting, I was given by Lou responsibility for coordinating

work between the two offices. At the time I thought, I'm not a scientist.

We probably should bring somebody from a field center to do this work

and I should stick to my aeronautical engineering skills. But Cecil Rosen,

who was the head of the aeronautics effort in Code R at the time said,

"No, you manage it." That was probably, I don't know if it was a wise

decision on Cecil's part, but it was a wonderful decision for me because it

led to all these other things that I've discussed. And helped me become

familiar with the atmospheric science community. I became very close to

the scientists who had worked the stratospheric ozone program for many

many years beginning with the Harold Johnston paper, actually led to a

Noble prize for chemistry for members of this community, professors

Ot Mario Molina, now at MIT and Sherwood Roland ~he University of

California Irvine, and these are the people I got to work with. Actually

what role I played besides establishing a project for this effort, and that's

important because the scientists were not accustomed to working in an

engineering project kind of atmosphere and I was able to convince them of

the necessity of organizing the effort as an engineering project. But

beyond that my contribution, which was really lots of fun was to serve as a

bridge between the two communities. The thing that I helped most was to

translate the work of the scientists into a format that was useful for my

colleagues on the engineering side.

CONWAY: By format what do you mean?

WESOKY: Just being able to help my engineering colleagues

understand what the scientists were saying about the impacts of aircraft

engine emissions on stratospheric ozone or climate. Scientists tend to get

involved with minutiae. It was difficult for them to explain on a system

basis how an emittant would affect the design of an airplane or could

affect the design of an airplane. That was possibly my contribution. For

example, the two communities often tended to talk past each other. So at

the beginning of the program the atmospheric scientists kept saying, "This

is impossible. You guys can't possibly build an airplane that would not

have dire effects on stratospheric ozone." It took me a while to finally

figure out that that comment, which was being made by Harold Johnston

and others, was based on a misunderstanding of the technology, that they

were still assuming that the engine combustor technology hadn't changed

in the twenty some, close to thirty years since the Boeing 2707. For

example, the GE4 engine for the 2707 had an emissions index, an

important parameter of 30 grams of oxides of nitrogen (NOx) per kilogram

of fuel, whereas we were talking of an em iss ions index of 5 grams of NOx

per kilogram of fuel for the HSCT. I was able to use in a crude way, a

back of the envelope manner, an analysis that the scientists had used to

show what a difference that makes, even at that time, to the stratospheric

ozone issue. I was able to show, for example, that if we actually built a

fleet of 500 to 1000 HSCTs, having emission index of 5, the models at that

time showed that we would have less than one percent strat-ozone

depletion. That kind of simple back of the envelope analysis helped

bridge this gap between the two communities and to convince the

scientists that there was hope, there was a good possibility that we could

develop technology that would allow a fleet of these aircraft to operate.

CONWAY: That's very interesting. I hadn't expected that they had come

into this believing that the combustor technology hadn't changed and

wouldn't change. Who else supported AESA is the next question to ask.

Were there people in headquarters that thought it was unnecessary, or at

Langley that thought it was unnecessary?

WESOKY: I'm not aware that anybody thought it was unnecessary. I

think there is a natural tension between engineers and scientists that's

hard to explain and particularly in connection with environmental matters.

I think that my colleagues in the engineering community tend to be

skeptical when it comes to environmental issues. Tha~\s skepticism I think

did continue for a long time at the highest levels of management at

Langley in particular. But eventually we were able to bridge that gap.

Actually some help came from the industry. For example at Boeing, the

Boeing aeronautical engineers were able to hijack an atmospheric

scientist in their own company who worked on the space side to come and

help them understand this new area of work. Steve Baughcom who is still

at Boeing, is actually a fellow now at Boeing who was a Harvard Ph.D.

chemist helped the manufacturers to realize that this was not a

bureaucratic issue. It was not a government-only issue. It was something

that they had to be concerned about and something that they could assist

with. I'm talking here about the scientific studies. In fact in the end both

here in the High Speed Research program and later in the Advanced

Subsonic Technology program, we had wonderful cooperation from the

airframe and engine manufacturers and a true partnership in assessing

the atmospheric effects of aviation.

CONWAY: Partly that must be demonstrated in their willingness to

construct an emissions database you guys worked on.

WESOKY: In fact that emissions database eventually became a very,

very important factor in : ' ecial ~port on{civiation :'.the ~lobal 1-'

~tmosphere that was conducted by the Intergovernmental Panel on

Climate Change, the United Nations organization that is in the news a lot

today because of the issues around the Kyoto Protocol.

CONWAY: So that database is useful for far more than just the original

purpose.

WESOKY: Right. In fact people who were involved in the early days of

the High Speed Research program have gone on to play larger roles. I

mentioned the name of Bob Watson. Bob Watson eventually left NASA

and because of his friendship with then Senator Gore, he moved to the

White House when Senator Gore became Vice President Gore, Bob

became the deputy director of the White House office of Science and

Technology policy. He had always been involved with the United Nations

Environment Program in the Montreal Protocol, which was involved with

strat-ozone depletion. Bob, like myself and many others, wandered from

there into the climate problem. When he eventually left the White House

he moved to the World Bank where he works today as a scientific advisor.

But he's also the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

Change. You see his name a lot involved with the Kyoto Protocol and

related matters.

CONWAY: I'd like to get a chance to talk to him although he seems to

be a tough man to track down.

WESOKY: You are trying to reach him?

CONWAY: Yes, but since he works for the World Bank and they're

under a lot of external pressure, getting through to anybody without any

relationship at all is difficult.

WESOKY: Another person you may want to speak to, a person who still

is very close to Bob, they've worked kind of as a pair throughout their

careers is Dan Albritton. Do you know that name?

CONWAY: No.

WESOKY: Dan is director of the NOAA Aeronomy lab in Boulder,

Colorado. He has been involved also throughout this whole effort.

CONWAY: Great. You are also part of the US delegation to the ICAO A111oh·""

" mmittee on '"nvironmental grotection [CAEP]. (\

WESOKY: Yes, starting in 1991 I began working with the FAA to try and

understand what would be required in the way of certification criteria if the

high speed research program would indeed lead to a high speed civil

transport. I participated as an advisor to the US delegation in December

1991 at the second meeting of CAEP. Following that I became what was

called the research focal point for the emissions working group of CAEP a

position I held until I retired in March.

CONWAY: The two issues for ICAO then were working on a noise

stringency standard and an em iss ions stringency standard as I understand

it.

WESOKY: Yes.

CONWAY: \1\/ho were the driving forces in trying to achieve those new

rules?

WESOKY: First of all , when it came to noise, there was never any

question that the high speed civil transport would have to conform to the

same standards as the contemporary subsonic aircraft. So our goal was

always Stage Three 'minus something.' That was a rather straightforward

goal, although in the end that was possibly the most difficult goal for us to

achieve. In fact the noise standard was always a moving target. For

example in January of this year I attended the fifth meeting of the ICAO

Committee on Aviation and Environmental Protection in which a Stage

Four standard was established making it even more difficult, if we were to

develop a supersonic transport. Even though it was difficult, it was rather

straight forward.

In the emissions area it was not as straight forward, because there Is

still itno any standard dealing with emissions at altitude. The only

emissions standards that we have today deal with the terminal area.

CONWAY: Takeoffs and landings.

WESOKY: Roughly below three thousand feet altitude and emissions

that affect local air quality. In fact even there, the standard is not really

based on what I would say the true effect of emissions on air pollution but

on technical feasibility to reduce those emissions. This was a whole new

area for ICAO and in fact even today we still don't have any standard that

deals with emissions at altitude.

CONWAY: I gather there doesn't seem to be any pressure to oppose

such standards either.

WESOKY: At the moment there is no interest in that with the demise of

the High Speed Research program.

CONWAY: I'll ask basically the same question about noise. Just

following the literature in Aviation Week it seems to me that throughout the

nineties there was tension between European nations wanting stricter

noise stringency and other nations that didn't. Is that your recollection

too?

WESOKY: Sure. And that contentiousness continues to this day, even

with the establishment of a Stage Four or Chapter Four standard at the

moment, because we don't have formally a Stage Four in the United

States. The problem today has to do with what I would call old Stage

Three airplanes and in particular those Stage Two airplanes that had been

hushkitted. The Europeans want to eliminate the operation of those and

other old stage three aircraft like the classic 7 47s and DC-1 Os.

CONWAY: Did you interpret that as an honest environmental attempt, or

as an attempt to create a business opportunity to sell more airplanes?

WESOKY: I'm an engineer and unfortunately it would be a guess on my

part. But in the defense of the Europeans, they feel that hushkitting was a

violation of the spirit of the Stage Three standard.

CONWAY: That raises the interesting question, since your targets for

HSR were stage three minus. But throughout that decade we seem to

have had some knowledge that the Europeans wanted a stricter standard

than that for future aircraft. Is that fair?

WESOKY: Yes. But the European objection to the High Speed

Research program was not noise really. It was emissions. They just

couldn't believe that we could develop a fleet of aircraft that would not

impact the stratospheric ozone layer. That was their primary concern.

CONWAY: That's interesting. And this was expressed through the

CAEP committees?

WESOKY: Yes, I was involved in very loud arguments with German

colleagues in particular about this matter.

CONWAY: They had their own research programs going on, although at

much smaller scale than the HSR was. It sounds to me that in essence

that they weren't very interested in a High Speed Civil Transport of any

sort and we were.

WESOKY: We put more money into it. Europe, being Europe, was

somewhat divided on the issue. In pulling out the file this morning I found

an old paper that was written by Dudley Collard who was involved in the

development of the Concorde. I visited Dudley Collard in Toulouse in the

early days of the High Speed Research program to benefit from his

experience. Dudley Collard was a British aeronautical engineer who went

to work for Aerosatiale because that's where supersonic engineering was

continuing in Europe. The French continued the work. The British had

less interest in it. In fact the British public felt that they had been

snookered by the French in the Concorde experience. The Germans were

very much opposed because of environmental issues. Again my reading

on the matter was it was more atmospheric effects than noise. In this den

I'm sitting in I have a model of a British aerospace airplane that had been

anticipated in the same time frame as our high speed civil transport.

CONWAY: Was that HOTOL?

WESOKY: No, I forgot what it's called. It just says AST on the side. It

was not HOTOL.

CONWAY: So I can't imply that the Europeans were united in antipathy

to supersonic transport. The French still liked the idea. The Germans

hated it and the British couldn't make up their minds.

WESOKY: Right. I think to this day the French have continued a low

level effort at Airbus and what was Aerospatiale.

CONWAY: In your relations with the manufacturers in the US, with

Boeing and McDonnell-Douglas, did you have a sense that they took the

European concern with noise seriously?

WESOKY: Sure, as you know the American companies formed an

alliance with the European manufacturers that went on for several years

looking at mutual problems.

CONWAY: And that included noise.

WESOKY: That most certainly included noise.

CONWAY: Back to the AESA again. How did you manage the scattered

scientific evaluators in AESA?

WESOKY: By evaluators, first of all let me say that the AESA element of

the High Speed Research program was organized and managed very

differently than the other elements. We had a group of very experienced

atmospheric scientists who put together a peer reviewed program

involving many many small efforts in many many organizations,

government, university organizations in particular. I managed it as an

engineering project looking at the characteristics of the ongoing efforts.

For example, where we spent the most money was in observations work

with the ER2 and other aircraft looking at the upper atmosphere, taking

measurements, trying to understand from those measurements, what the

emissions from aircraft might do. Then another element looked at or

concentrated on laboratory work, attempting to simulate in the laboratory

the atmospheric effects that were occurring or might occur as a result of

aircraft engine emissions. Thirdly we had an element that was developing

simulation tools, computer models to simulate these effects. Even within

these three major elements there were minor project elements. So using

the work break-down structure kind of description that you're familiar with

I'm sure, AESA was a level two element of the High Speed Research

program that I managed and then the modeling work, the laboratory work,

the observations work were level three elements. At times we had as

many as 100 investigators in an effort that was about $10 million a year.

You can see that each of these investigators was getting no more than

$100,000, maybe a few hundred thousand a year. Some were getting just

a few tens of thousands of dollars a year. Something I should have

mentioned, that I certainly learned a lot about how to work with

atmospheric scientists from Tony Broderick. Do you know that name?

CONWAY: No, that's another new name.

WESOKY: Tony Broderick was involved in the seventies in what was

called the ClAP program. Tony went on to become an assistant

administrator at the FAA but always maintained a keen interest in

atmospheric science and a personal relationship with Harold Johnston for

example. V\lhen we began the t"iigh Speed Research program I went to

Tony who at that time was an assistant administrator at the FAA and he

was wonderful in helping me understand who I should deal with and how

to deal with the atmospheric science community and strongly suggested

that the way I could most benefit from the work was to put small amounts

of money into ongoing scientific efforts to have the scientific community

focus on aviation on aircraft emissions effects. They were already dealing

with the basic science and we just needed them to spend a little time on

trying to understand how the aviation aspect of the science might differ

from anything else. All of the scientists, or most of them anyhow who I

worked with had main line efforts in understanding fundamental

characteristics of the atmosphere particularly related to strat-ozone. They

were kind enough to take small amounts of money from the Office of

Aerospace Technology and help us understand how aviation would

contribute, or how aviation fit into those large problem areas.

CONWAY: You mentioned modeling, which I know is a major activity in

the atmospheric sciences community these days. I think you used five

models to have a good comparison. How did you choose those?

WESOKY: Just peer review. I was the project manager and in typical

engineering project fashion, we had a chief scientist, and initially that was

Michael Prather who is now at the University of California at Irvine.

Michael was largely responsible, along with Bob Watson, for my education

in this area. I ran the program as an engineering program manager.

Michael provided the scientific knowledge to me that I needed to make

project decisions. It just worked very well as this concept of project

management has worked in other areas.

CONWAY: Let's talk about the relationship with international

investigators. Some of the models I know belonged to foreign entities.

How did you work that out? The same way?

WESOKY: Yes, there were, well before the High Speed Research

program began, a major effort to understand the human effects on

stratospheric ozone. In fact it's funny to realize that that whole interest in

stratospheric ozone did begin with the Boeing 2707 and Harold Johnston's

concerns. From the aviation concern came the concern about

chlorofluorocarbons that was discovered by Mario Molina and Sherry

Roland that eventually led to the Noble prize. This large community of

atmospheric scientists began with the first American SST effort, grew into

a major program looking at the effects of chlorofluorocarbons and other

substances. Then when we began the High Speed Research program,

we asked them to divert their attention back to aviation.

CONWAY: And you didn't have any difficulties getting them? Did you

seek out foreign involvement is the right way to ask th is question.

WESOKY: I didn't have to seek it out. They were already there. The

strat-ozone effort was a major international effort.

CONWAY: But I meant specifically for AESA, did you need to recruit

people for people to work in support of it or did they come to you?

WESOKY: I don't know if the term came to me is appropriate, but their

involvement was as natural as the US scientist's. They had the expertise.

There were modeling groups at England at Cambridge and the University

of Edinboro~ that were prominent in this community. It was just natural

that they became involved.

CONWAY: It's already such an internationally diverse community, it

sounds like you're saying it wasn't even questioned that you would wind

up with foreign investigators.

WESOKY: In fact European scientists, the most prominent ones, if you

look closely, all had some experience working in the United States,

particularly at NCAR in Colorado. Those who had risen to high positions

in the European scientific community, almost all of them had served some

time in United States research organizations. In fact, as you probably

know, Bob Watson is originally from England and came to the United

States. I believe he came to do a post doc under Harold Johnston. I may

not have that exactly correct, but he did a post doc under Harold

Johnston.

CONWAY: That I didn't know. I didn't think Johnston mentioned that

when I talked to him. The reason I was asking I tried to get that question

several ways as I was getting it, I wanted to get at the issue of achieving

credibility. It seems to me in order to get an international rule set into

place on emissions, as I think was your goal, you needed to achieve some

sort of level of scientific credibility.

WESOKY: Oh yeah, at some point in the program we faced the

question of whether we should have a single international program or a

separate US and European program. Even though we continued to have

European involvement at the scientist level in our program, there were

separate efforts in the United States and Europe. We justified that

because of what you just alluded to, credibility. We felt that if eventually

the matter were to be studied, to be assessed by a UN scientific body

such as the IPCC, it would be best to have separate programs because of

the concern of scientific credibility and objectivity. If the United States

were pushing for the development of a high speed civil transport then

there might be a concern that the science was biased in that direction.

CONWAY: I see. So having two or three different sources of reports

and data would improve credibility, not impair it.

WESOKY: Yes, and in fact, even though these were very independent

programs, the relationship between the people in these separate

programs was wonderful. We could have arguments and differences, but

the working relationships were always great. The social relationships

were wonderful. It was a great experience for me, the first time I had

worked on an international basis.

CONWAY: Fascinating. I wanted to ask a bit about, I detect that there

was some controversy over whether to continue funding AESA into HSR•s

phase two. Is that right?

WESOKY: Sure. I do~t think there was a great controversy, in that we

had only done the very most preliminary studies and the models and

laboratory work and observations were all in a very crude state of affairs.

VVhat we did at that time was to establish a study panel at the national

research council , led by Tom Grcfd@ who was then at the AT&T Bell labs)

I believe he's now at Yale University, to look at what we had done and

what else needed to be done. To make a long story short, the study panel

praised the science that had been conducted but definitely concluded that

much more had to be done. In fact Tom Gra'd~ testified before a v

congressional committee and there was not much argument after that that

we needed to continue the AESA effort in phase two of the High Speed

Research program.

CONWAY: Then the HSR management down here thought you guys

were done when your own opinion and the NAS's opinion was that you

needed to understand quite a bit more.

WESOKY: I think that that again reflects this natural tension between

engineers and scientists and the skepticism of engineers about

environmental issues.

CONWAY: Now as I understand it the NAS, one of the NAS's criticisms

was on the role of aerosols and the lack of focus on aerosols by the

program. Is that right? ·

WESOKY: Yes, and that kind of reflects in the broader scientific

community. As I said the scientists tend to deal with minutiae. At that

time they were all focused almost entirely on oxides of nitrogen and not

looking at the effects of the sulphur dioxide and soot particles in particular

that came out of aircraft engines and other sources as well. It turned out

that sulphur indeed does have a significant impact on the strat-ozone

issue and the High Speed Research program and it's funding of AESA I

think contributed some great science there.

CONWAY: 1 ;

WESOKY: One of the most fun experiences I had dealt with the

international collaboration. I think it was 1994 although my mind might not

have the date exactly right. I received a call from colleagues who had the

NASA ER2 aircraft down in New Zealand doing work for both the scientific

office at NASA headquarters and in the High Speed Research program.

They were aware that a couple of Concordes were going to come through

New Zealand on around the world charters and they wanted perm iss ion to

have the ER2 sample the wake of the Concorde. I immediately got on the

phone and was able to work with my French colleagues to set up a

relationship between Air France and my project here to establish a means

for that measurement. Again it was a benchmark in this area, really the

first in-flight measurement that helped us to understand the effects of

aviation on the environment.

CONWAY: So no one had even sampled the Concorde in flight before?

WESOKY: Not that I recall at the moment. Certainly you have to

understand that even if that had had happened before, instrumentation

was developing rapidly and our ability to understand what we measured

was much better than it had ever been. This was the first time I believe

that the instruments that were used, for example, to understand the

Antarctic ozone hole were used to sample the exhaust of an aircraft.

CONWAY: So it was the first modern data set.

WESOKY: Exactly. Just to make sure that I'm not criticized later, the

NASA Lewis Research center had sponsored a program in the seventies

called GASP. Were you aware of that? Global Air Sampling Program.

CONWAY: Using the four United 747s.

WESOKY: Exactly. Unfortunately that project was not respected at all

by the scientific community because they felt it had been totally put

together by engineers without consultation with the scientific community

and the measurements that were made they felt were not as good as they

should be.

CONWAY: That's too bad. I remember thinking it was an interesting

way to achieve data.

WESOKY: By the way we attempted to learn from GASP throughout my

last ten years with NASA and the FAA. I tried to get the air transport

community to volunteer to put scientific instruments on commercial aircraft

and failed. But a similar effort was conducted in Europe, called MOSAIC.

MOSAIC is an acronym. Don't ask me what it stands for at the moment. It

was a wonderful program that used A340s right off the production line in

Toulouse with instruments installed on the production line and flown by Air

France, Lufthansa and a few other airlines.

CONWAY: That was for atmospheric sampling?

WESOKY: Yes. And it had nothing directly to do with aviation it was )

just an attempt to get scientific data about the atmosphere. They were not

sampling aircraft engine emissions.

CONWAY: I'm finding it's interesting that the Europeans seem to be

more aggressive about these things nowadays. As I remember fifteen

years ago they were the ones refusing to have anything to do with the

chlorofluorocarbon bans, because they didn't believe the science. Maybe

it was twenty years ago.

WESOKY: It's a political matter. The green movement in Europe has

been much more successful on the political matter than the

environmentalists have been in the United States.

CONWAY: That's an interesting difference to be sure. I think that I've

asked you the major questions I had. Is there something that you recall as

being important that I haven't asked you about?

WESOKY: Not at the moment. I would just say that at the end of the

High Speed Research program we had pretty much convinced ourselves

of the ability to reduce oxides of nitrogen to a level that would not be a

great problem. However, a new issue had arisen that we really didn't have

a chance to investigate further. And that was just the water vapor that

would accumulate in the stratosphere as a result of a large fleet of High

Speed Civil transports. The term stratosphere as you may know comes

from the fact that the atmosphere is stratified at that altitude and things

you put into the atmosphere at those altitudes tend to stay there a long

time. Whereas in the troposphere the atmosphere is greatly mixed and

what you put in there doesn't stay very long. So the concern at the end of

the program was that water vapor, which has a high global warming

potential, could accumulate and contribute to a climate problem . I'm not

convinced that's the case. But unfortunately we did not have an

opportunity to further investigate that.

CONWAY: Something for a future research project that I'm sure

someone will propose. One followup question. We were talking about the

emissions database before. Did you have difficulty convincing the

contractors to do that given that it would undoubtedly have proprietary

data in it?

WESOKY: It did not have proprietary data in it, in that you could not

point to a specific aircraft and engine combination and say this is what

happens. We took care of that by identifying generic classes of aircraft

and engines. So a 767; an~A330, aircraft were considered a generic

class. DC9s and 737s and aircraft of that size were considered a class.

But I think that it would be incorrect to say that the companies were

opposed. In fact Mike Henderson, a name I'm sure you know from

Boeing, once told me that if NASA were to stop funding that effort Boeing

would put up the money to continue it. And that didn't happen very often.

CONWAY: That would want it because of the recognition of potential

rule making?

WESOKY: Absolutely. They recognized that they could never develop

an aircraft unless they received a favorable assessment of that aircraft's

environmental effects.

CONWAY: What sort of a time-table for rule making did you envision?

WESOKY: We did have timetables. When we talked about an aircraft

that could be certified in 2015 for example, we had laid out a time-table

using the ICAO schedule for C~ meetings. I can't remember all the

details. But we actually had a schedule that would have lead to a

certification standard in time to put an aircraft in the air in 2015.

CONWAY: Since you never got the supersonic rules in place before

1998 then you would have been, your manufacturing target couldn't have

been as early as the original plans.

WESOKY: It was a really aggressive schedule. But it was possible. I

don't mean to mislead you. There were great difficu lties there because

there continued to be skepticism from my German colleagues in particular

about the viability of the concept.

CONWAY: That's fascinating. It's been an interesting conversation.

Again I'm out of questions for right now. When I sit down to write the

chapter I may have more for you and I hope I can give you a call back and

talk then if I need to.

WESOKY: Absolutely. As I said it was a wonderful experience for me

and it led to great things for me. I'm just sorry that it ended the way it did.

CONWAY: It did end badly, that's for sure. As I said what I'll do is send

these things out to a transcriptionist to have them done for me. And it will

probably be a couple of months before you see the transcripts. If you

don't see it right away that's why. Thank you for your time and I'll be sure

to talk to you again.

WESOKY: Thank you.