NASA LANGLEY RESEARCH CENTER 1917-2017
Problem Solving By J.R. Wilson
When the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory was created in 1917, just as the United States entered World War I, the intent was to build a top-scale aerodynamics research facility and infrastructure, along with a cadre of the top engineers and researchers the country then had in the fledgling realm of aviation. As the lab and its facilities grew, both in size and reputation, virtually every company and government agency involved in aviation increasingly turned to Langley for problem-solving – from emergency response calls stemming from a catastrophic failure to help in understanding a unique structural issue. Eventually, the reputation of Langley engineers and researchers led others, outside aviation – and later, space – to call on them for help. “We are a fundamental R&D center, so we have a great deal of both breadth and depth in fundamental physics and have the labs and test facilities to do in-depth analysis,” noted Walt Engelund, Director of the Space Technology and Exploration Directorate. “It is the decades of deep subject matter expertise we have developed in a lot of the key fundamental flight sciences disciplines that was part of the reason why NASA located NESC here, for both the culture, expertise and facilities at Langley.”
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NESC – the NASA Engineering and Safety Center – was stood up as a tenant organization at Langley in 2004, largely as a result of the Space Shuttle Columbia accident investigation, according to William Prosser, a Technical Fellow for Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) at the safety center. “In particular, the report referenced not having a strong independent engineering organization within NASA. “There often is not one perfect solution to a problem but a number, some with more risk, others with a better schedule or budget path, etc.,” Prosser said. “So often we are trying to find solutions
