Welcome to the Home & Home Visit Series

Background:

A two day NASA/FAA Industry Roundtable meeting was held in late March 1999, in Washington, D.C., with the first day hosted by NASA Administrator Dan Goldin and FAA Administrator Jane Garvey. The purpose of this event was to increase the awareness of the scope, capabilities, and directions of government research programs in air and space transportation technology.

During the meeting there was consensus for expanding this type of information exchange deeper into our respective organizations. The desire was to have the exchanges at the "home" sites for a more interactive meeting, and the result is the "Home & Home" visit series. Five government visits have been formulated. NASA and FAA researchers will also be invited to industry sites, with United Airlines and Boeing currently volunteering to host visits.

The objective of each visit is to give participants a view of the host site's operations and capabilities, opportunities for dialog and establishing contacts for continued interactions or partnerships, and in the case of government locations--the scope and breadth of research impacting aviation and space transportation. The visits are planned with a thematic focus to help organize the information and discussions.

Objectives:

• Focus on topics of relevance to the aviation community
• Visits provide better understanding of the scope and breadth of government research supporting safety, the environment (noise and emissions), throughput, future concepts/tools, cost reductions.
• Key messages: (1) Need for continued national investments in long-term research to maintain social and economic conditions. Technology is key to solving the "barrier" issues (safety, capacity, noise, emissions, space transportation). (2) Partnerships are essential to carrying out work. (3) Home & Home is to establish working relationships and points of contact for the future.
• NASA and FAA teams will visit "customers" and vice versa. The visits and discussions must be designed to include a mixture of people (manufacturers, users) to get a variety of perspectives on technology issues and constraints.
• Discussions of each visit will be "captured" for sharing with others, and as reference and information resource for colleagues who could not attend.