Question #1
Question #1: Are NASA centers eligible to partner on TEES/JHTO-RPP-2021-003?
Answer #1: The JHTO intent is not to fund government agencies or government affiliated organizations through UCAH grants. However, in unique cases where government or government affiliated expertise exists and no parent organization funding can be made available, JHTO may on a case by case basis direct-fund these institutions to partner in related research. In these cases, a sufficient case must be made in the proposal for the value and cost of such partnership, and that funding will be removed from the university grant.
Question #2
Question #2: Is the government expecting that Topic 1 will include some level of fabrication and testing of demonstration articles (e.g., a portion of the nose, joint, and aeroshell)? Or is this topic intended as a strictly analytical study?
Answer #2: All UCAH topics are applied research and as such benefit from some level of validation via some type of method (testing, application to a shape of relevant characteristics, etc). Having some level of fabrication and testing will be advantageous to the proposal.
Question #3
Question #3: Can industry be the lead PI on the proposal, or it must be university?
Answer #3: Only consortium member universities can lead on proposals.
Question #4
Question #4: Related to Topic 3: Is the main interest and thrust of the proposal is in the development of more advanced 1-D tools for rapid design with interface capability with CFD tools?
Answer #4: As an applied research topic, the tools should be developed for rapid design and validated with information from CFD and test data. A path for integration or interface with modern design codes based on CFD would be useful.
Question #5
Question #5: Related to Topic 3: Is the proposal looking for tools based on CFD or the role of CFD is simply to generate databases in addition to experimental and legacy databases to validate the accuracy of 1D tool?
Answer #5: All UCAH topics are applied research and as such benefit from some level of validation via some type of method. Primarily it is assumed that the use of CFD or relevant testing can be used to help anchor the models but also could be used in the generation of information to develop the tool sets.
Questions #6
Question #6: Will there be multiple awards on a Topic or only one award?
Answer #6: We anticipate making a single award for each topic, but are not constrained to a single award if there is substantive reason.
Question #7
Question #7: Related to Topic #1: To what extent is this topic a material-development effort? The description reads: “Proposals shall also consider the thermal and mechanical properties required for the material, such as static load…”. Is “the material” a new material to be developed or COTS materials (as they exist today) or just a hypothetical material?
Answer #7: Either a new material or an existing material being utilized in new manner would be viable, as long as they meet the intent of the proposal description. In determining a path forward, proposers should keep in mind the intent for these projects to be applied in nature.
Question #8
Question #8: Related to Topic 1: Is the material referenced intended to be a seal material (attached to both the radome and aft-body)? Or is it something else?
Answer #8: The intent is to explore sealing between the radome and aft-body.
Question #9
Question #9: Related to Topic 1: With regard to vehicle body cross-sections, are non-cylindrical but axisymmetric shapes of interest? Or is the preference to focus on non-axisymmetric shapes, in general?
Answer #9: Both are of interest, but non-axisymmetric shapes are of primary interest.
Question #10
Question #10: Related to Topic 1: Is the >1500C temperature metric meant to be the radome-aft body joint/inter temperature?
Answer #10: Yes.
Question #11
Question #11: We understand that there is a maximum of seven Principal Investigators (PI), per proposal, however does that only apply to the lead institution or both the lead institution and their subcontractors?
Answer #11: The maximum applies to the total number of Principal Investigators – lead institution and subcontractors.
Question #12
Question #12: Related to Topic 5: What type of mission is the focus of this investigation: (a) hypersonic air-breather, or (b) hypersonic glider/boost-glide?
Answer #12: While the research can be related to either configuration, some processes (i.e. ablative processes) are more likely to occur on higher speed vehicles. Materials used on either vehicle type however are of interest.
Question #13
Question #13: How is non-traditional defense contractor defined?
Answer #13: A nontraditional defense partner (NTDC) is an entity that is not currently performing and has not performed, for at least one year preceding the issuance of a prototype project solicitation, any contract or subcontract for the Department of Defense that is subject to full coverage under the Federal Acquisition Regulation-based cost accounting standards (CAS).
Question #14
Question #14: Our team wanted to inquire if other Federal agencies could provide support to their project as an in-kind cost share? Would they need to be actively participating in the project? And lastly, is it possible for a federal agency to also receive funding from the award directly from TEES/DOD?
Answer #14: UCAH encourages collaboration with Federal agencies with knowledge and interests aligned with the research topics. Agencies can provide in-kind support as they are inclined. Funding to these organizations from TEES/JHTO is not the main intent of UCAH funding but special cases could exist where it is in the best interest of the government for this to occur. Please describe the relationship in the proposal sufficiently so that the JHTO can understand the specific requirement.
Question #15
Question #15: For Topic 1, does the 1500 C temperature or greater correspond to the temperature at the interface or corresponds to a temperature away from the interface, closer to the hot end of the hypersonic system? Does the join need to survive at 1500 C for a limited amount of time?
Answer #15: The temperature of 1500 C is applied at the mechanical interface of ceramic materials in the nose, with high temperature steel, titanium or ultra-high temperature ceramic aft-body materials. Since this is applied research, instantaneous survival is not the goal and sustained performance is sought. While a time for survival is not specified, research aimed at sustained performance of a missile system (seconds to minutes) would be appropriate.
Question #16
Question #16: Topic 1 states that “Temperature greater than 1500 degrees Celsius should be considered”.
- Does this specifically refer to the temperature that you anticipate needing for the Mechanical Interface between the RF nose and the body? Is this temperature only for the nose and not necessarily the back junction with the body of the frame?
- To what extent should the project address EM compatibility of the proposed approached for the mechanical interface?
Answer #16:
- See answer #15.
- Given the focus of the solicitation on applied research that will lead to capability enhancement of Department of Defense hypersonic systems, approaches addressed in the proposal should consider ramifications that could impede use in operational systems.
Question #17
Question #17: Is a specific design phase fidelity the expectation (conceptual design, preliminary design, detail design leading to best-practice aero dataset enabling flight test) for UQ process development and its application to formulate aerodynamic dataset to ensure safe s&c?
Answer #17: When considering the focus of your proposal, take in to account that UCAH is about applied research. Improving accuracies in designs throughout the process of development are important especially as they relate to application to systems.
Question #18
Question #18: Is reusability of the hypersonic aircraft a requirement requiring aero database development from takeoff to hypersonics to landing (covering entire speed regime from low-speed to high-speed)?
Answer #18: Aero databases across the representative spectrum of flight of any hypersonic vehicle would add to the body of knowledge. As an applied hypersonic solicitation, and with the realization that high-speed aero data bases are rare and sometimes lack validation truth, proposals including the high-speed portion of data are sought.
Question #19
Question #19: For Topic 1, does the 1500 C temperature or greater correspond to the temperature at the interface or correspond to a temperature away from the interface, closer to the hot end of the hypersonic system? Does the joint/interface need to survive at 1500 C for a limited amount of time? If yes, how long?
Answer #19: The solicitation aims to solve critical high-temperature interface challenges, so application should be at or near the interface region.
Question #20
Question #20: Affiliate Consortium Members from universities from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom may partner with an eligible principle bidder on a case by case basis. Is approval to partner with Affiliate Universities listed on the UCAH webpage required prior to White Paper submittal?
Answer #20: No approval is required to partner with affiliate consortium member prior to white paper submittal. All entities included on the prototype proposal (including subawards) are required to be members by the time of the prototype proposal submission.
Question #21
Question #21: If partnering with an Affiliate Consortium Members from a university in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, or the United Kingdom, are there any changes to the section V Security Requirements given they are non-US organizations?
Answer #21: If the specific security requirements are not applicable to a non-US partner, please mark No or N/A int his section. If a process has already been established to identify how collaboration will be handled with international partners, that should be included in this section.
Question #22
Question #22: For Topic 1, is the sponsor only interested in understanding the interaction between a nose shape made of a particular and specific ceramic type and a substrate (e.g., steel, titanium etc), Or the sponsor will also favorably consider funding a proposal on developing a novel and highly conformal yet high-temperature resistant coatings in which the interactions can be engineered? In other words, should the PIs consider working with a specific ceramic coating, or they have the freedom to develop a novel coating that can (i) survive high temperatures (ii) adhere well to substrate and (iii) scalable.
Answer #22: While there are certainly materials of interest used today in the development of hypersonic vehicles, the development of a novel coating that can (i) survive high temperatures (ii) adhere well to substrate and (iii) scalable would certainly be considered valuable by the government.
Question #23
Question #23: I had a question regarding a requirement in the RPP. It states “Except as addressed in the next paragraph, individuals supported by a Sub-Agreement awarded as a result of this RWP/RPP process must be United States (U.S.) citizens prior to award.” Is a sub-agreement considered any contract between the university that wins a project and an organization that supports them? If the applicant institution has researchers that are permanent residents, can they be supported?
Answer #23: All participants (include sub awardees) must be U.S. citizens with case by case exceptions made by the government for residents of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Questions #24-26
Questions #24-26: All Related to Topic 1:
Question #24: The writeup cites RF-transparent ceramic “nosecones” and “nose shapes” as the primary area of interest. However, the technical people in this area that we have contacted are only aware of window-type approaches (as opposed to entire nosecones) as being feasible at this time, due to fabrication and temperature limitations of available RF-transparent materials. If we base our effort around assessing the types of joints used in a window-based system, would this be considered responsive?
Question #25: The writeup says that temperatures greater than 1500 degC should be considered. In our discussions with technical people, the highest temperature capability RF-transparent materials are operable to roughly 1400 degC. If we use an RF-transparent material with a max temperature capability of 1400 degC, would this be considered responsive to the topic?
Question #26: Last would be a question related to the one above: Is the “1500 degC or greater” benchmark intended to be the highest temperature of the vehicle occurring near the nosetip? Or is this envisioned as occurring farther aft, perhaps at the location of an RF window (if, again, a window approach is considered responsive)?
Answers #24-26:
Answer #24: The types of joints used in a window-based system, would be considered responsive to the solicitation.
Answer #25: The solicitation aims to be forward looking to higher block velocities that may be capable today and hence 1500 degC is applied. Approaches that come close to the 1500 degC value with novel concepts moving toward application would be considered responsive.
Answer #26: See the answer to question #19
Questions #27-30
Questions #27-30: These are in relation to Topic 3: Methods for Predicting High-Speed Airbreathing Propulsion Performance (Technology Discipline: PROP – Propulsion).
Question #27: What is the expected flight speed range the tool should be aiming for? For example, mode of operation or Mach number range.
Question #28: The call asks for a flexible tool for modeling different airbreathing propulsion systems. Does this means this should be able to contemplate TBCC or rocket-accelerated ram/scram systems too? or this tailored to different configurations within an ramjet, fully scramjet or dual-mode operation only?
Question #29: Are ablative solution to be included in the modeling / prediction?
Question #30: The call seems to be focused on the propulsion system. However, its evaluation cannot be isolated from the vehicle, for example for the purpose of coupling with the inlet flow (operation at an angle of attach), trimming the vehicle etc. Is integration of the performance prediction of the propulsion system with the vehicle expected or desired?
Answer #27: Flight engine mode should be in the SCRAMjet operational region.
Answer #28: Flexible tools that can model different airbreathing propulsion modes efficiently and tools that model different configurations within a single mode are interesting to the governemnt. Both or a combination of them would be considered responsive to the solicitation.
Answer #29: Depending on the Mach number of operations, ablative processes would be useful in the model. When considering the focus of your proposal, take in to account that UCAH is about applied research.
Answer #30: As application is considered, interactions with parts of the systems outside the engine can certainly become critically important to model.
