NASA RAM Report – The Foundation for a Rural Air Revival

As with so many of the developments in telecom and broadband, rural areas may provide the proving ground for the next generation of air travel. This is one of the important implications of NASA’s recently issued report, Regional Air Mobility (RAM).

Investors, community leaders, policymakers, industry, and the general public are the target audience for this aptly named report.  Although published by NASA, the authors hail from academia, the aviation industry, capital markets, and, of course, NASA. In short, the report shows how the nation’s existing 5,000 airfields provide a launching point for low-cost electric aviation.

“RAM leverages the plethora of existing, underutilized airports throughout the United States, obviating the need for vertical takeoff and landing.”

The premise is that RAM will provide dependable, efficient, and affordable transit from 50 to 500 miles and will provide relief for hub airports; 17 of which are projected to be capacity-constrained by 2030.

The evolutionary approach suggested in this report doesn’t require the huge upfront investment in vertiport infrastructure, as required with Urban Air Mobility (UAM).  While UAM may look like the George Jetson future, Regional Air Mobility is the extension of traditional air travel beyond the airport hub. To be clear, UAM and RAM are complementary to each other and, over time, probably start to blur.

Improving Quality of Life Through More Accessible Airfields #

In many ways, the path forward is one that was envisioned in 1946 with the Congressional passage of the National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems (NPIAS (PDF)). The goal was to ensure that all of the U.S. population lived within 20 miles of an airport. The hope was that these airports could serve as a catalyst for economic development in their communities.

That future was disrupted by the advent of the jet and its need for longer runways. The number of passengers required per jet flight for breakeven eliminated the commercial viability of many destinations. The approach described in the RAM paper offers the potential to reverse this trend. It even suggests that there might be enough savings to reduce or eliminate the Essential Air Service program, which subsidizes travel to select rural airports.

The report features “Voices from the Near Future” explaining how RAM will transform travel. These fictional stories from different personas paint a picture of how rural or underserved airport pairs could positively impact the quality of life for;

• a harried, Bakersfield couple who were able to escape for a low-cost weekend to Catalina Island,
• an Iowa-based farmer who needs to visit his father in Mexico City for an unexpected surgery,
• a southwest Texas town served by low-cost, pilotless, super quiet cargo deliveries,
• a quality assurance inspector who occasionally has to travel between Groton, CT and Newport News, RI.

It is a given that such a service must be safer and more affordable than alternative transportation modes. Echoing Darrell Swanson in his recent Viodi View interview, having community-compatible aircraft is the key to success. NASA’s research suggests that the noise issues associated with electric aircraft could be a thing of the past with the silence of their motors and the resulting torque.

“Tomorrow’s aircraft may be able to climb fast enough and use quiet enough motors and propellers that the ‘noise footprint’ of the aircraft – the region where someone on the ground can hear the aircraft – is contained within the airport boundary.”

As alluded to in one of their fictional use cases, the low-cost and expedient movement of cargo may be of as much social value as the movement of people. For instance, 28% of the US population doesn’t have access to Amazon’s same-day or one-day service. Further, like today’s airline model, the shared use of cargo and passengers will help the RAM business model.

Airfields as Energy Hubs #

The report suggests that increasing the local demand for electricity will improve the return on investment for renewable power.

“By introducing another large consumer of local energy, either directly as electrical power or other energy storage products that leverage airport renewable power, RAM can dramatically improve the return on-investment potential for local airport renewable generation projects – without causing some of the headaches associated with moving or storing peak renewable power elsewhere on the grid.”

Effectively the airfield becomes an energy hub for communities, where the generation and use of energy are virtually at the same point and so transmission losses are much lower than traditional methods.

This is an area of continued research for NASA as they are looking at “how much airport generated solar could offset or even eliminate regional aircraft electrical loads from the national power grid.” NASA points to the TRB’s research that identified 225 existing renewable energy airport projects.

The expansion of RAM will often be in rural areas, where there is ample land for solar implementation. Private lands in areas surrounding rural airports would seem to be well-positioned for implementing so-called agrivoltaics and helping to electrify the local airport. This would provide farmers with another source of income, while potentially increasing the farm’s efficiency according to research from the National Renewable Energy Lab.

An Interstate Relief Valve #

Another positive impact of RAM will be the removal of cars and trucks from the nation’s Interstate highway and roadways. RAM offers the opportunity to expand the transportation network with a much lower investment in fixed infrastructure compared to terrestrial modes. It also complements those modes, whether rail, river, or roadway.

The Transportation Research Board is recommending that the U.S. spend $45 to $70B per year over the next 20 years to maintain the Interstate system; this doesn’t include monies to improve access and throughput. From an infrastructure standpoint, the public investment is already in air transport’s favor as Radius Capital’s Peter Shannon suggested in a 2018 article that every dollar in annual spending on roads supports 22 miles traveled each year, compared to 205 passengers miles per year for similar investments in airfield infrastructure.

As the report states,

“There is already significant investment being made on maintaining this infrastructure [airfields] and RAM will simply allow more people to utilize it”

Shannon, who also a reviewer of the NASA report, suggests that RAM is a nodal transportation network that has the benefits of

• creating direct connectivity between every point
• no path infrastructure to build or maintain (author’s comment: other than the signaling/communications channel)
• flexible capacity
• resilient to disruption (like mesh-based communications networks)
• small footprint and easy overlay into already developed areas

The shared nature of air travel is also likely to drive demand for electric, shared autonomous shuttles to ferry people to and from town centers and help solve the airport’s first/last-mile transportation challenge.

Get Ready for Takeoff #

While the transition to electric flight seems like it could be decades away, the NASA RAM study suggests an evolutionary rollout that builds on existing infrastructure and systems. For instance, FLOAT Shuttle offers a subscription service that uses a conventional Cessna 208B to ferry up to nine passengers between general aviation airports in Southern California.¹

This approach lends itself to an evolutionary upgrade path that where aircraft electrification and various forms of flight automation are phased in as economically and safely available.  It may seem like it could take forever to electrify the airfields of America, but, as pointed in the report, it took less than a decade for the number of U.S. automobile electric charging stations to grow from 541 to 78,301.

Finally, the report suggests that for Regional Air Mobility to reach its potential for transforming travel for the better, it will require everyone’s – including policymakers, consumers, and researchers – involvement to help realize the vision.

Notes #

¹ According to the report, FLOAT Shuttle charges as little as $29 one-way or $1,250 per month for a monthly subscription plan. This is similar to Viodi’s rough modeling of what a San Jose to Merced trip might cost using an electric airplane.

² Not explicitly addressed is the level of increased security that might be necessary at airports that have little security as they don’t currently provide commercial service. The implication is that in some of the smaller airports, it will akin to private travel as “users will often be able to park near the plane itself.” It seems like there will need to be some method to ensure security, particularly as the destination could be at the airside portion of a larger hub airport.

³One aspect not mentioned in this report is the smoothness of the ride. That is, given the short distances and the relative low-altitude flight path, will the ride be more turbulent than what people are used to with traditional jet travel? If so, will it be objectionable enough that it limits the passenger market?

⁴ The 40% operating expense reduction projected by NASA might not mean 40% savings for the consumer.  For instance, according to the Peninsula Daily News, Dash is launching its Port Angeles to Seattle service in Q3 of 2021 with pre-owned hydrocarbon airplanes. The CEO anticipates that “five years from now, use of electric-propulsion aircraft that could cut ticket costs by 25 percent.” Getting Dash to fly to Port Angeles also required the Port of PortAngeles and the U.S. DOT to guarantee $330,000 in revenue and for the Port of Port Angeles to waive $20,000 in landing fees.

[Disclosure/Disclaimer: The author of this article is an SJC Airport Commissioner. The publication of this article is independent of that role. The article is not intended to reflect endorsement/participation by SJC.]