The innovative concept proposed herein involves the development of a flight test planning software package for the NASA Virtual Flight Research Center (VFRC) program. The VFRC flight test planning package we propose to develop will be a separate package from TEST_PLAN, our commercial flight test planning software program for computer workstations. As the only flight test planning package commercially available, TEST_PLAN meets most production and experimental flight test planning requirements: it does not meet VFRC and NASA unique requirements concerning data access, remote operations, platform independence, sub-orbital vehicle testing and research oriented testing. The proposed VFRC-Planner will support these VFRC and NASA unique requirements. Our concept is innovative because coupled with the VFRC system, it allows off-site as well as on-site (but remotely located), flight test planning and data access, across a wide area network using a variety of workstations and personal computers. Thus, a wide variety of customers including engineers from government agencies, US industry participants and academic institutions can plan and participate in the execution of flight tests almost as if they were in mission control. Commercial Applications:As the near-real-time flight test planning and documentation tool in the VFRC, the VFRC- Planner will be commercially marketable to all users of the VFRC. Users who have a VFRC_Planner license will be able to plan flight tests in detail at their own location, monitor flight tests in progress and replan as necesssary using all of the tools available within the program. Users will be able to access flight and/or simulation data through the VFRC-Planner's flight card facility and generate flight trajectories for planning purposes using the VFRC-Planner's performance simulation facility.
