4. Background

The idea of a universally understood flight dynamics data package has been discussed for at least two decades within the AIAA technical committees [Hildreth94], [Hildreth98]. There have been proposals in the past to standardize on Fortran as well as proprietary, vendor-specified modeling packages, including graphical ones. The National Aerospace Plane (NASP) Program, under the guidance of Larry Schilling of NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, developed a hybrid Web- and secure-FTP-based system for exchanging NASP subsystem models as well as a naming convention for variables, file names, and other simulation components in the early 1990s. Some other simulation standards have subsequently been proposed by the AIAA and are under active consideration at this writing [AIAA11].

2011-07-12