Background

The idea of a universally-understood flight dynamics data package has been discussed for at least two decades, within the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) technical committees. 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, came up with a combination 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. Some simulation standards have been proposed by the AIAA and are under active consideration at this writing.