Air Force Research Laboratory Space Cryogenic Technology Research Initiatives

Application of Systems Engineering to USAF Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR)

This paper outlines results from the preliminary characterization of the Ball Aerospace 35/60K Protoflight Spacecraft Cryocooler performed at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Space Vehicles Directorate. The cooler was developed under joint sponsorship by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and AFRL for space based infrared sensing applications. This cryocooler is a unique, three stage Stirling cycle protoflight cryocooler unit capable of simultaneously lifting 0.4 W at 35 K and 0.6 W at 60 K. The physical characteristics and component details of the cooler are included in this report. The thermodynamic performance of the cryocooler is presented in terms of the effect ofvariable heat loads on the cold end, mid-stage, and upper stage temperatures. Based on the acquired data, performance models are presented using two-variable regression methods.

: In Section 252 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal 2006, Research and Developments Efforts for purposes of Small Business Research, Congress adopted four wide-ranging reforms to the Department of Defense Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs in order to increase the effectiveness of SBIR and STTR for both the DoD and the defense industry. First, Section 252 directed closer alignment between R&D and acquisition goals of SBIR and STTR. Second, Section 252 authorized and funded creation by the Department of Defense (DoD) and the military services of the Commercialization Pilot Program (CPP) to facilitate transition of SBIR technologies into the acquisition process. Congress conditioned the use of CPP funds on detailed evaluative reporting to Congress. Third, Congress codified into statutory law President George W. Bush's Executive Order 13329, Encouraging Innovation in Manufacturing, which incentivized manufacturing technologies through the SBIR and STTR programs. Fourth, Congress clarified the authority to conduct testing and evaluation of SBIR and STTR technologies in SBIR and STTR Phases II and III. The implementation requirements were specified in the text of Section 252 and the Congressional Guidance Letter issued by the House and the Senate Small Business Committees. This study analyzes the implementation of Section 252 by the Secretaries of Defense, the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force. It reflects the results of literature review and a survey of SBIR and STTR. The study questions are based on Section 252 text and the Congressional Guidance letter, as well as best practices identified in relevant academic and professional literature. The study finds that, while the DoD and the military departments have begun implementation of the DoD SBIR CPP program and other Section 252 reforms, progress is uneven.

Microcosm, under Air Force Research Laboratory (Space Vehicles Directorate) and internal funding, developed and recently flew the first fully autonomous, on-board orbit determination and intrack and cross-track control system. Results show the technology maintaining in-track position to ± 1 km indefinitely while using less propellant than traditional orbit maintenance. This technology provides a capability never previously available: specifying a satellite's position months, if not years, in advance with great ease and accuracy with simple geometric calculations rather than complex orbital mechanics and propagation. This will allow all system components (ground based and on-orbit) to know factors such as the current location of all satellites in the system, location and direction to the nearest satellite, parameters of current or future ground passes, when satellite transitions occur, and when a given satellite will next be over any location for all future times. For constellations, the technology eliminates the need for re-phasing as the in-track position is maintained as well as the altitude. Implementing autonomous orbit control significantly reduces operations costs, eliminates many of the traditional payload planning cycles, and creates added system robustness. This paper provides results of the flight demonstration and discusses additional applications of this technology.

We empirically determine the impact of the NASA Small Business innovation Research (SBIR) Program on invention and innovation. The NASA SBIR program selects a portfolio of technology proposals, submitted by small businesses to an annual solicitation. Funding may be awarded in two tranches, a 6-month phase I award and a subsequent, 2-year phase II award. Over the last decade, the total annual awarded funding was about $100–140M with Phase I awards growing from $100–125K and phase II awards from $500–750K. Typically, about 15–20% of submitted Phase I proposals are awarded and only these awards are eligible to submit a phase II proposal. The success rate at phase II is about 40%. We looked at NASA SBIR data between 1999 and 2006 to determine the impact of receiving a phase II award on invention and innovation by using patent activity as a proxy. Data from all NASA Mission Directorates and over a range of years were considered and combined into a statistically significant collection. We examined the phase II proposed technologies and the subsequent patent history of the submitting companies in the five years after the award cycle. We find that phase II awarded companies had a significantly greater number of awarded and cited patents, over this time frame, than companies not awarded an SBIR phase II. Specifically, we find an overall increase in awarded patents of 39% for SBIR awarded companies versus non-awarded companies. This difference is statistically significant at the 95% confidence level. We also examined subsets for these data to quantify the effects of company size and previous patent awards on these trends.

In order to explore how the extent of commercialization changes over time, longitudinal surveys were conducted by telephoning several sets of awardees in the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. A model was formulated that predicts how the distribution of SBIR projects among five commercialisation levels changes from one year to the next. It was found that the distribution in any given year is dependent on the distribution in the previous year only. Projections show that as many as 30% of SBIR projects may eventually achieve commercialization.

The successful development and market insertion of a financially successful new product requires technology, marketing, manufacturing, and luck. This suggests various steps in the process that are critical to success. More specifically, the paper deals with the special problems encountered by small business. The analysis is presented in light of the Small Business Innovative Research program (SBIR) which is an effort by the US government to enable the development of new high technology products and the successful establishment of business enterprises that will ultimately contribute to the GNP and tax base. It is not an entitlement program. Competition for contracts is fierce. This identities a chain of events that must be successfully navigated in order to insure small enterprise survival and profitable product insertion into the US business base. A model program is used to define and describe how each step in the process was accomplished toward the ultimate success of the product. This model is an actual SBIR derivative event that has resulted in a successful product that not only completely satisfied the customer demands, but also resulted in the spin-off of a family of other products that have since been sold into other commercial applications. The purpose of this is to highlight some of the issues that must be addressed by small business when attempting to both develop a high technology product and introduce it into the marketplace. This will be done by examining a successful product development history. It is done in the interest of “lessons learned” that may be of value for future small business enterprises. The example chosen happened to be a Phase 3 SBIR (Small Business Innovative Research) program. For this reason, a brief introduction of the SBIR process comes first.

The successful development and market insertion of a financially successful new product requires technology, marketing, manufacturing, and luck. This paper suggests various steps in the process that are critical to success. More specifically, the paper deals with the special problems encountered by small business. The analysis is presented in light of the Small Business Innovative Research program (SBIR) which is an effort by the US government to enable the development of new high technology products and the successful establishment of business enterprises that will ultimately contribute to the GNP and tax base. It is not an entitlement program. Competition for contracts is fierce. The paper identifies a chain of events that must be successfully navigated in order to insure small enterprise survival and profitable product insertion into the US business base. A model program is used to define and describe how each step in the process was accomplished toward the ultimate success of the product. This model is an actual SBIR derivative event that has resulted in a successful product that not only completely satisfied the customer demands but also resulted in the spin-off of a family of other products that have since been sold into other commercial applications. The purpose of this paper is to highlight some of the issues that must be addressed by small business when attempting to both develop a high technology product and introduce it into the marketplace. This will be done by examining a successful product development history. It is done in the interest of ldquolessons learnedrdquo that may be of value for future small business enterprises. The example chosen happened to be a Phase 3 SBIR (Small Business Innovative Research) program. For this reason, a brief introduction of the SBIR process comes first.

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program conducted by the Japanese government is intended to enable the rapid growth of small firms. Using comprehensive empirical data, this study examines the performances of firms that are directly affected by the program. First, to provide an outline, this study compares the changes in sales, employment, and the number of patents between SBIR awardees and matched firms. It cannot be shown that SBIR awardees have better performance using those indices. Second, this study conducts regression analyses to control for firm sizes, multiple awards, technological levels, the value of venture capital in a region, and population in regions. As a result, this study does not find that SBIR awardees have advantages after applying these detailed controls. This study shows that further detailed investigation is required to prove the benefit of the SBIR program.

The Small Business Innovation Development Act of 1982 created the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program to stimulate technological innovation, to use small businesses of 500 or fewer employees to meet federal R&D needs, to foster and encourage participation of minority and disadvantaged persons in technological innovation, and to increase private sector commercialization of innovations derived from federal R&D. In 1983, this set-aside program totaled $45 million. The SBIR program grew to nearly $2 billion by 2008 when Congress failed to reauthorize it. For several years it survived through a series of multi-month extensions, and at the end of December 2011 it was finally reauthorized for another six years.

Small business innovation research (SBIR) in the USA is heralded as a major program to support innovative new technologies by SMEs that will grow afterwards by selling products and services in the market. Instead we found, in the solar photovoltaic sector, that SMEs supported by the Department of Defense and National Aeronautics and Space Administration are mostly acting as internal services of these federal agencies: their products serve mainly, if not exclusively, these two defence-related organisations. Their future growth would thus be curtailed. The paper calls for a more accurate analysis of small business innovation research program and maybe other innovation policies.

Advanced smart structures flight experiments for precision spacecraft

Recent policy discussions have focused attention on what some refer to as Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) “mills.” One characterization of an SBIR mill focuses on firms as multiple award winners (MAWs). A second emphasizes reliance on SBIR awards for a large portion of a firm’s revenue. This last characterization is the focus of this paper. The analysis relates the percentage of a firm’s revenue comprised by SBIR awards to four outcomes: the generation of at least one spin-off firm, the number of spin-off firms generated, the receipt of at least one patent, and the number of patents received. The results suggest that the marginal effect of an increase of one percentage point of revenue from the SBIR program, evaluated at each firm’s observed percentage of revenue, is positively related to each of the four outcomes. However, when considering predictions across the entire range of reliance on SBIR funding, the results are more mixed. Notably, the predicted number of patents peaks at 70 percent of revenue and declines thereafter. Comparisons of predictions from multivariate models to simple descriptive statistics suggest that some of the apparent negative relationship at high percentages of SBIR revenue seen in comparisons of means may be due to uncontrolled differences in other firm characteristics.

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program is one of the most successful public programs designed to support small firm innovation. The purpose and structure of the program, however, are often misunderstood. This paper clarifies the goals and rationale for the SBIR program and reviews recent findings regarding the program's impact. The paper identifies five dimensions of the innovation capital gap and outlines a possible extension of the program to better address this finance gap.

Evaluating the NASA small business innovation research program: preliminary evidence of a trade-off between commercialization and basic research