The first A stands for Aeronautics

NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration.  This week Jaiwon Shin, associate administrator for aeronautics, laid out six goals for the aeronautics side of the house.
1. Safe, efficient growth of operations. 
2. Low Boom Supersonics
3. Ultra efficient subsonic commercial aircraft.
4. Low Carbon propulsion
5. Real time system wide safety assurance
6.  Assured autonomy

Growth of operations probably means advanced navigation aids to permit more aircraft to fit into the air.  Sounds good, but the current bottleneck to more flights, is the lack of runways to handle them.  Building new runways is not an NASA mission (it's FAA) and the major difficulty is the armies of NIMBYs who raise political hell every time airport expansion is proposed.

Low Boom Supersonics is more work on cleverly shaped aircraft that make a less noisy sonic boom.  It's interesting,  and a fine science project, but we tried supersonic transports 40 years ago.  They cost too much, both to buy and to operate.

Ultra efficient sub sonic commercial air craft.   At least they limited the project to subsonic.  Boeing and Airbus all ready put a lot of work into this, both companies have higher efficiency versions of their bread and butter airliners under development.  What can NASA bring to the party?

Low Carbon propulsion.  We looked into nuclear powered aircraft back in the fifties.  It got as far as test firing a prototype nuclear engine.  The program was dropped because of radiation safety concerns and the excessive weight and marginal thrust of the Kiwi A engine.  The other  avenue is solar electric propulsion.  There isn't enough energy in sunlight to achieve much more than a pedal power level of performance. 

Real time system wide safety assurance.  Not quite sure what that means, unless they are talking about a computerized system for accident reports, safety advisories, Notices to Airman, and so forth.

Assured autonomy.  We think this means figuring out how to allow unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, or drones) to fly in US airspace.   Anti collision policy right now is "See and be seen".  Pilots are expected to look out for and avoid other aircraft.  UAV's are not so good at this, the microprocessors don't scan the sky. UAV's were invented to fly missions too dangerous to send real air crew on.  I was not aware of any places in US air space where the flak is that bad.  Are the druggies using shoulder fired anti aircraft missiles against the Border Patrol? 

Jaiwon Shin is hoping to get $560 million to spend on this stuff.  Down from $1.7 billion in 1998.  Aviation Week feels funding should be increased.  No surprise there. 

In real life, the improvements from the 707 of 1957 to the 787 of 2013 lie in better materials to make the plane from.  Better turbine blade material that lets the turbines run hotter, and better structural materials (carbon fiber) that reduce weight.  I note an absence of any material science research in this NASA program.