CHANGES IN STORE FOR PLANES NASA OBJECTIVES REDEFINED.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE - The National Aeronautics and Space Administration wants to develop technology to let airplanes change the length, width and shape of their wings - as a bird does.

In releasing his proposed 2002 budget, NASA Administrator Dan Goldin said he wants to drop short-term research efforts that will provide only marginal technological improvements and free up money for bolder projects that may produce revolutionary results in 10 or 20 years.

``People kept saying, Where's the vision? We now have the vision,'' Goldin said in a video conference hookup with reporters at NASA centers around the United States.

Before his remarks, reporters saw an animated video depicting how such a ``morphing'' aircraft could operate.

Interspersed with film footage of a bald eagle in flight were animated sequences of the airplane changing its wings - sweeping them back for high speed, lengthening them for landing and even splitting the wing tips as an eagle spreads its feathers.

Focusing on longer-term research - such as propelling deep-space craft faster through the solar system and making revolutionary improvements to flight efficiency - means cutting short-term projects, including rotorcraft research at Ames-Langley near San Jose and a planned flight to Pluto, Goldin said.

``We can't build planes that morph and fly like eagles unless we terminate lower-priority activities,'' Goldin said.

Overall, NASA's proposed budget will go up 2 percent to $14.5 billion, with about $7.3 billion going toward manned space flight and $7.2 billion toward scientific missions, aeronautics research and technology.

The NASA budget is still subject to approval by Congress, which will deliberate through summer.

At NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Goldin's proposed budget means a 6.4 percent cut from $219 million to $205 million, officials said.

Most of the Dryden reduction will come from cancellation of the X-34 and X-33 rocket planes, announced last month, and the culmination of X-43 scramjet testing. The X-43, an unmanned hypersonic craft, is scheduled to make two flights this spring and one next year.

Authorized jobs will drop from the equivalent of about 635 full time to 609, but the lower number is about how many workers the center actually has now after making additions in recent years, Dryden director Ken Petersen said.

``The amount of work that is coming to Dryden is still very strong,'' Petersen told reporters after Goldin's news conference.

The morphing airplane technology - for which about $130 million is proposed in the 2002 budget - will likely be tested piecemeal on Dryden aircraft in the near future, Petersen said.

Goldin said NASA officials also will spend the next year looking at whether to shut down older centers that cost too much to keep up. But Dryden officials said their facilities are in generally good shape and likely to survive that examination.