Promote `aircraft:*` and `mission:*` input variables from the mission group

Desired capability or behavior.

In a pre-mission group, Aviary promotes all variables starting with aircraft:* and mission:* to the top level, as documented in this page.

However, the promotion/variable connections for these variables work differently for a mission group. For a mission group, we need to declare these inputs as Dymos parameters in get_parameters in a builder. Dymos then connects the parameters from params_comp to rhs_all, and it also promotes params_comp inputs to the top-level. For time-independent variables like aircraft:wing:wetted_area, I believe Dymos's params_comp only passes these variables through but doesn't do anything essential (I might be missing something).

I am wondering if we could skip the Dymos parameters for static variables, and instead promote all aircraft:* and mission:* inputs to the top-level like we already do in a pre-mission group. The benefits are (1) we don't need to add all inputs in get_parameters in a builder, and (2) this reduces the number of variables Dymos's params_comp takes care and simplifies the N2 diagram (in my opinion). However there would be some pitfalls I overlook.

I'm not sure if this is a good modification for general cases, or maybe it's just my preference for organizing variables, so I wanted to hear what the dev team and other users think.

Prototype

Here is a prototype implementation that promotes all aircraft:* and mission:design:* inputs from the rhs_all group to the top-level. I also removed get_parameters from all builders. You can find the complete set of the code in my branch

class AviaryGroup:
...
    def configure(self):
        ...
        # Promote all inputs of the mission group that start with `aircraft:*` or `mission:design:*` to the top-level
        for phase_name in self.options['phase_info']:
            if phase_name not in ['pre_mission', 'post_mission']:
                # find all inputs of the `rhs_all` group that start with `aircraft:*` or `mission:design:*`
                rhs_group = getattr(self.traj.phases, phase_name).rhs_all
                list_inputs = rhs_group.list_inputs(out_stream=None, includes=['aircraft:*', 'mission:design:*'])

                # get a list of input variables to promote
                list_inputs_to_promote = []
                for _, input_meta in list_inputs:
                    # check for duplicates
                    if input_meta['prom_name'] not in list_inputs_to_promote:
                        list_inputs_to_promote.append(input_meta['prom_name'])

                # promote those variables to the top-level
                # TODO: check shape of the variable, and if it's not a scaler we should skip promotion?
                for input_name in list_inputs_to_promote:
                    print(f'Promoting {input_name} from traj.phases.{phase_name}.rhs_all to top-level')
                    self.promotes('traj', inputs=[(f'{phase_name}.rhs_all.{input_name}', input_name)])

Notes:

• I wasn't sure if I should promote mission:design:* or all mission:*.
• This assumes that the builder promotes all aircraft:* and mission:design:* to the mission group level (or rhs_all level).

N2 diagrams before and after this modification

You can find the N2 diagrams of run_level2_example.py with and without this modification: https://github.com/kanekosh/Aviary/tree/promote_aircraft_vars/N2
Originally we see a lot of aircraft: variables for the aero model in Dymos parameters, but with the proposed changes they go straight up to the top-level auto_IVC.

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

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Associated Bug Report

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