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Defense Intelligence Reference Document Cockpits In The Era Of Breakthrough Flight

Defense Intelligence Agency · 57 pages · text from the file's own layer

This Defense Intelligence Reference Document from the Defense Intelligence Agency, dated 1 November 2010, is one of a series of advanced technology reports produced in FY 2009 under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications (AAWSA) Program. It proposes a provisional cockpit design for craft driven by speculative breakthrough propulsion, such as control of gravity and inertia and faster-than-light travel. It draws mainly on the book Frontiers of Propulsion Science and on human-machine interface research.

  • p. 2 …a series of advanced technology reports produced in FY 2009 under the Defense Intelligence Agency, l…
  • p. 5 …How these advances may affect future cockpits is described, and this is the central message of…
  • p. 6 …the far future, this study evaluates the impact of having achieved the following breakthrough advancements: • Control…
  • p. 12 …then contemplate the consequences that these advances impose onto other systems of the vehicle-in this…
  • p. 21 …In support of the forgoing discussion, we are speculating that heretofore unknown advances in physics regarding…
  • p. 32 …As evidenced by the gaming industry, the motions of the pilot's hands-whether by a…
  • p. 44 …the sensors and functions are known at this time, and it is expected that further advances…
  • p. 45 …Taking advantage of foreseeable advances, such images are likely to be in the form of virtual…
  • p. 48 …advances in cockpits for breakthrough flight might be further advanced by taking advantage of the gaming…
  • p. 51 …on an advanced version or next generation of heads-up display to outline the road, pinpoint…
  • p. 53 …Regardless of such advances, the keyboard is still likely to be around for those lingering tasks…
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Figure 4. Warp Drive. Taken directly from the Frontiers book, this image has become the iconic representation
for a warp drive: the "York Extrinsic Time Plot."
In theory, the outer shell is presumed to create the propulsive effect of warping space-
time outside the craft without affecting the inside. In short, the Alcubierre warp drive
creates a separation of space-time environments inside and outside of the craft,
although the exact details remain uncertain.
Although there is no explicit function for the inner hull in this situation, this Alcubierre
warp drive at least illustrates the concept of separation of these outer and inner
environments. When planning future cockpits, the outer and inner inertial frames need
to be treated as two distinct zones. The physics related to such considerations is still
evolving 4 and beyond the scope of this report.
Why Double Hull Needed: Example 2 (Field Space Drive)
Another class of conceptual propulsion is a "field drive"-a subset of "space drives"
where a spacecraft is propelled " ... using only the interactions between the spacecraft
and its surrounding space ... "5 Instead of using the Riemannian geometry of Einstein's
general relativity, these approaches use the physics of fields and scalar potentials. 6
While several variants exist, the "Bias Drive" concept is selected here to illustrate the
relevance of the double-hull configuration, specifically in the context of modifying the
scalar potential that defines an inertial frame. By altering the properties of the
surrounding inertial scalar, a gradient in that scalar is induced which, in turn, induces
gravitational-like forces on matter located in that gradient.
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Report, from the dia collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 57 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.