Documents / Report
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.
UNCLASSIFIED/ ,'F811. 8FFll!l*L 1!1!11! l!IIU:!Y technology for manipulating inertial fields (or for warping space-time) can accurately track these effects, then that knowledge may compensate to keep these tools viable. Design of future guidance systems must address this issue. Absolute Velocity - Universal Speedometer Conveniently, nature provides another reference frame for deep-space navigation. The cosmic microwave background is a reference frame against which velocity can be measured relative to the mean rest frame of the universe. By comparing fore/aft Doppler shifts relative to this highly isotropic and homogeneous radiation, velocity measurements can be derived. For example, the net velocity of the Earth's motion relative to this background has been measured to be 365 km/s. 13 However, the cosmic microwave background will not be detectable at FTL speeds. As illustrated in Figure 8, although many of the pictures of the cosmic microwave background radiation remove the prominent dipole moment shown in this graphic (the major color difference), it is precisely this dipole-the difference between fore/aft Doppler shifts-that provides a navigation reference for deep-space flight. The projection of this image is a spherical shell that has been opened and flattened. The Doppler shift corresponds to the Earth's motion of over 1.3 million km/h relative to the mean rest frame of the universe. The Earth moves in the direction away from the red and toward the blue. Figure 8. Cosmic Microwaves as Universal Motion Reference Frame. [Credit: NASA] Position-Reference Star Trackers For deep-space flight, the star trackers that have been developed for existing spacecraft may still prove viable, new instrumentation will probably be required. Given the enormous expanse of space, the apparent locations of stars will not vary that much. 14 Even those that do appear to move-our closest stars-are known well enough so that software can take into account how those positions will change as the vehicle's position changes. Due to Doppler shifting, as noted previously, checking positions relative to the stars will only be possible at sublight speed. For speeds approaching light speed, corrections will be required for relativistic effects. Such effects will probably not become apparent until traveling well beyond about 9% c, 15 UNCLASSIFIED//FQA: QFFICIOP 1!55 0111 ¥
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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.