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.
“The Advance”11 pages
UNCLASSIFIED/ ;'PIHi: 8PPH!ltllt ~81!! 8HLV Chapter 1: Predicting Implications of Propulsion Breakthroughs MARCH OF PROGRESS: REVOLUTIONARY PROPULSION PHYSICS Breakthroughs in propulsion physics (such as the control over gravitational or inertial forces, propellant-less space drives, and even faster-than-light travel) are not imminent; however, enough progress has been made to allow for thoughtful speculation about their nature and implications. As a preview, the implications to cockpit design include added degrees of motion, combination of operational regimes (near ground, orbit, and beyond), greater range of speed (from zero-speed hover to beyond light speed), and loss of familiar motion cues (pilot's inertia and visual cues) resulting from the separation of external and internal environments. The primary reference used to predict these possibilities is the book Frontiers of Propulsion Science [Millis & Davis, 2009], 1 particularly chapters 3, 4, and 15. This book may be the first-ever scholarly compilation of science pertaining to breakthrough flight-methods sufficiently advanced to enable human voyages to other star systems. The book examines a wide range of works, offering introductory explanations and comparisons between approaches and identifying high-priority unknowns needing deeper study. References to specific ideas and issues cite that book and other original works. Setting Ideal Performance as Design Target This report focuses on the most significant likely differences between contemporary cockpits and cockpits in the era of breakthrough flight. Possibilities that imply the most demanding changes are considered first, and explanations of the correlations between the propulsion characteristics and resulting cockpit features are provided. Looking to the far future, this study evaluates the impact of having achieved the following breakthrough advancements: • Control over gravitational and inertial forces: - The craft is propelled by interacting with the properties of the space-time and/or inertial frames surrounding the craft-and can accelerate at g levels beyond human endurance. - The environment inside a craft can be sustained anywhere between 0 g and 1 g (minimum range) without regard for either the motion of the craft or its outside gravitational environment. • Faster-than-light (FTL) speeds are possible by having mastered control over those aspects of nature that impose the light-speed limit. However, due to reasonable relativistic projections of the energy required for propulsion coupled with the limits of the human lifespan, it is reasonable to expect that travels will be limited to within our galaxy. For the sake of bracketing the scope of coverage, this study assumes that practical star flight will be limited to a 100-light-year radius around our Sun. Even with this constraint, thousands of star systems are within that range. 1 UNCLASSIFIED//Flilll. lilFFUil,t.le lal!i! 8Hl!V
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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.