AAWSAP DIRD, Cockpits in the Era of Breakthrough Flight, November 2010

This Defense Intelligence Reference Document, dated 1 November 2010 and numbered DIA-08-1011-002, was prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Warning Office. It is one of a series of advanced technology reports produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications program. It draws mainly on the book Frontiers of Propulsion Science and speculates about breakthroughs such as control of gravity and inertia and faster-than-light travel. It then proposes a provisional cockpit design with six-degree-of-freedom controls, virtual displays and no windows.

From the source:Release of 2026-09-18 Incident: 11/1/10, Las Vegas, Nevada. Released with redactions. This document is a Defense Intelligence Reference Document (DIRD), a technical reference format used by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to capture baseline knowledge on a specific topic for later analytic use. DIRDs are best understood as reference and synthesis products rather than as original research. It is one of 38 DIRDs produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) between 2009 and 2011. Because AAWSAP’s scope permitted a broad range of supporting topics, not every DIRD in the series directly concerns aerospace systems or future threat assessment. The following summary reflects the DIRD’s scope and framing at the time of writing and should not be read as implying current validation of the concepts discussed. This DIRD examines how cockpit design might change if future aerospace vehicles were ever to achieve major propulsion breakthroughs such as control over gravity and inertia, “propellantless” flight, or faster-than-light travel. The report does not describe an existing or emerging vehicle class. Instead, it asks what such hypothetical capabilities would mean for piloting, displays, controls, and human factors, and it argues that the biggest design challenges would come from full six-degree-of-freedom motion, operation across multiple flight regimes from near-surface flight to orbit and deep space, and the possible separation between the craft’s actual motion and the crew’s internal physical sensations. It combines those assumptions with established human-machine-interface principles and with maturing inputs such as gesture, voice, and brain-machine control to outline a provisional cockpit centered on intuitive displays, stress-tolerant physical controls, and a virtual surround display.

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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
Conven iently, 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 th is highly isotropic and homogeneous rad iation, 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 cosm ic
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. [Cred it : 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,
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