Long distance travel around the globe can potentially be revolutionized with the use of an intercontinental rocket that uses low earth orbit as its medium. This transport system can increase growth in many new businesses like tourism travel between the continents. This research evaluates the technical and non-technical possibilities of using a double-stage reusable rocket, where the second stage is also a reusable, rocket-powered passenger vehicle using a low earth orbit space journey with a stabilized re-entry method that ensures passenger comfortability. A potential network of spaceports spanning the globe is postulated within a range of 4,000 km to 8,000 km(2,160 nm to 4,320 nm) of each other, and each located within an hour by any other means of ground transport to population hubs greater than four million. This will help further connect the world as the journey from one major city to another would take at most an hour, and no point on the habited continents would be more than 4,000 km(2,160 nm) from a spaceport. It is assumed that the costs of an international first class flight ticket are in the thousands of dollars range showing how there is a potential market for this type of travel network. The reasoning and analysis, through a literature review, for an intercontinental rocket vehicle is presented along with the various aspects of the possibility of this kind of travel network coming to fruition in the near future.

Long distance travel around the globe can potentially be revolutionized with the use of an intercontinental rocket that uses low earth orbit as its medium. This transport system can increase growth in many new businesses like tourism travel between the continents. This research evaluates the technical and non-technical possibilities of using a double-stage reusable rocket, where the second stage is also a reusable, rocket-powered passenger vehicle using a low earth orbit space journey with a stabilized re-entry method that ensures passenger comfortability. A potential network of spaceports spanning the globe is postulated within a range of 4,000 km to 8,000 km(2,160 nm to 4,320 nm) of each other, and each located within an hour by any other means of ground transport to population hubs greater than four million. This will help further connect the world as the journey from one major city to another would take at most an hour, and no point on the habited continents would be more than 4,000 km(2,160 nm) from a spaceport. It is assumed that the costs of an international first class flight ticket are in the thousands of dollars range showing how there is a potential market for this type of travel network. The reasoning and analysis, through a literature review, for an intercontinental rocket vehicle is presented along with the various aspects of the possibility of this kind of travel network coming to fruition in the near future.

September 11th, 2001 was a day that affected everyone. The world came to a stop. The aviation industry was affected, and the national airspace system was closed for a few days. The events that occurred on that specific day enacted changes that affect the industry to this day. This paper analyzes some of the changes that were made and discusses some of the changes the industry is going through again, about 20 years after the events on September 11th. The coronavirus pandemic has changed the way we all live our daily lives and aviation is not exempt. Changes to aircraft cleaning procedures, boarding processes, and seat design have all been ways the industry has gone through changes. The results of a potential recovery as well as the long-term changes are discussed.

Communications between air traffic controllers and pilots are critical to national airspace traffic management. Measuring communications in real time made by pilots and air traffic controllers has the potential to predict human error. In this thesis a measure for Deviations from Closed Loop Communications is defined and tested to predict a human error event, Loss of Separation (LOS). Six retired air traffic controllers were recruited and tested in three conditions of varying workload in an Terminal Radar Approach Control Facility (TRACON) arrival radar simulation. Communication transcripts from simulated trials were transcribed and coding schemes for Closed Loop Communication Deviations (CLCD) were applied. Results of the study demonstrated a positive correlation between CLCD and LOS, indicating that CLCD could be a variable used to predict LOS. However, more research is required to determine if CLCD can be used to predict LOS independent of other predictor variables, and if CLCD can be used in a model that considers many different predictor variables to predict LOS.

The process of designing any real world blunt leading-edge wing is tedious andinvolves hundreds, if not thousands, of design iterations to narrow down a single design.
Add in the complexities of supersonic flow and the challenge increases exponentially.
One possible, and often common, pathway for this design is to jump straight into detailed
volume grid computational fluid dynamics (CFD), in which the physics of supersonic
flow are modeled directly but at a high computational cost and thus an incredibly long
design process. Classical aerodynamics experts have published work describing a process
which can be followed which might bypass the need for detailed CFD altogether.

This work outlines how successfully a simple vortex lattice panel method CFDcode can be used in the design process for a Mach 1.3 cruise speed airline wing concept.
Specifically, the success of the wing design is measured in its ability to operate subcritically (i.e. free of shock waves) even in a free stream flow which is faster than the
speed of sound. By using a modified version of Simple Sweep Theory, design goals are
described almost entirely based on defined critical pressure coefficients and critical Mach
numbers. The marks of a well-designed wing are discussed in depth and how these traits
will naturally lend themselves to a well-suited supersonic wing.

Unfortunately, inconsistencies with the published work are revealed by detailedCFD validation runs to be extensive and large in magnitude. These inconsistencies likely
have roots in several concepts related to supersonic compressible flow which are
explored in detail. The conclusion is made that the theory referenced in this work by the
classical aerodynamicists is incorrect and/or incomplete. The true explanation for the
perplexing shock wave phenomenon observed certainly lies in some convolution of the
factors discussed in this thesis. Much work can still be performed in the way of creating
an empirical model for shock wave formation across a highly swept wing with blunt
leading-edge airfoils.

Educational technologies can be great tools for learning. The implementation of learning aids and scaffolds within these technologies often make them effective; however, due to various problems, students may take more passive approaches to learning when using these educational tools. This tends to lead to interactions that impair learning. This study approaches this issue by reexamining the learner’s role when interacting with educational technologies. Specifically, the current study attempts to support learning and perceptions by inviting students to approach a learning task like an interface designer or instructional designer. These roles derive from a previous study on higher agency roles. The results of the current study indicate that participants learned across all conditions, suggesting the assignment of roles may not impair learning. However, learning outcomes did not differ between conditions. Additionally, the interface designer and instructional designer roles were more critical of the sounds and organizations of each video than the learner role. Limitations of the study and future directions are discussed.

There are significantly higher rates of pilot error events during surface operations at night than during the day. Events include incidents, accidents, wrong surface takeoffs and landings, hitting objects, turning on the wrong taxiway, departing the runway surface, among others. There is evidence to suggest that these events are linked to situational awareness. Improvements to situational awareness can be accomplished through training to instruct pilots to increase attention outside of the cockpit while taxiing at night. However, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) night time requirements are relatively low to obtain a private pilot certification. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of flight training experience on conducting safe and incident-free surface operations at night, collect pilot opinions on night training requirements and resources, and analyze the need for night time on flight reviews. A survey was distributed to general aviation pilots and 239 responses were collected to be analyzed. The responses indicated a higher observed incident rate at night than during the day, however there were no significant effects of night training hours or type of training received (Part 61, Part 141/142, or both) on incident rate. Additionally, higher total night hours improved pilot confidence at night and decreased incident rate. The overall opinions indicated that FAA resources on night flying were effective in providing support, but overall pilots were not in support of or against adding night time requirements to flight reviews and found night training requirements to be somewhat effective.

Nuclear Power Plants (NPP) have complex and dynamic work environments. Nuclear safety and organizational management rely largely on human performance and teamwork. Multi-disciplinary teams work interdependently to complete cognitively demanding tasks such as outage control. The outage control period has the highest risk of core damage and radiation exposure. Thus, team coordination and communication are critically important during this period. The purpose of this thesis is to review and synthesize teamwork studies in NPPs, outage management studies, official Licensee Event Reports (LER), and Inspection Reports (IRs) to characterize team brittleness in NPP systems. Focusing on team brittleness can provide critical insights about how to increase NPP robustness and to create a resilient NPP system. For this reason, more than 900 official LERs and IRs reports were analyzed to understand human and team errors in the United States (US) nuclear power plants. The findings were evaluated by subject matter experts to create a better understanding of team cognition in US nuclear power plants. The results of analysis indicated that human errors could be caused by individual human errors, team errors, procedural errors, design errors, or organizational errors. In addition to these, some of the findings showed that number of reactors, operation year and operation mode could affect the number of reported incidents.

This thesis outlines the creation of an excel tool designed to utilize public flight data for a given flight and determine further information such as general flight properties, weight estimation, and aerodynamic and stability characteristics. In depth analyses is done for a TV Relay flight of a Beechcraft Super King Air 200 to display the data processing and accuracy of the values. From this analyses it is displayed that the aircraft is flown safely and well within its performance parameters for the entire mission. The usefulness of this tool comes from its ability to successfully analyze critical properties and perform pilot and crash reconstruction analysis.