Compact envelopes : an efficient and provably safe approach to air and space traffic integration
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Traditional methods for safely integrating space launch and reentry traffic into the National Airspace System use hazard areas (e.g. Special Use Airspaces, Temporary Flight Restrictions, etc.) that restrict aircraft from larger areas, for longer times, than necessary. This can result in significant disruptions to air traffic through increased fuel burn, flight time, and flight delays. This thesis proposes a new class of hazard area that we have named compact envelopes and that guarantees a quantifiable level of risk while dramatically reducing the disruption to commercial air traffic. These compact envelopes are dynamic in time, are described by contours as a function of altitude, and can be constructed for any launch or re-entry vehicle, for both orbital and sub-orbital operations. The generation of these compact envelopes incorporates a probabilistic risk analysis of off-nominal vehicle operations and leverages expected improvements in air traffic management procedures from NextGen; one key assumption is that airborne aircraft can safely react to any off-nominal event given sufficient advance warning. A probabilistic analysis of the disruption to the NAS caused by traditional hazard areas and compact envelopes during space vehicle operations is presented. Quantities of interest include increased flight time, fuel burn, and total distance flown for aircraft that must be rerouted around these hazard areas. The use of compact envelopes for ensuring aircraft safety is shown to produce a near-complete elimination of airspace disruption on average and a dramatic reduction in the worst-case disruptions compared to traditional hazard area methods. It must be noted that the practical implementation of the compact envelope idea only requires improvements to our air traffic control infrastructure envisioned to be part of NextGen by the year 2020.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2016 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Colvin, Thomas J |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. |
| Primary advisor | Alonso, Juan José, 1968- |
| Thesis advisor | Alonso, Juan José, 1968- |
| Thesis advisor | Close, Sigrid, 1971- |
| Thesis advisor | Kochenderfer, Mykel J, 1980- |
| Advisor | Close, Sigrid, 1971- |
| Advisor | Kochenderfer, Mykel J, 1980- |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Thomas J. Colvin. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2016. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2016 by Thomas James Colvin
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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