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To examine the role of new aeronautical technologies in improving commercial aviation’s environmental performance.

Reviews the environmental improvements that may be conferred through the adoption of alternative aviation fuels and new airframe, engine and navigation technologies.

Although aeronautical technologies have evolved considerably since the earliest days of powered flight, the aviation industry is now reaching a point of diminishing returns as growing global consumer demand for air transport outstrips incremental improvements in environmental efficiency. The chapter describes some of the technological interventions that are being pursued to improve aviation’s environmental performance and discusses the extent to which these innovations will help to deliver a more sustainable aviation industry.

The successful culmination of missions based on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) can be measured with two main parameters: (1) successful mission completion: all objectives of the mission (e.g., maneuvering and navigation, reconnaissance and targeting or search and rescue, and return) were accomplished and (2) safety: no damage to the vehicle and no fatalities or injuries to any human were sustained throughout the mission. Automation of the UAV's control and operations increasingly becomes a determining factor in successful mission completion and increased safety. However, in this day and age of automatically launched and retrieved swarms of UAVs, the human operator still has a critical role. Human-controlled UAVs will persist for a long time and human error is a factor that still needs addressing in the age of automation. Even a single person, who has flown radio-controlled model aircraft as a hobby since childhood, can still cause the crash of an expensive UAV in a matter of seconds. Moreover, there are aspects of human error in UAV control that can have important implications to the implementation of automation and to keeping the human operator in the control loop.

This chapter examines the historical development of space tourism from early wondering at the heavens to more recent extraterrestrial astrotourism. It catalogs the development of the significant terrestrial space tourism market, including dark-sky tourism, launch tours, zero-G flights, and edutainment experiences, as part of a “steps to space” for costlier future developments in space tourism. Recent developments in the suborbital sector initiated by the XPRIZE and spearheaded by Virgin Galactic are the next stage in this product ladder. All these draw on a rich history of space exploration – imagined, virtual, and real – that frames how future developments in space tourism can be viewed.

Wide area search munitions (WASMs) are a cross between an unmanned aerial vehicle and a munition. With an impressive array of onboard sensors and autonomous flight capabilities WASMs might play a variety of roles on the modern battle field including reconnaissance, search, battle damage assessment, or communications relay.

This chapter provides an overview of the Department of Defense (DoD) laboratory structure to help equipment designers, modelers, and manufacturers determine where research, testing programs, or relevant findings can be found. The chapter includes a discussion of the performance measures and metrics typically used in DoD laboratories and concludes by considering the current state-of-the-art as well as the state-of-the-possible for human performance measurement.

The most basic solution for monitoring position and attitude of an UA is through direct line-of-sight. Because they are usually standing outside, a pilot that maintains direct line-of-sight with the aircraft is usually referred to as the EP, as opposed to an internal pilot (IP) who obtains position and attitude information electronically while inside of a ground control station (GCS). Flight using an EP represents the most basic solution to the problem of separating the pilot from the aircraft while still enabling the pilot to monitor the location and attitude of the aircraft. Pilot perspective is changed from an egocentric to an exocentric point of view. Maintaining visual contact with the UA, the EP can control the aircraft using a hand-held radio control box. Many of these control boxes are similar to those used by radio-controlled aircraft hobbyists and provide direct control of the flight surfaces of the aircraft through the use of joysticks on the box. Very little automation is involved in the use of such boxes, which control the flight surfaces of the aircraft.

UAVs have become a critical component of U.S. military operations, reducing the need to risk the life of a pilot, while performing tasks considered dull, dirty, and dangerous. UAVs currently are serving an important intelligence, surveillance, search, and destroy function in Operation Enduring Freedom. Since September 11, 2001, the public has increasingly been made aware of the role that military UAVs, such as the Predator and Global Hawk, play.