Estimation of inertial platform errors

Equations for inertial platform error mode

Experimental wake survey behind Viking 75 entry vehicle at angles of attack of 0 deg, 5 deg, and 10 deg, Mach numbers from 0.20 to 1.20, and longitudinal stations from 1.50 to 11.00 body diameters

An investigation was conducted to obtain flow properties in the wake of a preliminary configuration of the Viking '75 Entry Vehicle at Mach numbers from 0.20 to 1.20 and at angles of attack of 0 deg, 5 deg, and 10 deg. The wake flow properties were calculated from total and static pressures measured with a pressure rake at longitudinal stations varying from 1.50 to 11.00 body diameters, and are presented in tabulated and plotted form. The wake properties were essentially symmetrical about the X-axis at alpha = 0 deg and the profiles were shifted away from the X-axis at angles of attack. An unexpected reduction in wake property ratios occurred as the Mach number increased from 0.60 to 1.00; these ratios then increased as the Mach number increased to 1.20. The reduction was present for all the longitudinal stations of the tests and decreased with increased longitudinal distance

Flight test performance and description of a rocket vihicle for producing low-speed artificial meteors

Flight test of trailblazer i reentry vehicle and production of artificial iron meteor

Evaluation of the gust-alleviation characteristics and handling qualities of a free-wing aircraft

Dynamic characteristics of aircraft with wings free to pivot spanwise axi

The Future Direction of Delaware Law (Including a Brief Exegesis on Fee Shifting Bylaws)

Delaware sets the governance standards for most public companies. The ability to attract corporations could not be explained solely by the existence of a favorable statutory regime. Delaware was not invariably the first or the only state to implement management friendly provisions. Given the interpretive gaps in the statute and the critical importance of the common law in the governance process, courts played an outsized role in setting legal standards. The management friendly nature of the Delaware courts contributed significantly to the state’s attraction to public corporations. A current example of a management friendly trend in the case law had seen the recent decisions setting out the board’s authority to adopt bylaws under Section 109 of the Delaware General Corporation Law (DGCL), particularly those involving the shifting of fees in litigation against the corporation or its directors. The DGCL allows bylaws that address “the business of the corporation, the conduct of its affairs, and its rights or powers or the rights or powers of its stockholders, directors, officers or employees.” The broad parameters are, however, subject to limits. Bylaws cannot be inconsistent with the certificate of incorporation or “the law.” Law includes the common law. The Delaware courts have used the limitations imposed by “the law” to severely restrict the reach of shareholder inspired bylaws. The courts have not used the same principles to impose similar restraints on bylaws adopted by the board of directors. This can be seen with respect to bylaws that restrict or even eliminate the right of shareholders to bring actions against management and the corporation. In ATP Tour, Inc. v. Deutscher Tennis Bund the court approved a fee shifting bylaw that had littl relationship to the internal affairs of the corporation. The decision upheld the bylaw as facially valid.The decision ignored a number of obvious legal infirmities. Among other things, the decision did not adequately address the requirement in Section 109(b) that bylaws be consistent with “the law.” The decision obliquely acknowledged that the provisions would “by their nature, deter litigation” but otherwise made no effort to assess the impact of this deterrence on shareholders causes of action. The provision in fact had the practical effect of restricting, if not eliminating, litigation rights granted by the DGCL and the common law. Perhaps most significantly, however, the bylaws significantly limited common law rights of shareholders to bring actions against the corporation and the board. Given the high dismissal rates for these actions, fee shifting bylaws imposed a meaningful risk of liability on plaintiffs. Moreover, because judgments in derivative suits were paid to the corporation, shareholders serving as plaintiffs confronted the risk of liability without any offsetting direct benefit. By preventing suits in this area, the bylaw effectively insulated the behavior of boards from legal challenge. The ATP decision was poorly reasoned and overstepped acceptable boundaries. The management friendly decision threatened the preeminent role of Delaware in the development of corporate law. The decision raised the specter of federal intervention and the potential for meaningful competition from the states. Because the opinion examined the bylaw in the context of non-stock companies, the reasoning may remain applicable only to those entities and never make the leap to for-profit stock corporations. Nonetheless, the analysis reflects a management friendly approach that does not adequately take into account the impact of the provision on the rights of shareholders

Open Process Software

Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies by Noah Wardrip-Fruin. (Software Studies Series. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009. Pp 480. $35.00 cloth.

Mother Nature on the Run: The SEC, Climate Change Disclosure, and the Major Questions Doctrine

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC or Commission) has proposed a rule that addresses the disclosure needs of investors with respect to climate change. The proposal would require that public companies tell investors about the risks to their business associated with climate change and explain the system and strategy of governance for monitoring those risks. In addition, the proposal would mandate the disclosure of certain greenhouse gas emissions. The SEC’s proposal arrived contemporaneously with the Supreme Court’s announcement of the “major questions” doctrine. A deliberate attempt to limit the authority of the executive branch, the doctrine would restrict agencies from adopting rules on politically or economically important topics unless “clearly” authorized by Congress. The doctrine in part arises out of a deep-seated suspicion of agency motivations for regulatory action in politically sensitive areas. While still under construction, the fundamental tenet of the doctrine is that certain policy decisions are reserved for Congress unless specifically given to agencies. Some have raised concerns that the efforts by the SEC to regulate climate change disclosure amount to a “major question” that requires explicit authorization by Congress. To the extent the exercise of authority is characterized as novel, the SEC will need, in order to withstand a challenge under the major questions doctrine, to establish sufficient limiting principles. These arise less form the particular topic and more from the need for, and purpose of, the rule. Instead, they arise out of the purpose of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Congress adopted the legislation in order to address an existing inadequate system of corporate disclosure. The system did not sufficiently protect investors and resulted in the misallocation of capital. The SEC was expected not to devise an entirely new system of disclosure but to fix one already in place. In the case of climate change disclosure, most of the issuer-oriented information comes from voluntary disclosure in the form of sustainability and other types of reports not filed with the SEC. The system has yielded a voluminous amount of information that, from the investor perspective, is inconsistent, non-comparable and unreliable. Issuers, for example, routinely disclose emission reduction targets. The SEC’s climate change proposal is designed to address these failings. Indeed, inactivity would amount to a policy decision to push investors towards a largely unregulated disclosure environment in a manner inconsistent with what Congress intended in adopting the Exchange Act. This article will briefly discuss the “major questions” doctrine then look at the history of the Exchange Act and the disclosure regime that existed prior to the adoption of the legislation. The problems associated with climate change disclosure strongly resemble those that existed when Congress acted during the Great Depression. Whatever limits may or may not exist on the authority to require disclosure in the first instance, the SEC was given the authority to ensure the efficacy of disclosure regimes arising from private ordering that failed to meet the needs of investors and caused a misallocation of capital

Quasilocal Energy for a Kerr black hole

The quasilocal energy associated with a constant stationary time slice of the Kerr spacetime is presented. The calculations are based on a recent proposal \cite{by} in which quasilocal energy is derived from the Hamiltonian of spatially bounded gravitational systems. Three different classes of boundary surfaces for the Kerr slice are considered (constant radius surfaces, round spheres, and the ergosurface). Their embeddings in both the Kerr slice and flat three-dimensional space (required as a normalization of the energy) are analyzed. The energy contained within each surface is explicitly calculated in the slow rotation regime and its properties discussed in detail. The energy is a positive, monotonically decreasing function of the boundary surface radius. It approaches the Arnowitt-Deser-Misner (ADM) mass at spatial infinity and reduces to (twice) the irreducible mass at the horizon of the Kerr black hole. The expressions possess the correct static limit and include negative contributions due to gravitational binding. The energy at the ergosurface is compared with the energies at other surfaces. Finally, the difficulties involved in an estimation of the energy in the fast rotation regime are discussed.Comment: 22 pages, Revtex, Alberta-Thy-18-94. (the approximations in Section IV have been improved. To appear in Phys. Rev. D