Numerical Study of Flow Augmented Thermal Management for Entry and Re-Entry Environments

The use of a flow augmented thermal management system for entry and re-entr environments is one method for reducing heat and drag loads. This concept relies on jet penetration from supersonic and hypersonic counterflowing jets that could significantly weaken and disperse the shock-wave system of the spacecraft flow field. The objective of this research effort is to conduct parametric studies of the supersonic flow over a 2.6% scale model of the Apollo capsule, with and without the counterflowing jet, using time-accurate and steady-state computational fluid dynamics simulations. The numerical studies, including different freestream Mach number angle of attack counterflowing jet mass flow rate, and nozzle configurations, were performed to examine their effect on the drag and beat loads and to explore the counternowing jet condition. The numerical results were compared with the test data obtained from transonic blow-down wind-tunnel experiments conducted independently at NASA MSFC

American Military Culture and the Strategic Seduction of Remote Warfare

This essay endeavours to answer the question of why the US National Security establishment puts such ever-expanding faith in remotely piloted drones in a strategic bombing role in fighting twenty-first-century wars. This essay argues, one: the use of strategic air power has been shaped by long-term historical factors surrounding an imbalanced emphasis on the science of warfare in the United States military beginning in the nineteenth century stretching back to the founding of the US Military Academy at West Point. Two, twenty-first-century drone warfare fits into the larger historical context surrounding the development of a uniquely American version of strategic bombing theory during the inter-war period and carried out in World War II. That theory promoted a technological determinism that lives on despite the repeated failure of strategic bombing to live up to expectations largely because the creation of the independent Air Force in 1947 rested upon the perceived achievements of US strategic bombing during the war