Making the Skies Friendlier to Fly

The test of a missile or missile interceptor ends with aerial fallout of missile wreckage in particles of all sizes, and for this reason commercial flights have been prohibited from flying over missile test ranges. But because the test ranges are so vast, this restriction makes huge areas of airspace unavailable for airline routes. The Army and the FAA are currently exploring the feasibility of making this mostly empty air space available to commercial flights, and Applied Analytical Incorporated of Huntsville, Alabama, is a partner in simulating the risks in such a venture. Matt Newsome, one of the engineers testing out the Aircraft Vulnerability Model, uses Data Desk to get a picture of where and how the pieces might fall, and he is an enthusiastic proponent of the software's capacity for this very demanding job.

The datasets Matt cranks through Data Desk to come up with a view like the movie shown here are as big as all outdoors—millions of data points result from the need to chart mile upon mile of three-dimensional space. Also, the simulation must account not only for risk but for the mass, density, velocity, and location of each particle that might fall. "And remember," Matt points out, "the safety standard we are working to is higher than sky-high."

According to Matt, the Airline Vulnerability Model he's working with is a "pseudo finite element model" written in Fortran. The results of the simulation runs are poured into Data Desk. "It is just so easy," Matt reports about the process of importing the data. "A spreadsheet program wouldn't be able to handle this much data, and it's so much more flexible than a spreadsheet program."

Data Desk's visualization capabilities can show where the 30,000 pieces of missile debris used in each Applied Analytical Incorporated's simulation are likely to go. A few thousand more simulation runs, and Matt Newsome will have a much clearer notion than most of us of just what might come out of the blue.

Click to view Mr. Newsome's Data Desk animation.

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