Advanced Aerodynamics
This parameter is the ratio of wing span squared to wing area.
What is aspect ratio?
This Cold War-era program led to the creation of the first operational jet-powered bomber in the United States.
What is the B-47 Stratojet program?
The time required to complete one orbit.
What is orbital period?
The second moment of area is commonly used in beam theory and is also known as this.
What is area moment of inertia?
This rocket remains the most powerful by total thrust ever successfully flown.
What is the Saturn V?
The point where the aerodynamic moments do not change due to angle of attack.
What is the neutral point?
This aerospace company, founded in 1929, built the iconic DC-3 before being absorbed into what is now Boeing.
What is the Douglas Aircraft Company?
This six-parameter set uniquely defines a Keplerian orbit.
What are the orbital elements?
This aerodynamic force acts at a distance from the center of gravity, causing rotation.
What is pitching moment?
This aircraft holds the record for the highest altitude achieved by a winged, powered airplane.
What is the X-15?
In boundary layer theory, this specific dimensionless number indicates transition to turbulence.
What is the critical Reynolds number?
This experimental aircraft validated the concept of variable-sweep wings, later influencing the F-14 and B-1.
What is the Bell X-5?
Reaction wheels saturate over time due to accumulated momentum and require this device to dump it.
What is a torque rod or magnetic torquer?
The phugoid mode in longitudinal dynamics primarily exchanges energy between these two quantities.
What are kinetic and potential energy?
This spacecraft is currently the farthest human-made object from Earth.
What is Voyager 1?
This instability in transonic flow is caused by a shock oscillating over an airfoil due to boundary layer separation.
What is buffet (or shock-induced oscillation)?
Developed under the Strategic Defense Initiative, this aerospace project attempted to create space-based missile interceptors.
What is the Brilliant Pebbles or SDI (Star Wars) program?
This low-energy pathway uses Lagrange points to transfer between Earth and Moon orbits.
What is a ballistic capture trajectory?
This buckling criterion determines when thin cylindrical shells collapse under axial compression.
What is Euler buckling or Von Mises criterion?
This modified aircraft, nicknamed "Silk Purse," was capable of steady flight at alphas up to and exceeding 70 degrees through the use of vortex generators and thrust vectoring.
What is the F/A-18
This method linearizes compressible flow around slender bodies at low supersonic Mach numbers.
What is Prandtl-Glauert / Linearized Supersonic Theory?
This 1957 launch did not just place the first artificial satellite into orbit — it fundamentally reshaped U.S. science funding and education policy.
What is Sputnik 1?
A maneuver that changes only the orientation of the orbital plane without affecting altitude.
What is an inclination change?
The determinant of |A - λI| = 0 in stability analysis yields these critical system values.
What are eigenvalues?
This NASA rover holds the record for the longest distance driven on another celestial body.
What is Opportunity (Mars rover)?