From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.5-pre1 (2020-06-20) on ip-172-31-74-118.ec2.internal X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.0 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_40 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.5-pre1 Date: 18 Mar 93 00:41:54 GMT From: eachus@mitre-bedford.arpa (Robert I. Eachus) Subject: Re: The actual quote from the Post AAS article Message-ID: List-Id: In article <1993Mar16.145422.14034@cbnewsl.cb.att.com> willett@cbnewsl.cb.att.c om (david.c.willett) writes: > It seems to me that the complexity of an ATC system would increase > similarly to the N-body problem from physics... There are two different problems here, the complexity of the software, and the computational difficulties of a particular number of planes in the same airspace. Mike was talking about the first, David about the second. Both are involved here. The highest aircraft densities in the world occur over Southern California and the Boston-Washington corridor. Most of this traffic is general aviation not commerical, but the ATC system still has to deal with it. However a much nastier problem is that with the long traffic corridors in the US and in some cases, several parallel corridors, all of this traffic can be concentrated in just a small slice of the sky. This is a particular problem with, for example the approaches to Hartsfield in Atlanta. The complexity of the software to deal with these things does not grow at the same rate as the mathematical complexity of the computation, but you do need to use much more sophisticated algorithms to keep the mathematical complexity under control. Also the reality of the situation is that only a few countries have or need more than one enroute control center, and the distribution requirements do make the problem much harder. Sorry to spend so much time contributing data not heat to the discussion... :-) -- Robert I. Eachus with Standard_Disclaimer; use Standard_Disclaimer; function Message (Text: in Clever_Ideas) return Better_Ideas is...