Air may be considered a mixture of diatomic nitrogen and oxygen in which all internal molecular energies including molecular vibration are considered. This leads to an adequate thermodynamic description of air up to dissociation. The thermodynamic and transport properties of this "vibrationally excited" gas are presented and compared with those of a perfect gas (which does not include vibration), and of a dissociating gas in chemical equilibrium. The effects of the vibrationally excited gas on Viscous-Shock-Layer flows are then analyzed and compared for a 7° tangent sphere-cone at zero and five degs angle of attack and at altitudes between 50 and 200 kft. The nose radius is 0.15 ft and the body is 30 nose radii long. The wall temperature and freestream velocity are constant at 2,000 °K and 25,000 ft/sec, respectively. In general, the vibrationally excited gas results are more accurate than perfect gas, and computationally much faster than equilibrium. The vibrationally excited gas also shows potential for use in the nonequilibrium flow regime where the chemical reaction rates are too high for the "stiff" finite-rate equations. This and other areas for additional research are discussed. / M.S.