The results of a seminal experimental study of the effects of bluntness and swallowing length on transition on an 8-degree cone at zero angle of attack in Mach 6 high Reynolds number flow are analyzed with the STABL computational fluid dynamics code package. Mean flow solutions and PSE-Chem stability analyses for a total of 11 different nose tip bluntnesses, ranging from sharp to 15.24 mm radius, are obtained. For the sharpest cases, N Tr ≈ 7, but as bluntness increases and the calculated swallowing distance lengthens, the computed N-factor at the experimentally-observed transition location drops below the level at which Mack's second mode would be expected to lead to transition. These results indicate that the dominant instability mechanism for the bluntest cases is not the second mode.