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Airbus Planning Transparent Planes
goG writes "European aircraft manufacturer Airbus has come up with the idea to build a passenger flight with a completely transparent fuselage. The central body of the aircraft will allow passengers to the see the stars above and city lights below. 'The planes of the future will offer an unparalleled, unobstructed view of the wonders of the five continents — where you will be able see the pyramids or the Eiffel Tower through the transparent floor of the aircraft,' Airbus said while unveiling the concept 'The Future By Airbus' earlier this year."
H. Sapiens has a built in fear of heights. Take a six month old kid and try to get him to crawl over a pane of glass suspended at a meter's altitude - no go. It's been tested, after reaching a certain age he won't do it. He has figured out the dangers of the Z coordinate.
Now stuff a hundred people on a plane and repeat the experiment. You'll have people screaming in terror as they fight to reach the exits. However much you rationalize it, fear of heights is built in into the average H. Sapiens brain.
I have a fear of falling (and the more likely to my brain falling is the more the fear kicks in), glass or transparent anything that I'd stand, sit, or other hope to hell is going to support me would give me a full blown panic attack...
Btw lots of people tell me it's just a fear of heights, except I'm fine on high things that seem solid and unlikely to fall... A cabin on the top of a 'mountain', won't bother me. A thin metal bar on the edge of a bridge 200 feet overlooking the ground (or water) makes me nervous. The transparent flooring on the upper level of a skyscrapper I once visited was another to have me curled up on the floor...
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
Join the club. I'm fine with flying, but I freak out at steep drops that I'm "connected" to. My daughters thought it was hilarious when I lost it at the Grand Canyon, and I was nervous all throughout dinner when we ate at the top of the Stratosphere (not my choice).
Given that I almost panicked on the Palm Springs aerial tramway, I suspect that I'd go into full-blown panic mode on a plane that did that.
Airbus may be able to make a plane like this. I doubt that they'll sell many to commercial airlines, due to liability concerns over people with acrophobia. There may be a niche market for sightseeing etc...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
If price only mattered people would ride donkeys rather than fly. Crash-proof planes would be extremely popular. At least until the first one crashed.
Agreed.
Try going up in a hot-air balloon some time. Being able to see all around you, most of the way below, and a good portion of above -- all at once -- from even a few hundred feet off the ground is really spectacular. I'd expect that at airliner altitudes, it would be even more so. Not as much detail visible on the ground, of course, but the scale of the view would be worth it.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
what about when flying through a boiling thunderstorm with lighting all around the airframe? That will go down well with the fear to fly crowd.
Or those all too often - ooops that plane is a bit too close - incidents as it is now most of the people on board can't see that another plane came too close but would totally freak out if the whole plane load saw it.
How much were you prepared to pay for that?
No more than the guy sitting next to me.
Imagine a restaurant where the prices were constantly changing and, if you happened to order your meal at the wrong time, you could end up paying 2-5 times as much for the same meal as the the guy at the next table. Pretty soon everyone in the restaurant would be obsessing about the price to the exclusion of all other considerations.
For years the airlines have been playing crazy games with ticket prices and now they have only themselves to blame for the public obsession with ticket prices to the exclusion of all other considerations.
Yeah, that's a better way of phrasing it. Edges.
I'm fine inside a skyscraper with a standard vertical window. If it tilts out so that I feel like I'm leaning over the edge, that's the trigger.
At the G.C., though, i couldn't get within 20 feet of the edge where the observation point was. How that Native American tribe gets people to do the Skywalk thing, I have no idea.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
This year, purchased a ticket at the Shanghai World Financial Center for a ride to the top. The top floor is that bridge area. Part of the floor has transparent (thick) tiles about two feet wide running lengthwise in the center.
I'll never forget when I first stepped on one. I scooted to the side ASAP! For a moment, I had visions of it cracking and me falling right through. After ten minutes or so, I sheepishly started walking on it like any normal tile. Reason being, I wanted to take some nice photos.
Life is not for the lazy.
I've flown on old Bell Huey Helicopters with the doors wide open (I guess the helicopters themselves weren't that old at the time). When the pilot makes a hard turn the whole body goes perpendicular to the ground, and if you are say, on the right side of the helicopter when it is making a right turn, you are stuck to the floor by centrifugal force and are staring straight down at the ground with nothing between you and it but air. A little unnerving at first. And if you happen to be carrying a lot of weight, it is best to hold on to the posts or better yet buckle in to a harness. A buddy of mine almost slid out.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Not necessarily.
your brain works in mysterious ways.
There is an interesting phenomenon that I dont recall the name for. basically the reason you freak in a skyscraper but not in a plane is the fact that there is nothing in your view to "connect" you to the ground.
when you are in a skyscraper, your brain sees the line of the building to the ground, makes the connection and says "F***! I'm high up!".
In an aircraft, there isn nothing for your brain to connect the plane to the ground, so you are less prone to that freak out.
Point of fact: Im DEATHLY afraid of heights. I cant climb a 20' ladder without freaking out. Yet as a skydiving instructor for the past 8 years, I regularly fly (calmly) to altitude sitting on the floor of an airplane by an open cargo door as it climbs to altitude (often with my a** inches from the edge, and my leg dangling outside). from 5' to 14,000 feet I can look out the door calmly and marvel at the view. (but have trouble climbing a 150' firewatch tower in a nearby forest)
interesting question: what about he baggage in the cargo hold? wont that get in the way of the purty view?
What do you want to see at the bottom? Boxes and boxes and more boxes ... and on the top. cables, cables and more cables. See-through-fuselage-my-ass I say.
I see this more a too early 1st April joke ... Unless they magically add some lights, call buttons, etc and make the floor where the seats are connected and the boxes and the boxes contents (aka luggage) transparent there won't be anything more to see anyway.
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
How about replacing the tiny windows with decent cameras and screens?
Some years ago, one airline my parents flew on had a camera looking forwards and down from the nose of the plane. You could get a (better than?) pilot's view of the take-off and landing.
Carefully feel above and below your eyes. Feel those flaps of skin? They're called eyelids. You can close them whenver you want to reduce the level of light that enters your eyes. Try it now. Don't use your fingers, they come with their own muscles. You might need to exercise those muscles if you haven't used them previously.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.