Slashdot Mirror
The Airplane of the Future May Not Have Windows
merbs writes: Hope you're not too attached to looking out the windows when you fly — the designers of tomorrow's airplanes seem intent on getting rid of them. A Paris design firm recently made waves when it released its concept for a sleek, solar paneled, windowless passenger jet. Before that, Airbus proposed eschewing windows and building its cabins out of transparent polymers. Now, the Center for Process Innovation has floated its own windowless plane concept, and it's attracting plenty of headlines, too.
Fine, if it comes with a really good imaging system passengers can access. A VR set "would be nice."
In reality, of course, it would likely mean that only the 1% will be able to see what's going on outside, as that sounds like a First Class option.
We're going to need more vomit bags. People who were prune to motion sickness will be worse off without the windows since they are cut off from the last piece of sensory information that tells them that they are moving.
How are we supposed to see the gremlins?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Maybe if you fly every week, it does. I fly rarely (almost a decade since my last flight), and I find it nice to look at the clouds, other planes, patterns on the ground, lights at night, the mountains. And now that I have a few kids, I can't wait for them to get to see it. Windowless plane sounds terrible to me.
..i think they will have to keep windows in the hatches. they'll now call the emergency exit rows "observation deck" and charge x2 for them.
thats what i call win-win :)
Airplanes are the only thing with Windows that don't crash (often).
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
I'm the same way - I love staring out the window of an airplane. I'll bring hours of entertainment on a flight, and then spend half the trip just wistfully gazing out the window.
One of my favorite moments (and quite probably a formative moment of my love for window seats on planes) was a landing at Victoria (or maybe it was Vancouver, been a while) airport. I was a young teenager, and was seated just aft of the left wing. I didn't know much about aircraft then, so when we touched down and all of a sudden the rear engine cowling splits in half and rejoins behind the exhaust to form a redirection chute (thrust reversal), and then the pilot throttles up (I've always loved the whistle of turbines and the power of a jet engine) while the plane shudders and rumbles to a stop... I was in heaven. I'm sure my eyes were the size of saucer plates. It was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen, like discovering you were actually riding a transformer the whole time. And that moment of surprise and joy is frozen in time in my memory, along with my love of window seats on airplanes. I'd be sad if they ever took that away.
From TFA:
Before that, Airbus proposed eschewing windows and building its cabins out of transparent polymers.
What that really means is that Airbus wants to turn the entire cabin into a window.
Also from TFA:
Hope you're not too attached to looking out the windows when you fly — the designers of tomorrow's airplanes seem intent on getting rid of them.
Well, I guess that technically, Airbus would be "getting rid of the windows", but if the end result is that everyone on the plane has a better view, I don't think it supports TFA's argument at all.
It's the Year of the linux airplane !! YYYEEEAAAAHH
aaaaaaa