Posted on 09/18/2010 4:36:04 AM PDT by SonOfDarkSkies
This is your captain speaking, your plane is about to become invisible!
Aircraft manufacturer Airbus has theorized a see-through passenger plane for the future, one with a completely transparent fuselage. In this concept craft, the push of a button by the captain would a send an electrical pulse through a high-tech ceramic skin -- making the main body of the plane see-through.
The extraordinary design would allow travelers to look down on cities and landscapes thousands of feet below or gaze up at the heavens, giving them the sensation of floating unassisted through the sky.
"Passengers in an airplane like this would experience flight in a completely new way," Airbus' head of research and technology, Axel Krein, the German news magazine Der Spiegel. Though the proposal might seem far-fetched, it is one of a number of plans being considered by engineers at the European aerospace giant.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Yeah. Mainly in shop class. LOL
Uh, thanks, but no thanks.
Sounds like a General Products hull:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Products_%28Larry_Niven%29
Fun, but I’d rather they spent their time and money preventing their planes from falling into the Atlantic Ocean.
Even though it may have a transparent skin, what won’t be transparent are all the hydraulics and wiring running through the plane.
I doubt there’d be much need for the bathroom after they pushed the “transparency” button. Mops & showers maybe... bathrooms - only on the longest flights.
Seriously - I don’t know why they haven’t pursued the old “flying wing” designs. The technology is there to make these viable(B2 stealth). I remember seeing a design that included a large windowed lounge in the front of the wing.
My first thought when I read about that a couple years ago was...
“OK, who’s been talking to Scotty?”
Transparent is not invisible. Another case of headline hype - exaggeration to get you to read the article which has nothing to do with the headline.
This is not a good idea. It’s a totally bad idea. A solid hull gives the passenger some feeling of security.
Whassamatter? Your shop teacher didn’t tell you not to electrocute your nipples?
>>> In this concept craft, the push of a button by the captain would a send an electrical pulse through a high-tech ceramic skin — making the main body of the plane see-through.
Gag pictures aside, if it worked this would be good as windows ports. A windowless airplane would be a stronger and safer airframe. Sections that would become transparent would be superior structurally. That would also allow larger windows or skylights.
An airplane is too complex, dangerous and paranoia-inducing of a system to introduce a massive change into. Remember the Concorde? A single crash and the entire program was scrapped. Being complex, you introduce to many chances for something to go wrong that noone thought of. Being dangerous, of course, you make the chance for something going wrong too calamatous. And being paranoia-inducing, you preclude the chance that the market will ever forgive.
Let’s see a piece of this ceramic that turns transparent with an electrical pulse.
Fake picture, no doubt.
"To create transparent aluminium, more power than is used by an entire city had to be focused into a dot with a diameter of less than one-twentieth the thickness of a human hair, and then could only maintain the transparent state for 40 femtoseconds." - from Wikipedia.
Also here: http://www.physorg.com/news167925273.html
Love it!!!!
In my experience over the last few years, for the most part, that would not be a good thing.
Scotty invented this back in the early 90’s and all while using a keyboard to interface with the computer.
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