Sunday, April 6, 2014

Wings #6 Joe Bradley-Hutchison


  1. In your opinion, what was the most significant impact aviation had on our world in the first one hundred years of flight?
Linking technology was by far the most significant impact aviation had on the world, and using aviation to its full potential.  Before the birth of widespread commercial flights, the railway system served the people with a form of fast transportation across lands, but aviation took transportation to the next level.  The development of intricate and highly adaptable commercial airways made the business of air travel one of the most efficient strategies of crossing the world, and the constant use of modern technology always resulted in safer travels.  More precise radio and radar advancements continued to allow pilots to take off, change course, and land in the most efficient manner.  Advancements in navigation and predicting weather patterns was crucial for pilots who possessed a large passenger list, and required the specific aspects of the skies they are travelling in (Crouch, 610-611).  Aviation was not only an innovation in itself, but an innovation that incorporated the use of future advancements as well.
It was a crucial step made by the Wright Brothers to make one of the first workable flying machines in the world, but it was what mankind did with it afterwards that made this innovation so special.  Aviation itself is a growing technological field that requires modern and advancing technology to keep it at the forefront of technological advancement within military and commercial flying businesses.  Therefore, it needs to incorporate any technological advancements of the current period, and so the greatest impact aviation had on the world was within the field of technological innovations itself.  The dream of flight was accomplished through the Wright Brothers, and the advancement in technology brings this field even farther.  Furthermore, it allows for new technology to be tested in the field, and therefore impacts technology in an experimental fashion.  This means that advancement in technology results in the advancement in aviation, which means that when one advances the other advances as well.
2.   What do you think the future holds for aviation in the twenty first century?
When the Wright Brother conquered the air in the early 20th century they disproved the earlier assumptions of their processors, and modern science at the time as well.  In 1909, Wilbur Wright remarked that a plane could never fly between New York and Paris in one flight, which is now something that thousands of people do every day.  Many believed the idea of the helicopter to be only a dream, but now they are considered a normal machine to be built for commercial and military reasons (Crouch, 636-637).  Furthermore, many believed that aerial flight was the only achievable task for mankind, but in 1969, mankind broke this tradition and landed on the moon.  The question is then, what is the future of aviation in the twenty first century?
The future only rests in the dreamers of aviation, which was what drove the field in the first place.  When the scientific accepted conclusions were against these early aviators they responded by trying anyway, and ended up defying the long accepted ideas of the past.  In an entire century mankind has gone beyond the Wright Brother’s innovation, and pushed to farthest realms of space and air.  There are manned space stations circulating the Earth as I write this response, and there is probably some satellite being launched to take pictures of a planet far from Earth in the deepest parts of space.  Mean while, thousands upon hundreds of thousands of people are traveling the world upon airlines equipped with the most advance technology possible.  The future of aviation, however, shall always remain true to those who wish to further its innovations.  The dreamers, the deep thinkers, and the innovators of the future are going to be those who will not just simply accept the present as absolute, but push the limits of the present to its full potential.  As technology continues to improve with each decade so with the innovations of aviation, and more importantly, so will the innovators of the future of aviation in using the technology of their time to achieve their dreams.  Therefore, the future lies with the dreamers, like the Wright Brothers, who will not just accept the present for what it is, but push for the impossible so far that it finally becomes a reality.




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