WINGS assignment 6

Assignment #6 Wings

Chapters 15 and Conclusion

1. In your opinion, what was the most significant impact aviation had on our world in the first one hundred years of flight?

It would be easy to state that the most significant impact aviation had on our world in the first one hundred years of flight was military advancement. It makes sense to think of all of the weaponry and the idea of aerial war ruled the Second World War, connecting continents in a short hop of the ocean as opposed to the voyage it used to entail. While this is a huge impact, I don’t believe that it is the biggest. I think that the largest influence that aviation had on our world was the addition of jobs and a career built around so many aspects of this once wooden, fabric machine constructed by two men without college experience. We read about how it evolved from here into The Wright Company, which although relatively small, employed many in Dayton including factory workers and exhibitionists. Aviation was once something self-taught and in just a few years turned into schools to train actual pilots. Across the world, flight was sparking the minds of many. It was not localized in Dayton at all even though sometimes we like to believe it. Flight brought a great competition for bigger and better, but also brought connections across the world. Aviation was no longer a hobby but a career. Pilot classes became more intensive, and as the planes grew so did the curriculum. All of the components from engine, exterior, pilot, radio, even to predicting weather required special aviation-geared training. Factories were employing more and more to catch up to the demand. They went from building the entire plan to taking parts to assemble a whole. This obviously required more workers and even more specialized training.

2.   What do you think the future holds for aviation in the twenty first century?

It is next to impossible to imagine what the future in aviation will bring. The Wright brothers with their wooden biplane in 1903 would have never imagined where we are today in advancing their machine into a fine-tuned supercharged technology. Early aviators and enthusiast had huge goals and dreams for their times however could have never predicted the trajectory that their advances would make on the world and on flight. I think we will continue with the theme of “bigger and better” over the years. We will continue to push the limits and further develop or technologies to allow for more advanced flight and features that I could not even think up. Commercial airlines have opened up the playing field for everyday people to cross continents in a matter of hours. Planes are able to fly much longer distances without fueling needs, and I see this increased capacity continue to increase over the years. We are now able to break speeds of the sound barrier and travel farther and farther from Earth’s atmosphere which I also can only imagine to continue to lengthen and increase speeds in the future.