Wings Questions 6: Alexander Schlater

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

The most significant impact aviation had on our world, in my opinion, was bridging of nations. While immigration and international travel were certainly available prior to the invention of the airplane, they were certainly more demanding and much slower than a simple flight on a modern passenger plane. The use of commuter planes has allowed for persons to pursue opportunities that would not otherwise be available to them. This includes going abroad for job opportunities, obtaining a higher education, studying more diverse areas of nature, obtaining a better cultural awareness, even escaping persecution. It is even possible to live, study, or work abroad and still return home every year to visit friends and family for the holidays or special occasions. What used to be a life changing commitment is now just an investment of a few hundred dollars in airfare. Natural barriers such as mountains and oceans kept certain parts of the world segregated for thousands of years, with the invention of the airplane; one can now travel to any location on the planet, and thus I believe the use of aviation for transportation has been the most important aspect of flight on a global level.

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

The future of aviation seems quite unimaginable. With successfully landed humans on the moon and robots on mars all happening after only about a century in the sky, there is no telling how much further aviation will go in another hundred years. Based on the progression of aviation thus far, however, I assume human pilots will be all but completely replaced. The limiting factor for innovations in almost any field in aviation will come to be the pilot. Machines are reaching unheard of speeds and altitudes, or more appropriately distances from earth. As advanced as our technology is, it will simply reach a point where a human cannot survive under such conditions. This is already being demonstrated in space travel by sending robots to explore far off reaches of the solar system. The arising popularity of unmanned drones also promotes this idea of robotification. While obviously impractical for transport, this could be utilized in any other area of aviation, such as high speed transport of goods across the planet. Additionally, I feel that the advancements in unmanned space craft will lead to the eventual study of even farther areas of the universe, of course, time will then play a role as the limiting factor. Perhaps the most drastic, but long predicted advancement will be the total substitution of terrestrial transport for aeronautical vehicles. Flying cars have been a prediction of science fiction programs as far back as a time when 2014 would have been portrayed as a futuristic society already using such vehicles.