Wings Questions 6 Gwen

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?

The most significant impact of aviation on the world in the first one hundred years of flight was the process in which flight became a common and even almost unexciting experience. Instead of being viewed as an exciting new frontier, flying came to be seen as a necessary, time-saving, slightly uncomfortable and inconvenient method of travel. No longer a grand adventure or even the height of comfort and luxury, it has become just another way to get from A to B at the earliest opportunity. It has been a major factor in the faster pace of modern life. Development in the airline industry today is driven by spreadsheets, statistics and budgets instead of visionaries, dangerous challenges and idealistic ideas of progress. Plane passengers evolved from heroes to a glorified form of cargo. Finally, on a more ideological level, the conquest of aviation has inspired scientific minds to aim for the “impossible” no matter how great the obstacles which stand in the way. The invention of the airplane sparked an age of great innovation and discovery. Wilbur and Orville Wright, and all other pioneers of aviation, left a legacy that has given us much more than just human flight.   

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

Commercial passenger flights between the Earth and human settlements in space will become common, after a long interim period where ground-to-space-and-back-again flights will be solely for scientific or governmental purposes. Faster and faster ways of flight will be discovered, stemming mainly from the quantum physics revolution, such as teleportation, folded space, wormhole exploitation and long-distance entanglement. The freight shipping market will expand explosively as more and more materials from outside of Earth become available to industries at home on Earth. Interplanetary organizations will replace international organizations as the arbiters of travel companies. New words, probably similar to “astrogation” or “spacing,” will come to replace “aviation” and “flying.” A second golden age of adventurous, glamorous space travel will arise and then grow blasé and fade out into mere convenience just as aviation once did. A new form of travel, more audacious and daring than any previous, will be discovered and the whole cycle will begin all over again. History always repeats itself, just on a different scale and in different means of expression.