Wings #6

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 the first 100 years of flight was that it made the world more accessible. Before flight was possible, travel time was so great that it often meant that people couldn’t travel. Transcontinental flight is the greatest example of this concept. To travel to another continent, one would have to drive to a coast, hop on a boat, and spend the next several days floating along until you finally arrived, at which time you might even have to take another long drive to actually get to your final destination. With the help of flight, people are able to travel overseas in a couple of hours. This makes the world seem a little smaller. It makes it more possible for the average Joe to experience other cultures and see what is out there in the world. It also brings about the global economy of business, making it possible for companies to be based in several different countries, and still work together.




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


I think that in the same way the last century made the world a little smaller, the next century will make our solar system a little smaller. New technology is constantly being developed, and soon we will know more about the planets around us than ever before. For example, there are new pads being developed so that the shuttles could possibly land and be salvaged, instead of crash and be mostly ruined. And as this technology improves, we are also improving the technology that gets sent in these shuttles. For example, there is a professor that the electrical engineering department recruited to come to Wright State that is working on developing a human robot that could be sent to Mars. I think that this will become a more common trend—that the aviation industry will inspire other industries to develop and design technologies that will work alongside aviation. The more developed the industry becomes, the more it will become integrated with other fields.