WINGS Questions #6

Assignment #6 Wings

Chapters 15 and Conclusion

There are two questions this week. You must answer both and each answer must be at least 150 words.

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

I believe aviation’s most significant impact on our world today is globalization. When the jet airliner was first rolled out, it suddenly allowed any person with some spare change to spend access to even the most remote corners of the earth. Any region that had a landing strip and an airport was now a potential travel destination. As a result, tourism saw a huge boom. Travellers could seek out places they had only dreamed of seeing with their own eyes - for a relatively low price and in no time at all! Businesses expanded across continents with international business travel. Nowadays a global business model is a standard feature of every Fortune 500 Company. With the speed and convenience of the airplane, we as a human race have made our world smaller, and with that we have begun to eliminate borders to create a linked global community. Of course, with aviation’s impact on war as well, we are still a long ways away from perfect harmony as a human race, but the plane has made it possible to embrace new cultures and individually experience what our great planet has to offer.

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

The costs of innovation have hindered the growth of the aeronautical industry since the crest of the Cold War. We have sat by, content with our Boeing 747s, historical moon missions, satellites and B-52s. Eventually a combination of two distinct pressures will revolutionize flying machines again. The first is our environment and resources. As overpopulation continues to threaten the globe, humankind will have to get creative in order to sustain itself. We will need to seek new worlds to mine for resources and possibly relocate at some point. This may not be in the twenty-first century, but it is highly likely that we will at least have to create new aeronautical devices to enhance the atmosphere from the crippling results of climate change and the Greenhouse effect. The second pressure is the digital revolution, which in fifty years time will likely have produced hyper-intelligent AI, personalized biotechnical devices and the increased possibility of plausible space travel. I believe that before the 21^st Century is over, the massive space cruisers of Star Wars won’t be so fictional anymore. We will send astronauts to the far reaches of our solar system and hopefully begin cracking the issue of Light speed travel. Since the silicon chip was invented in the mid 20^th century, technology and innovation have leapt forward at a rate unseen in human history. I only expect that progress to surge exponentially.