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The future of air transport: Airbus unveils concept airplane for 2030

now that is smart :>

Airbus is behind the curve that Boeing has set with their Dreamliner aircraft. While Boeing was building a futuristic craft now, Airbus was building the enormous 380, the super SUV of airliners. It is about time Airbus steps up to the challenge.

Random thoughts:
Twin vertical stabilizers are rare (new?) for aircraft this size.
When was the last airliner to have semi-embedded engines? The De Havilland Comet of 1952?
If you have see through walls, you won't need ordinary windows too.
Travelers with private cabins? I've never even been in 1st class...

no one has ever made a prediction of the future that was even close to what actually occurred or was technologically done.
some of us remember the GM fururistic city that was all the rage at he 1939 worlds fair. i do not believe that anything they projected actually came into being because the technology developed in WW II and later for the space program took a quantum leap past that available in the late 1930s.
their worst mistake was to picture the city of the future with few inhabitants. they never even considered the increase in the population, and what was shown was all white, not another race even existed in their future city. this would seem to be what the teaparty people mean when they say they want their country back or wanting the original constitution back, the one that allowed slavery and counted all others at 3/5 of a person.

this would seem to be what the teaparty people mean when they say they want their country back or wanting the original constitution back, the one that allowed slavery and counted all others at 3/5 of a person.

First off, the article had nothing to do with politics or history or tea party or anything else related to politics.

Secondly, people who are as ignorant as you sound from your comments should not be... well... commenting.

I, for example, believe in the tea party movement, and I'm Hispanic. My beliefs have nothing to do with wanting slavery or reducing anyone to less than a whole person.

I do, however, believe in the constitution and I want to bring the country back to what the founding fathers envisioned and which most people now still believe in.

My guess is that, you and your ideological beliefs are threatened by the constitution and by the freedoms which were originally guaranteed to us under that constitution and the bill of rights, and therefore, you and your fellow progressives/democrats are willing to lie in order to stop the tea party movement.

Especially when one considers the reliability problems of French technology. The French or France is one of the major components of Airbus and histoically their mechanical technology has been completely unreliable. They design beautiful, amazingly comfortable and interesting things but does anyone remember French cars, or the French Caravelle airplane, or the French Ariane rockrts . The cars didn't run very well for long, the Caravelles had a nasty habit of falling out of the air and it took years before the Arianes got mor than 500' into the atmosphere, nevermind space. NASA had it's problems but next to Ariane they looked like geniouses It might be a great idea if Boeing would build it.

Before allowing to launch future air transport, it's a must to pass the standards of certification of quality management systems to assure that the operation is safe and legal. Registering ISO certificate is easy because an ISO 9001 registrar will lead them to the guidelines of ISO rules.

"360 degree see-through walls" probably won't happen because of all the airsick bags they would need for the people that would get vertigo from suddenly being in "mid-air" with no visible means of support.
That and we will have to wait for Star Trek's "transparent aluminum".
Hey SCOTTY!!

If you think about it - the jet engine is the thing that is holding us
from getting faster speeds for a shorter travel time. At space speeds
- where the jet cannot go because of the lack of O2 - is anywhere in
the world in an hour. Space speeds now are 25,000 mph.at 16 miles
up. LAX to JFK is 6 minutes.LAX to Sidney is 17 minutes.

New planes should be designed so that boarding is in front, debarking is in back--or vice versa. With both being in front, general boarding becomes a mess--the people who get in first grab the front seats and block the aisle stowing their luggage up top while people behind them are trying to get past to get to their seats. With debarking on the opposite side from boarding, passengers will automatically go as far back (or forward) as there are empty seats, and won't clog the aisles.