Anyone who knows me well has heard me rant about how the technological revolution of the last 20 years has brought us endlessly amazing new innovations that we have never even imagined before, yet it has somehow passed a blind eye over airline travel. Aside from having WIFI and low-res video screens on the backs of chairs, the airplanes of today might as well be the jets of the 1970's - that's 40 years ago!) I blame part of this on NASA. The agency is responsible for R&D and innovation but has neglected the first A in it's acronym. To be fair, their budget has been pretty piss poor. As my favorite astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson has pointed out, the 2008 bank bailout was greater than the entire 50 YEAR BUDGET of NASA. You can see the priorities have led us to neglect NASA.
[More on this in another post]
Recently there has been some chatter about privatization of this kind of R&D - including space exploration. Personally, (because of the influence of Mr. Tyson) I'm dubious.
It's heartening to see that Airbus is thinking pretty longterm about it's innovations in commercial airline planes. Completely new forms of construction and engineering is being considered at all levels of manufacturing (down to network and utility "wiring"). Watch the TED talk below.
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