European plane-maker Airbus recently asked its engineers to lock themselves in a room, eat their weight in peyote and dream up the Aircraft of the Future. What they came up with were morphing seats that conform to a person’s shape, holographic projections that can change a private cabin into a Japanese garden and the world’s first see-through airplane.Says Airbus’ head of research and technology: “Passengers in an airplane like this would experience flight in a completely new way.” That way: terrified!The transparent plane’s outer skin would be made of a special futuristic type of ceramic. The push of a button would send electricity flowing through the material, making the main body of the plane see-through, German news magazine Der Spiegel reported last week.This is essentially one of those thought experiments that we’ll all end up laughing at 50 years from now. The same way we laugh at those Scientific American covers from the mid 20th-century that showed everyone flying around on their own personal jet packs. Still, it would be cool if Boeing took this as a challenge to come up with something even more far-fetched, like the world’s first invisible plane. Make it happen, engineering people!
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