HD Screens instead of windows...

[petermcleland]

http://gizmodo.com/the-first-supersonic ... 1525457929

I wonder if this private supersonic jet will, like Concorde, have to keep its Bang Tracks over water!

[dodger]

High Peter,

Personally i think it's a great idea, like they say in that article it will give the fuselage greater strength which makes the aircraft lighter, i am surprised they have not done more of it,

Roger.

[Garry Russell]

Terrible idea

You're not then seeing anything in reality

Might as well watch a video of an airport or the beach instead of going there.

Windows are for lookng out of and that's the point they miss.

[Dev One]

I would think its a great idea - think of all the poor passengers who dont like flying & are not interested in reality, so you could show films of non reality, so they dont then see bits moving & thinking they are going to fall off! And in any case what can one see out of current aircraft - especially if you are in the middle of a 380 or 747!
Keith

[Garry Russell]

You don't see much in the middle which is why it's window seat for me or I won't go.

[airboatr]

What happens if there is a short in the screen circuit.

[Garry Russell]

True ...they can have vids now for those that want to wAtch that, but, windows is reality and there is too much keeness to use technology where it is not needed.

[petermcleland]

Windows are a hazard in an aircraft that operates very high...That is why the concorde windows had to be so small. The loss of a normal sized window at about 60,000 feet would mean that all the passengers would probably die as there is no pressure breathing capability. Concorde with its small windows and massive engines could cope with the loss of three windows. I can see that with Concorde type speeds and fuselage expansion due to friction heat, a windowless fuselage would be a great advantage.

[TSR2]

But that's my point. If in the 60's they could do Concorde which did manage to have windows and fly faster, why cant they do better now. An aircraft without windows could easily have been built back then. It sounds like an inferior design and to mitigate the lack of windows, they've added tv screens. That's really not progress in my understanding of it. The real progress will be that new engine being developed which should enable an airframe to land and take off conventionally, but fly through the edge of space delivering uk to Australia in a couple of hours. Now if that had no windows id be saying, fair enough, because look at all of the other innovation, but this is small slower and really isn't 50 years of technical innovation.

[Swanoir]

Having suffered a transatlantic US Air flight a couple of years back where they couldn't even keep the seat back TVs and lights on for eight hours, I'd be nervous about the possibility of being in complete darkness with absolutely no way of seeing out, even if it was just for a couple of hours. Not since the days of the Comet 1 have I heard of aircraft windows being an engineering 'problem'. If it aint broke, don't fix it...

Oh, Goldfinger got sucked out of a Saberliner window, but that's coz Bond shot it to deliberately cause explosive decompression, didn't he?