The end of noise in the sky. Transparent planes, with larger windows, offering more comfort to passengers and being sustainable. The future of aviation is already underway, with research under way to make these ideas a reality and ensure sustainability.
More than a century after Santos Dumont’s 14 Bis took off, much has changed. Airplane prototypes are constantly being updated, with factories like this one being responsible for bringing the latest to the assembly lines. Among the industry’s main challenges for the future of aviation are the modernization of aerodynamics and the development of increasingly sustainable fuels.
“We have set the goal that our aviation industry will be carbon neutral by 2050. It seems far away, but the challenge is huge. So, we and several players in the industry are working right now, talking about fuel changes”, explains Luis Carlos Afonso, Vice President of Engineering at Embraer.
On the route set out to achieve the goal of not dumping more carbon in the sky, there is an invention that will disrupt the impacts that flights will have on the environment and could even change our perception of a plane in the air. Just imagine looking up and seeing a plane like that, not hearing a sound.
Companies around the world are immersed in studies to be able to take passengers to the air in commercial planes powered 100% by electric energy.
Embraer, for example, conducts tests to use electric aircraft over long and short distances. One of the more advanced plans is a model called “EVTOL”. The vehicle is a mixture of plane, helicopter and car, with the idea that the aircraft can be used from 2026, initially in the urban perimeter.
Although the new propulsion models are getting closer, the complete replacement of the fleet can take decades. Meanwhile, researchers are looking for other ways to optimize flights, such as improving wings and producing more fuel-efficient engines.
There is a design change as well. Airbus, one of the world’s leading aircraft companies, recently revealed plans to develop planes with larger windows and a transparent roof. The project should be ready in 2035.
In addition, comfort is also an essential item. Companies are already developing planes with beds, including for passengers traveling in economy class. The company Air New Zealand announced a project with a new Boeing that has capsules for passengers. The new model is expected to enter service in 2024.
Aviation renews itself, based on the ideas of the father of aviation, which, for the neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis, are impossible to measure and classify.
“It is impossible for neuroscience to measure the degree of intelligence, the degree of abstraction capacity that a guy who looked at the sky and saw how birds flew, realized that he could not reproduce how birds fly, how he looked at the model of animals flying and generated a simplification that was capable of flying. This is a phenomenon that we call non-computable, because there will never be a machine, a computer, or a digital system capable of reproducing something similar”, quotes Nicolelis.
Source: CNN Brasil
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