Commercial air travel has changed in numerous ways over the last half-century. In the 1960s, tickets could easily cost up to five times what they are today. Passengers could smoke on the plane and consume as much booze as they wanted for free.
Today? You can still get your drink on (but you’ll most likely have to pay for it), and ultra-budget tickets now, with tiny seats and added baggage fees, are ubiquitous.
There’s one aspect to air travel that, strangely, hasn’t changed, though: how fast the plane goes. We’re still flying at essentially the same speeds we did in the years before humanity stepped foot on the moon.
And, given modern congestion that adds extra time for planes to get in and out of airports, it actually takes longer today than it did 50 years ago flying on the same routes.
This chapter will provide an overview of the current state Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) and of electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft (EVTOL), drones, and the use of electric and hydrogen-powered flight.
We look at the promise of supersonic and hypersonic flight. And we wrap with an exploration of the innovation happening across the space continuum.