[HN Gopher] Airports for the Supersonic Age
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Airports for the Supersonic Age
Author : maurits
Score : 110 points
Date : 2020-02-03 13:10 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.airporthistory.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.airporthistory.org)
| _visgean wrote:
| i accidentally clicked on the image and it said download is not
| allowed. So I went to web tools and downloaded the image anyway.
| I don't even want that image but I hate that feature.
| dennnis wrote:
| Stick it to the man
| ethagknight wrote:
| Interestingly, on Mac in Safari, if you switch to Reader View,
| you can download images and copy text to your heart's content.
| AWildC182 wrote:
| Worse yet, if you just disable scripts entirely the page
| renders beautifully and you can click on the images to expand
| them and actually read the tiny text.
| soared wrote:
| I wonder if the overbuilding of airports during this era directly
| led to affordable air travel in our current time?
| AWildC182 wrote:
| This is a really good question. It's a complicated issue and
| depends on some definitions.
|
| If we didn't build any and decided we wanted massive air travel
| now? Yep.
|
| If we are only talking about travel between class B airports
| (basically any major city: LAX, DEN, ORD...)? Not really? DEN
| for instance was rebuilt in a new location around 1995.
|
| What about literally all airports? Yes, but not really because
| of _this_ era. We built tons of airports all over the country
| during WWII and the early cold war for military purposes. The
| FAA gave out tons of money to municipalities to build airports
| in places we 'd never have them today, see KSMO[1]. Between
| this and funding from the federal government to subsidize
| routes serving far flung communities, we're seeing a lot of air
| travel that wouldn't exist otherwise. This isn't necessarily a
| bad thing though as it allows these smaller communities to
| remain connected and support larger businesses. If this
| situation didn't exist it would put yet more pressure on
| massive landlocked urban centers to support everyone converging
| on them and make them the only locales that could support major
| businesses.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Monica_Airport#Future
| Psyladine wrote:
| >If this situation didn't exist it would put yet more
| pressure on massive landlocked urban centers to support
| everyone converging on them and make them the only locales
| that could support major businesses.
|
| The fantasy of the 'strong towns' movement.
| AWildC182 wrote:
| Hardly a fantasy. Just look at the reqs for Amazon's HQ2.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_HQ2#Requirements
| orliesaurus wrote:
| Makes me think... If we will ever see something like a Concord
| fly again!!
| zdw wrote:
| This page has great content, but some Javascript or CSS stupidity
| that prevents text selection. Anyone have a good fix to reenable
| that?
|
| I use the text selection highlight as I read just to keep my
| place when scrolling around to look at the images.
|
| Browser makers need to come up with a "Disable user-hostile
| features" toggle that gets rid of this and form related BS like
| the inability to paste passwords.
| fluffysandwich wrote:
| I do the same thing, using text selection to keep my place when
| scrolling. Feels very gross having to resort to extensions to
| restore what should be basic browser functionality. (e.g. Don't
| Fuck With Paste[0] for sites that try to prevent you pasting
| passwords)
|
| [0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/don-t-fuck-
| wi...
| eitland wrote:
| > Browser makers need to come up with a "Disable user-hostile
| features" toggle that gets rid of this and form related BS like
| the inability to paste passwords.
|
| It exist in most browsers and is typically called something
| allng the lines "disable Javascript" :-)
| mrspeaker wrote:
| My "dystopian future prediction" is it's about to get a whole
| lot worse.
|
| Browser makers can stop JS shenanigans, but they are also
| integrating web assembly: the perfect tool for creating user-
| hostile, proprietary, unblockable features.
|
| Sites will deploy stupid things like "a browser inside a
| browser". Soon OCR/"analog holes" will be the only way around
| them.
| vmateixeira wrote:
| Paste this on the browser console:
|
| document.body.onselectstart = function() {return true;};
| agumonkey wrote:
| alternatively, firefox reader mode doesn't intercept
| selection events
| lawlorino wrote:
| Does this work on mobile also?
| bklaasen wrote:
| It does in Firefox on Android.
| [deleted]
| agumonkey wrote:
| The level of naive fantasy (no offense, I'm just talking about
| the simple drawing technique and the dreamy future) in this era
| is staggering.
| bdamm wrote:
| It is a great lesson on why premature optimization can be a bad
| thing.
| mimixco wrote:
| Terrific pictures and rare history info! Thanks for the post.
| ArtWomb wrote:
| Ah! What could have been. Failure of developing (quiet) super-
| sonic and hyper-sonic civilian aircraft is one of the great
| shortcomings of our age. The Boom (shockwave) has given way to
| The Zoom (video teleconferencing)
|
| An interesting point of the "future architecture" speculations is
| that they never anticipated algorithmically-aided parametric
| designs in the manner of Zaha Hadid ;)
|
| https://www.dezeen.com/2019/09/26/zaha-hadid-architects-star...
| EFFALO wrote:
| There is a certain quality of the graphic design, colors,
| typography, and layout of the "vintage" planning & marketing
| materials shown here that I just can't put my finger on why I
| like it so much. Perhaps a certain richness from the inks that
| were available and the type of tools used to produce it.
|
| Whatever it is, it feels authentic and hopeful. I love the sense
| of optimism that the graphics (and history shared in this
| article) invokes. Great stuff.
| ArtWomb wrote:
| It's made by humans. With formal, classic training in plastic
| arts. By hand. Without Adobe tech. Using only pen, ink,
| charcoal, and paint
|
| Sometimes looking at 1920-30s High Modernist design, it
| suggests that "new dawn" in human affairs, the sort of
| confidence people used to have in science triumphing over
| superstition ;)
| ahartmetz wrote:
| When I buy picture books for children, I will not buy anything
| that was obviously made on a computer. They look so bland and
| lifeless. (I don't care how it was actually made, it's about
| the look of the result.)
| zackmorris wrote:
| As a child of the 80s, I can definitely say that life in past
| decades was "brighter" then than it is now, although it's for
| reasons unrelated to graphic design. What it basically comes
| down to is, we used to dream and fantasize about possible
| futures and our contributions to it in a way that was nurtured
| by society. There was a general feeling that we had grown
| beyond the profit motive, or at least, that prosperity was
| increasing faster than effort.
|
| Basic etiquette was better. Well-read people like Carl Sagan
| were listened to. People could have a modicum of respect in
| their communities as simple professionals like
| teachers/architects/doctors/lawyers/etc. Children were allowed
| to be children. We had movies like The Goonies, which
| illustrated the ills of society (like unrestrained real estate
| development) and provided a counterculture message of hope.
|
| I'm in danger of straying into the rise of fear-based dystopia
| post-2000 so I'll leave it at that. I think that we can get
| back to the optimism of past decades, but it requires looking
| past the superficial and understanding that real prosperity is
| more about opportunity and a feeling that we're all equal and
| helping to build a better world together.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| > I'm in danger of straying into the rise of fear-based
| dystopia post-2000 so I'll leave it at that.
|
| That rise happened in the 90s, if not earlier. Remember the
| sensationalism about people getting killed because of Y2K
| bugs?
| pjc50 wrote:
| Whereas in the 80s the fear of civilization-wide
| extermination through nuclear war was widely present, in
| films and even pop songs. Y2K was the rare occasion where
| the sensationalism got the problem fixed, so nobody
| believes it was ever a risk. Like CFCs.
|
| No, the 90s was a quiet time for everyone west of
| Yugoslavia and north of the Mediterranean. The "end of
| history" between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall
| of the World Trade Center.
|
| I sometimes think we don't do futurism any more because we
| spent so much effort looking forward to the future of 2000,
| and there's no big date to look forward to quite like it.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| There's something with the non-realistic hand drawing, that
| puts emphasis on some very specific points. You can't get a
| similar result with computer aided realistic images.
|
| There is also that the designer seems to really empathize with
| the message. It's hard to find material nowadays that even has
| a message, the designer empathizing with it is really rare.
| duxup wrote:
| Yeah it seems like "the future".
|
| With the exception of the planes that all seem to be careening
| out of control...
| mannykannot wrote:
| Though I know nothing about the materials used, it looks to me
| like the aesthetic of Chesley Bonestell's space exploration
| images, and also of '2001' - as can be seen in the "Envisioning
| 2001: Stanley Kubrick's Space Odyssey" exhibition, currently at
| the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, NYC.
| pjc50 wrote:
| A mixture of change of materials (some of those are clearly
| paintings done in acrylic that have been photographed then used
| for colour plates), and change in style - at the moment we're
| in a backlash against the use of multiple colours, as well as
| any kind of clashing. This would absolutely be laughed out of
| the office today:
| https://www.airporthistory.org/uploads/1/2/1/4/121407428/cdg...
| - because green and purple are high-contrast colours.
| soapboxrocket wrote:
| Terminal 1 at CDG may be horribly dated, but I love that design
| and look.
| duxup wrote:
| There was a small midwestern airport I used to fly in and out
| of.
|
| They had the "new" terminal, all of 3 gates. And then the
| baggage pickup area.
|
| In between those areas was the "old terminal" it was this
| absolutely pristine 1960s ish airport waiting area that was
| hexagon shaped with this gorgeous black flooring also in a
| hexagon shape, a big brass compass in the middle, and
| everything in that area radiated out from that compas, the
| seats were lined up along the lines of the hexagon. Service
| desks, bar, etc. It had big tall windows (a few stories tall)
| so you could see out onto the runways.
|
| Sadly it eventually was torn down when they renovated the
| entire structure for a new more modern boxy... thing.
| moystard wrote:
| What a fascinating article. It is interesting to see how people
| in the 60s and 70s imagined the future of flying: fast supersonic
| planes flying between continents. We have gone in a completely
| different direction with "slow" and cheap air travel.
|
| PS: Only on H.N would you find a majority of comments referring
| to the website CSS/JS and technical glitches when the content is
| of such quality.
| joezydeco wrote:
| You're Too Cheap to Fly Faster: https://medium.com/lift-and-
| drag/youre-too-cheap-to-fly-fast...
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(page generated 2020-02-03 23:01 UTC)