Responded to the post, be respectful in your discussion. Healthy debates are welcomed. Be sure to maintain academic rigor and professionalism at all times.
For my initial discussion posting, I selected Electric Commercial Aircraft as the technology I will be researching.
The history of the modern aircraft can all be traced back to “twelve seconds, and 120 feet. This was the time and distance of the Wright Flyer’s maiden voyage on December 17,1903 at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina—four miles north of Kitty Hawk”. This was the first recorded instance of a flying machine, over the next hundred plus years, the technology and science that made flight possible would be refined, until “in 2010, Airbus embarked on its electrification journey, developing the world’s first all-electric, four-engine aerobatic aircraft” (Electric flight, 2021).
The subject of this research is a combination of the perpetual nature of science and technology, and the role that relationship played in the development of electric commercial aircraft.
Aircraft have many technologies that rely on the foundations of hard sciences to function correctly, from the ignition in the combustion jet engine to the electromagnetic induction in the motor of the electric aircraft, there is a long trail of technologies and sciences working in harmony to accomplish flight (LOSIF et al., 2018).
I decided to look at the electric commercial aircraft because of its unique characteristic, specifically how it is a new green energy that is still pollutive, and that speaks to the former topic of discussion, the unforeseen negative consequences of technologies, and could be an appropriate segue into the current topic.
Has science had an impact on the development of this technology? If so, what sciences and how?
Absolutely science has had an impact, technological advancements in the field of aviation have been nurtured by the sciences for over a century. Aerodynamics and the study of airflow over objects have drastically reduced drag and increased co-efficiency in aircraft, allowing for higher top speeds and lower fuel consumption. The experiments of aerodynamics traditionally relied on engineering wind tunnels and observing airflow over models, this required a fair amount of mathematics, engineering, and cost. The more modern approach to optimizing the aerodynamics of a model is to use computer simulations, with a combination of mathematics, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence (Lalonde, 2021).
The amount of technology and science that goes into an electric commercial aircraft is abundant and vastly diverse. The need to understand the physics and chemistry required to accomplish flight has to coincide with the technologies that rely on these and other sciences to succeed.
What social factors have had a hand in the development of this technology or scientific breakthrough? Based on these factors, do you think it has a future?
The social factor that presumably contributed most to the adaptation of the electric commercial aircraft is global warming and climate change, and the push for renewable energies and technologies.
It is important to note the sciences used to conduct the studies (Slavich et al., 2014) that influenced the social factors that had a hand in developing the technology, even though its detachment is through a few degrees of separation, it speaks to our discussion of the entangled perpetual advancement of both the sciences and technologies.
It is also important to mention “the social construction of technology” (Kline, 1996), and the influence hobbyist and pilots of earlier aircraft had on the development of the new full-scale commercial model, as smaller and shorter model development and prototyping helped with future innovation.
I think according to the evidence, it is a safe and wise assertion that electric commercial aircrafts have promising a future.
What could be done to advance its progress?
Even though electric commercial aircraft is seen as a new and greener alternative, there still exist the unforeseen and foreseeable negative repercussions of technologies that we have been discussing. These repercussions exist for most technologies, and for electric commercial aircraft it is in the form of carbon generated energy provided via a power grid, and the amount of carbon generated to produce the aircraft, there is also the question of recyclability of source material of the aircraft, and any necessary refining of materials. Understanding these shortcomings can help determine areas of improvement.
For electric commercial aircraft, there are both incremental and discontinuous technological changes, but I would attribute discontinuous change as a greater driving force, as aircraft are not generally released to the public before completion with the idea of making incremental improvements to any problems, this is not to say electric aircraft development can’t use iterative life cycles (Oliveira et al., 2016).
Knowing discontinuous technological changes are the predominant driving force of innovation allows us to better predict the types of future behavior that can most progress this technology. Future development and implementation of higher density batteries and energy storage devices, improving aerodynamics, as well as reducing energy consumption and weight, are all areas for potential improvement.
The final thing that must be considered is probably the most important driving force, which is money, because “the promise of pollution-free aviation is exciting, but efficient financial markets, savvy shareholders, and profit-driven airline executives are unlikely to sign up for electric power unless it can significantly benefit their bottom line” (“Technology Changed Aviation and It’s Happening Again with Electric Aircraft – Aviation Today”, 2021).
References:
IOSIF, G., IORDACHE, I., STOICA, V., LUCHIAN, A. M., COSTEA, E., SUCIU, G., &
SUCIU, V. (2018). Achieving a More Electric Aircraft: a comparative study between the concurrent and traditional engineering models. INCAS Bulletin, 10(1), 221–228. https://doi.org/10.13111/2066-8201.2018.10.1.19
Kline, R., & Pinch, T. (1996). Users as agents of technological change: The social construction of the automobile in the rural united states. Technology and Culture, 37(4), 763-795. Retrieved from https://www-proquest-com.vlib.excelsior.edu/scholarly-journals/users-as-agents-technological-change-social/docview/198421390/se-2?accountid=134966 (Links to an external site.)
Lalonde, E. R., Vischschraper, B., Bitsuamlak, G., & Dai, K. (2021). Comparison of neural network types and architectures for generating a surrogate aerodynamic wind turbine blade model. Journal of Wind Engineering & Industrial Aerodynamics, 216. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jweia.2021.104696 (Links to an external site.)
Electric flight. (2021). Retrieved 9 September 2021, from https://www.airbus.com/innovation/zero-emission/electric-flight.html (Links to an external site.)
Eve Slavich, David I. Warton, Michael B. Ashcroft, John R. Gollan, & Daniel Ramp. (2014). Topoclimate versus macroclimate: how does climate mapping methodology affect species distribution models and climate change projections? Diversity and Distributions, 20(7/8), 952–963.
Oliveira, P. S. G. de, Silva, D. da, Silva, L. F. da, Lopes, M. dos S., & Helleno, A. (2016). Factors that influence product life cycle management to develop greener products in the mechanical industry. International Journal of Production Research, 54(15), 4547–4567.
Technology Changed Aviation and It’s Happening Again with Electric Aircraft – Aviation Today. (2021). Retrieved 10 September 2021, from https://www.aviationtoday.com/2020/04/07/opinion-technology-changed-aviation-happening-electric-aircraft/
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