8 ms·

Airports for the Supersonic Age

123 points by maurits 7y ago

mimixco 7y ago
Terrific pictures and rare history info! Thanks for the post.
zdw 7y ago
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.
- vmateixeira 7y ago
  Paste this on the browser console: document.body.onselectstart = function() {return true;};
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    alternatively, firefox reader mode doesn't intercept selection events
    - lawlorino 7y ago
      Does this work on mobile also?
      - bklaasen 7y ago
        It does in Firefox on Android.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- mrspeaker 7y ago
  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.
- fluffysandwich 7y ago
  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-with-paste/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/don-t-fuck-wi...
- eitland 7y ago
  > 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" :-)
EFFALO 7y ago
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.
- duxup 7y ago
  Yeah it seems like "the future". With the exception of the planes that all seem to be careening out of control...
- pjc50 7y ago
  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-artists-impression-small-bar_orig.jpg https://www.airporthistory.org/uploads/1/2/1/4/121407428/cdg... - because green and purple are high-contrast colours.
- mannykannot 7y ago
  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.
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  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.
- 7y ago
agumonkey 7y ago
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 7y ago
  It is a great lesson on why premature optimization can be a bad thing.
soapboxrocket 7y ago
Terminal 1 at CDG may be horribly dated, but I love that design and look.
- duxup 7y ago
  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.
_visgean 7y ago
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 7y ago
  Stick it to the man
- AWildC182 7y ago
  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.
- ethagknight 7y ago
  Interestingly, on Mac in Safari, if you switch to Reader View, you can download images and copy text to your heart's content.
  - awad 7y ago
    Reader View, and Readability the bookmarklet before that, is one of those great 'it just works' features that I'd go crazy without.
soared 7y ago
I wonder if the overbuilding of airports during this era directly led to affordable air travel in our current time?
- AWildC182 7y ago
  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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Monica_Airport#Future
  - Psyladine 7y ago
    >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 7y ago
      Hardly a fantasy. Just look at the reqs for Amazon's HQ2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_HQ2#Requirements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_HQ2#Requirements
orliesaurus 7y ago
Makes me think... If we will ever see something like a Concord fly again!!
- redis_mlc 7y ago
  The Concord shutdown largely because many of the pax and approvers died in the Twin Towers attacks. So I suppose if a similar number of people with too much money in NY and London, it could happen again.
moystard 7y ago
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 7y ago
  You're Too Cheap to Fly Faster: https://medium.com/lift-and-drag/youre-too-cheap-to-fly-faster-7885a299bca2 https://medium.com/lift-and-drag/youre-too-cheap-to-fly-fast...
ArtWomb 7y ago
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-starfish-beijing-daxing-international-airport/ https://www.dezeen.com/2019/09/26/zaha-hadid-architects-star...
- awad 7y ago
  It's a good tagline but The Zoom still involves the first 5-10 minutes of technical issues interspersed with drop off and, in my opinion, doesn't displace the value of interaction IRL. Rather, I think it makes conference (formerly audio) calling way better. I'm very hopeful that The Boom (aerospace company) is successful as someone who travels a good deal for work.

123 points by maurits 7y ago

Terrific pictures and rare history info! Thanks for the post.

zdw 7y ago

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.

vmateixeira 7y ago
Paste this on the browser console: document.body.onselectstart = function() {return true;};
- agumonkey 7y ago
  alternatively, firefox reader mode doesn't intercept selection events
  - lawlorino 7y ago
    Does this work on mobile also?
    - bklaasen 7y ago
      It does in Firefox on Android.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mrspeaker 7y ago
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.
fluffysandwich 7y ago
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-with-paste/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/don-t-fuck-wi...
eitland 7y ago
> 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" :-)

EFFALO 7y ago

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.

duxup 7y ago
Yeah it seems like "the future". With the exception of the planes that all seem to be careening out of control...
pjc50 7y ago
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-artists-impression-small-bar_orig.jpg https://www.airporthistory.org/uploads/1/2/1/4/121407428/cdg... - because green and purple are high-contrast colours.
mannykannot 7y ago
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.
marcosdumay 7y ago
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.
7y ago

agumonkey 7y ago

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 7y ago
It is a great lesson on why premature optimization can be a bad thing.

soapboxrocket 7y ago

Terminal 1 at CDG may be horribly dated, but I love that design and look.

duxup 7y ago
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.

_visgean 7y ago

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 7y ago
Stick it to the man
AWildC182 7y ago
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.
ethagknight 7y ago
Interestingly, on Mac in Safari, if you switch to Reader View, you can download images and copy text to your heart's content.
- awad 7y ago
  Reader View, and Readability the bookmarklet before that, is one of those great 'it just works' features that I'd go crazy without.

soared 7y ago

I wonder if the overbuilding of airports during this era directly led to affordable air travel in our current time?

AWildC182 7y ago
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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Monica_Airport#Future
- Psyladine 7y ago
  >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 7y ago
    Hardly a fantasy. Just look at the reqs for Amazon's HQ2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_HQ2#Requirements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_HQ2#Requirements

orliesaurus 7y ago

Makes me think... If we will ever see something like a Concord fly again!!

redis_mlc 7y ago
The Concord shutdown largely because many of the pax and approvers died in the Twin Towers attacks. So I suppose if a similar number of people with too much money in NY and London, it could happen again.

moystard 7y ago

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 7y ago
You're Too Cheap to Fly Faster: https://medium.com/lift-and-drag/youre-too-cheap-to-fly-faster-7885a299bca2 https://medium.com/lift-and-drag/youre-too-cheap-to-fly-fast...

ArtWomb 7y ago

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-starfish-beijing-daxing-international-airport/ https://www.dezeen.com/2019/09/26/zaha-hadid-architects-star...

awad 7y ago
It's a good tagline but The Zoom still involves the first 5-10 minutes of technical issues interspersed with drop off and, in my opinion, doesn't displace the value of interaction IRL. Rather, I think it makes conference (formerly audio) calling way better. I'm very hopeful that The Boom (aerospace company) is successful as someone who travels a good deal for work.