this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
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It was a joke.
But no, I don't believe it's controlled with a touch screen. Though it is "daring" shall we say... to make a plane with no cockpit windows.
In commercial airliners, nearly the entire flight is now closely monitored and controlled by redundant computer systems. And the pilots rarely use the front window, they mostly fly by instrument.
Cameras as the cockpit windows aren't really that crazy at this point. Really glass cockpits are a formality.
Glass cockpit is a specific term for flight decks that have replaced analog gauges with digital gauges and screens.
Pilots use the windows all of the time. They use it to look for traffic and for vfr approaches.
It's really not, flying without looking out the window is very common especially for NASA and the USAF.
Absolutely, in fact it's not just nasa or military, almost everyone does that. You need to prove that you can fly without looking out the window to get your "instrument rating" and be legally allowed to fly at night. Every instrument flight rated pilot can do it (a majority of pilots). However, airports are lit up with lights, so even at night or in fog, you can see the runway as you're landing. If you have no windows, you can't do that, you'll need someone to guide you down.
That's not my concern, the issue is a lack of redundancy. If the computers crash or if the vehicle loses power your suddenly have no windows. From a design perspective, it's a risky choice. Not insurmountable, but it's a potential problem point. It's a choice that adds an additional critical single point of failure.
lack of redundancy is a concern, but the same was said for fly by wire cutting the physical link between stick and controls. fly by wire is ubiquitous now, can be made very very safe, and is a net gain for aviation in general.
not having a window is obviously a bigger challenge, but its still a solvable problem.
Yeah, I totally agree. I don't think this is an insurmountable challenge or anything, just a bold decision.
Yeah but looking out the window as your plane crashes isn't going to change the fiery death that a system shutdown on a modern airliner will inevitably bring.
I get what you're saying but a window is a structural trade off too, they've obviously done the testing and determined it's a sensible design choice
Simply not true.
There are redundant systems for everything on aircraft. You can certainly control the plane without the computers working, and without any instruments working. You can generally control the plane even without power because of redundant hydraulic systems.
Thinking computers are necessary to do anything is wrong when it comes to aircraft.
And obviously the choice to eliminate the windows is entirely a structural design, that's where you see the benefits, which I'm sure are quite real.