
Airports for the Supersonic Age - maurits
https://www.airporthistory.org/airports-sst-1.html
======
EFFALO
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.

~~~
zackmorris
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
> 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
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.

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zdw
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
Paste this on the browser console:

document.body.onselectstart = function() {return true;};

~~~
agumonkey
alternatively, firefox reader mode doesn't intercept selection events

~~~
lawlorino
Does this work on mobile also?

~~~
bklaasen
It does in Firefox on Android.

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_visgean
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.

~~~
ethagknight
Interestingly, on Mac in Safari, if you switch to Reader View, you can
download images and copy text to your heart's content.

~~~
awad
Reader View, and Readability the bookmarklet before that, is one of those
great 'it just works' features that I'd go crazy without.

------
moystard
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
You're Too Cheap to Fly Faster: [https://medium.com/lift-and-drag/youre-too-
cheap-to-fly-fast...](https://medium.com/lift-and-drag/youre-too-cheap-to-fly-
faster-7885a299bca2)

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

~~~
AWildC182
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
>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
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)

------
ArtWomb
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...](https://www.dezeen.com/2019/09/26/zaha-hadid-architects-starfish-
beijing-daxing-international-airport/)

~~~
awad
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.

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

~~~
duxup
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.

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

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

~~~
redis_mlc
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.

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agumonkey
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
It is a great lesson on why premature optimization can be a bad thing.

