A 3D Printed Jumbo Jet

 Future of Transportation  

Designer Bastian Schaefer shows off a speculative design for the future of jet planes, with a skeleton inspired by strong, flexible, natural forms and by the needs of the world's, ahem, growing population. Imagine an airplane that's full of light and space -- and built up from generative parts in a 3D printer.

Designer Bastian Schaefer showed off a speculative design for the future of jet planes at a recent TED talk.

With a skeleton inspired by strong, flexible, natural forms and by the needs of the world's, growing population, his airplane is full of light and space -- and built up from generative parts in a 3D printer.

"My belief is that the airplane of the future will get its own consciousness. It will be more like a living organism than just a collection of very complex technology," says Schaefer. "This will be very different in the future. It will communicate directly with the passenger in its environment. And then we are talking also about materials, synthetic biology, for example. And my belief is that we will get more and more new materials which we can put into structure later on, because structure is one of the key issues in aircraft design."

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Schaefer is the Cabin and Cargo Innovation Manager at Airbus Operations -- and leads a group of far-thinking engineers who are building out a concept plane.

Previously at Airbus, he worked on the development of A380 stairs and components for in-flight entertainment. Between 2006 and 2011 Bastian worked at Bertrand Ingenieurbüro GmbH working on projects with C&D Zodiac Development A350XWB Lavatories, AT Kearney and EADS Technology Watch Consulting. He considers himself a mechanical engineer and has a special interest in cars.

SOURCE  TED

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