A fake starry night of chimps, ballet, and Dreamliners
So this past week there was the big unveiling of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. I actually got to go to a small unveiling of the 777 with my Dad back when it was first introduced. Well, truth be told, I didn’t get to see the plane because it hadn’t been built yet. Oh, and we weren’t in Seattle. But I got to see my Dad’s company’s contribution, a part for the plane’s wheel.
Hmm, story loses some of its punch doesn’t it?
It was a REALLY big wheel though.
It took them years before the things were actually flying yet I find that I have still never flown on one. The reasons:
A. I live in the Cincinnati area and it’s airport, CVG, is one of the biggest Delta hubs around.
B. Delta only owns like eight of the things.
C. Of the eight the own they all seem to fly to the Far East.
D. To date my travel needs to that side of the world have been very low.
I have had the opportunity to fly on many a 767 and Airbus somethingoranothers to Europe but that’s just not the same. Funny side story, on one of those the flights the in-flight movies were MVP: Most Valuable Primate a story of a chimp playing hockey and Center Stage a movie about the excitement and intrigue of a ballet company.
That was the first, and only time, that I’ve mentally tried to will myself to die. I can still see the little Delta triangle symbols on the seat in front of me while I concentrated.
Obviously, it didn’t work.
Funny side story to my side story, when getting the link for MVP from IMDB I discovered that they had made not one, but two sequels to the monkey hockey movie. Naturally, because a chimp playing hockey is a tad unrealistic, they were MVP 2: Most Vertical Primate (monkey skateboarding) and MXP: Most Xtreme Primate (monkey snowboarding). For the curious, the IMDB users gave the monkey movies 2.9, 2.2, and 3.8 stars out of ten. That makes the ballet movie and its whopping 6.2 look like The Godfather.
To wrap up with at least a little bit of tech from Wikipedia:
Light-emitting diode (LED) cabin lighting (three color), will be used instead of fluorescent tubes, allowing the aircraft to be entirely ‘bulbless’ and have 128 color combinations.
That’s a dry way of explaining what Extreme Technology describes:
Dreamliner’s new interior will create a new sensation for passengers inside the cabin. Illuminated by arrays of light emitting diodes, both the brightness and the color of the sky-like cabin ceiling can be controlled in flight by the crew. Flight attendants can give passengers a sense of daylight when desired, and when they want to help passengers rest, simulate a beautiful nighttime sky.
It’s Harry Potter meets an airline cabin. At least this way, the next time I try to will myself to death because of a monkey or ballet movie I won’t have to look at Delta upholstery. Next time it will be fake LED stars.
If you want to talk about bad kid movies, let’s not forget about Galaxy Quest with Tim Allen (which actually received a 7.2/10 ?!), and The Pagemaster with everyone’s favorite 8-year old, Macaulay Culkin. I also did not enjoy Jumanji even though that got a 6.1/10.
I was thinking about the
“when they want to help passengers rest, simulate a beautiful nighttime sky.”
Imagine your flying along at 33,000 feet and you drift off to sleep for a short time. You open your eyes to see a star filled nighttime sky (simulated of course) and you remember, in a just woke up fog, that you are cruising at 33,000 feet. Relaxing or sudden adrenaline rush?
Personally, when I am in a plane at, what the pilots and atc call, the flight levels (altitude above 18,000), I don’t want to open my eyes and see a star filled night sky above me.
Personally, I’m not the slightest bit worried given that I am completely incapable of sleeping on an airplane. No mixture of sleeping pills or in-flight booze has helped either. Although that combination plus a fake night sky might result in some serious trippy-ness.