Paul Marks, senior technology correspondent (Image: David
Crump/Daily Mail/Rex Features ) What do you expect of aviation
as flight technology advances? More than a century after the
Wright Brothers triumphed on a wind-beaten North Carolina beach,
aviation researchers have the technology to take flight in any
number of directions. With advanced autopilots and drones as
evidence, some are predicting the end of human pilots. Others
say hybrid engines and ever-lighter plastic planes are the
obvious, green way ahead. Will suborbital hypersonic planes
whisk us from London to Sydney in a few hours, or are Zeppelin-
like blimps (the aviation equivalent of the slow food movement)
about to make flying civilised again with a triumphant comeback?
The Future Skies discussion at the Dana Centre - the sci-tech
speakeasy at London’s Science Museum - addressed just these
questions earlier this week, guided by a team of flight experts
from around the country. Hypersonics expert Ben Thornber of
Cranfield, the aeronautical univer