Alternate Futures 4: Come Fly With Me!

It has been a very busy – yes even stressful – time here at the blog. First, I’ve got a new job – for which I am very grateful.  There is a steep a steep learning curve attached, but I am confident I will gradually overcome this.  I’m getting ready to move to a new apartment closer to where I work, thus cutting down a killer commute, which is its own source of stress…

…and there’s this Donald Trump thing. Over a week on, I, like much of the rest of the world, am still how trying to get my head around how possibly Donald J. Trump became the 45th President of the United States. Of course, there’s nothing I can do about it. Although I predicted it in this space back in April, I still can’t believe it. Anyhow, the less said about that, perhaps the better.  

On to the main topic of today’s post, a more gentile form of air travel, a passenger flying wing airliner, based on John K. Northrop's XB-35 and YB-49 flying wing bombers of the late '40s and early '50s.  According to its backers, the flying wing jet transport represented the "fulfillment of scientific vision and symbolized the dreams of science for our world of tomorrow." If it were only so. Ultimately, the bomber projects came to naught, stifled by a conservative military, and the the dreams for the big wing airliner faded away.  I like to think that flying wings like these could be flying the friendly skies of some alternate world and may yet somehow fly over our own world in the not-to-distant future:

Design for passenger version of Northrop's Flying Wing

Cabin mock up from promo film.

Blow up of image below; from newspaper.

Here's the Northrop promotional film for the passenger wing, which gives a clue of how it all might've unfolded:

Meanwhile, you can  purchase Elvis Saves JFK! for just 99 cents and War Plan Crimson, A Novel of Alternate History, for $2.99 and now The Key to My Heart, also $2.99 (all are free to preview). All books -- which are already on Smashword's premium distribution list -- are also available through such fine on-line retailers such as Sony, Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble and Apple's iTunes Store. Thanks.
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