Ok a blonde friend and I made this up a long time ago so here it is; airplanes made from rubber don't crash, they bounce. Eventually we combined this idea with giant parachutes for an uncrashable plane.
-- WhiteWiz, Jun 17 2005

You just know that when Goodyear makes an airplane... http://davidszondy....ht/rubber_plane.htm
it's gonna be rubber. [2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jun 18 2005, last modified Oct 02 2006]

Rubber tends to break upon impact, but if it doesn't, at least the decelerating people in the plane would, um, be very messily contained in the cabin.
-- Giblet, Jun 17 2005


sp. bouncy. I like the principle but what do you do about engine heat melting the rubber and rigidity of rubber as compared to aluminium?
-- DocBrown, Jun 17 2005


What happens when the plane is reaching it's max speeds? Surely the rubber couldnt withstand. I also don't think that you could recreate a jet engine with rubber, so they might still catch for or something when you crash, and plus they would weigh the wings down.
-- Night, Jun 17 2005


Interestingly, way back in the '50s the British Navy experimented with rubber coatings on their aircraft carrier decks so that pilots wouldn't have to bother with undercarriage.
-- moomintroll, Jun 17 2005


Kinda baked. [link]
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jun 18 2005


OOoooo! I want an inflatoplane!
-- DesertFox, Jun 18 2005


You know, I do agree with the parachutes idea... 'Fraid that unless you intend for the airplane to fly at speeds slow enough for people to get fed up, and just drive in a even less crashable car (which only crash while they're working properly), however, the Rubber Airplane part probably wouldn't go over too well... Basically, what everyone's said before me. (Although of course, for the plane to even get up to speed, I assumed that the engines at least, were metal... well, or very, very large elastic band-powered propellers)
-- {WhiteFang}, Jun 19 2005


If all planes were built like this, hijackers could be safely ignored - sure, we'd all get to travel much more slowly - but what's wrong with that? If you can have an instant video conference with someone on another continent, why do you need to be in the same office in 8 hours?

If you have to travel (and sometimes you do) why not take a more leisurely route, and actually enjoy it?
-- zen_tom, Oct 02 2006


I'd love to see a video of a rubber airliner boucing off of the World Trade Center.
-- MoreCowbell, Oct 03 2006



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