Boeing and the Commercial Jet Age

There's been a lot of controversy around some of those things, and all of those elements are pretty deep and could they could all justify an episode all by themselves. But rather than turn this into the Boeing Podcast, I thought I would kind of some up things in this third part. I'm gonna have to skip over a lot of stuff, and if you guys are really interested, I could always go back and do a couple of episodes that really focus on some of the individual stories on a more

granular level. But rather than have this series go on indefinitely, We're just going to press about seventy years of history together into one episode. So, considering the first two episodes

were thirty years, we're gonna be taking some liberties. But in our last episode, we looked at a very busy time for Boeing because the company had become a major part of the war effort for the United States during World War Two, and we also looked at how Boeing continued to develop both military and civilian aircraft after the war was over, and we finished with a discussion about the development of the seven oh seven, which was Boeing's

first mass produced commercial jet, so passenger jet like the kind we have today now. As I mentioned in that episode, the development process for the seven oh seven represented an enormous investment, a huge risk for Boeing. It took up nearly all the profits Boeing had made since World War

Two had ended. And making the matter more fraught was that the havaland comment the British made commercial jet that had inspired Boeing president William Allen to take this big risk in the first place, well, it ended up having some catastrophic problems of its own, and by the time those problems became evident, Boeing had already committed to building a commercial jet, so within the first year of operation

that would be the comment started to have some issues. Now, the first accident only caused a couple of minor injuries, and in that incident, the Commet the airplane failed to become airborne at the end of a runway, so it ran the whole length of the runway, could not take off and it ended up crossing into really rough ground. But people got bumped up, but that was the worst of it. However, a similar accident in nineteen fifty three

was much more serious. Again, a Comet failed to take off from a runway, this time in Pakistan, and it collided with an embankment at the end of the runway. All five members of the crew died and six passengers did as well. It was the first commercial jet accident that had fatalities UH and obviously this was a huge deal. Then in nineteen fifty four, on two separate occasions, Commet aircraft broke apart in midflight. The Commet fleet was grounded.

As a result, the aircraft lost its certificate of airworthiness and a full inquiry was made and an investigation to find out what exactly was happening. The investigation actually found that the aircraft's frame was suffering fatigue and that led to structural failures, particularly around the windows. It was that

the the pressurized cabins. You know that air pressure inside the plane is much greater than the air pressure outside in high altitudes, and so you have this force pushing outward on the interior of the plane, and that push, particularly at the windows, was what was causing fatigue on the airframe. And thus you had structural failures in flight with a couple of these comet flights, and that caused in flight accidents, essentially the planes which just completely break

apart with all people aboard lost as a result. Now all of this was going on, as I said, as Boeing had already committed to creating its own commercial jet aircraft. So one of the big challenges Boeing faced was creating an aircraft that was demonstrably safe to travel in. And then a second challenge was to convince the general public that this was the case. And travelers were understandably concerned after the high profile accidents involving the world's first commercial jets.

So Boeing produced a film titled This is Such a Charming Name, Operation Guillotine. It was a a film that was trying to counteract this public reservation of flying aboard a commercial jet. And in the film, Boeing had test footage where they had aircraft chambers that were pressurized. This was inside a controlled environment, so this wasn't like flying in the you know, over the United States or something.

And in the first demonstration they showed a pressurized airplane fuselage like a regular propeller airplane type fuselage, and the fuselage gets pierced by two metal blades. So this is like a scenario where a propeller failure has happened and part of a propeller breaks off and breaks into the fuselage of a plane and that caused rapid depressurization and

the fuselage broke apart in that test. But then Bowing showed a similar test with the fuselage of their seven oh seven and they had five blades pierced this structure, not just two. But in their test footage they show that the Bowing fusel lodge can hold together even with this this breach, and some air was escaping obviously because there was, you know, now a hole in the plane.

It's not like you can just not have air leak out if you have a differential in pressure on one side and versus the other, but it did show that the Bowing design was far more resilient to damage that was going to hold together even in a catastrophic event like that than the traditional aircraft, which is an interesting way to build passenger confidence, to be sure, but it

was one of the things they tried. The seven oh seven was meant to be a mid to low range commercial jet, and I mentioned in the previous episode that PanAm had put in an order for twenty seven oh seven's, but PanAm also hedged its bets. It wasn't going all in on Boeing. It also put in an order for twenty five d C eights from boeing competitor Douglas. Boeing was able to manufacture the seven oh seven faster than Douglas could build the d C eights, and Bowing would

also customize the aircraft itself. They would have different load outs and different variants of the seven oh seven, And because of those customizations, there's not really one set of measurements I can give you for a seven oh seven. The same is true for all the different seven hundred series aircraft that Boeing would produce. There are different variations of those and they all have different stats. But here's

how the first seven oh seven stacked up. It was a hundred forty five ft one inch long, that's about forty four point two meters, and had a wingspan of a hundred thirty feet ten inches or thirty nine point nine ms. The fuselage, so you know, like the body of the aircraft had a width of twelve feet four inches or three point eight meters. And while it was meant as a mid range aircraft, its first commercial flight was actually between New York City and Paris, France, though

it did stop once in Newfoundland to refuel. The seven oh seven could travel faster and hold more passengers than the Comet could, and there were several variations of it. There was the seven O seven one, the seven O seven one twenty B, the seven oh seven to twenty, the seven oh seven three twenty, the seven oh seven four twenty, and then there was the seven twenty and the seven twenty B variants. So those two seven twenties you might wonder what's up with those because they didn't

follow that seven oh seven pattern. These were meant to be short to medium range jets, and they were also meant to service airports that had shorter runways that couldn't accommodate the larger versions of the seven O seven, so these were slightly smaller versions of those those commercial jets. Now, differences between some of these variants could sometimes be tricky

to spot. Some of them were essentially the same design but had different engines, so unless you were really really observant and had an up close and personal look at the interior of some of the workings of the jets, you wouldn't be able to necessarily tell on site the

difference without seeing a designation. Now, Boeing would manufacture more than one thousand of the seven oh seven aircraft across US all families over the decades, and the seven oh seven would be in continuous production from nineteen fifty four

to nineteen seventy seven. It helped establish commercial jet travel across the world, not just for Boeing but for all companies, and before long more people were traveling by air than by sea, which was a first because while air travel had been established for several decades, it was incredibly expensive and it was very slow if you're using a propeller aircraft, uh, and it there was this perception of real danger, so a lot of people preferred to travel by boat rather

than by airplane, but jets were a different story. It also established something else. The seven O seven had exit doors on the front left and rear left side of the plane, so the four and the aft of the plane. This would become a standardized configuration for Boeing's commercial jets and ultimately would mean that other manufacturers would have to follow suit because airports would accommodate this particular configuration with

the design of their jetway. So if you've flown into a major airport and you notice that all the jets are pulling up to their jet ways the same way, it's because the Boeing kind of established this, and then it sort of became the standard. While Boeing was hard at work on the seven oh seven, the company's aircraft also made history in another way. On September one, nineteen fifty three, a Boeing B forty seven Strato jet refueled another B forty seven in midflight. It was the first

time a jet was being used as a tanker. The arrangement relied upon what is called a probe and drogue refueling system, so there are two main aerial refueling methods, and by that I mean two main methods of refueling a plane in air, not a way of refueling a mermaid. One is to use a rigid boom extension that connects two aircraft together in midflight for the purposes of fuel transfer. It allows for a very high speed fuel transfer because

you're using a rigid boom. Um when you use something that has flexibility to it, it actually slows down the transfer of fuel a little bit. However, that system requires both aircraft to fly pretty close to each other, and if something should go wrong, the boom, because it's solid, could cause serious damage to one or both aircraft, so it's riskier. The probe and drogue method is slightly more safe.

The aircraft in need of refueling flies ahead of the tanker aircraft, and the refueling plane extends a hose that is otherwise retracted so that it would be flush against the aircraft. So it starts to let this hose out, and the hose trails behind the aircraft, and at the end of this hose is a basket, and the trailing aircraft the one that has all the fuel aboard it that's going to refuel The first plane has the probe. It's kind of like a uh, you know, a fuel

pump that you would use at a gas station. The the pump part where you plug that, you know, you slot that into your gas tank. That's kind of what the probe is. The pilot guides this probe into the basket and that connects the probe to the hose and refueling can begin. Afterward, the tanker pilot can retract the probe from the drobe. The basket um and the pilot of the newly refueled plane retracts the drogue, winds it back up, and then you've got a newly refueled plane

in flight and never had the land to refuel. And I'm just gonna say this, I find the fact that pilots can fly so steady as to allow for in flight refueling to be absolutely mind blowing. I'm amazed at that level of precision and skill, and also the ingenuity required to create the refueling system in the first place. Human beings can be pretty astounding sometimes, And of course I say that as a human being. I'm not some

sort of transdimensional alien make observations or anything. So let's get back to Boeing and stop asking silly questions human

by nint. Boeing had made some huge accomplishments. The Dash E D had already had its first flight at that point, and Boeing was producing the k C one five strato tanker aircraft, which was based off this DASH eight design, and it was also at this point working on that seven oh seven commercial jet, which again was also based off the Dash A D. So you can think of the DASH E D as the parent to both the k C one thirty five strato tanker and the seven

oh seven. And those two aircraft were not identical. They were actually very different from each other, but they were both based off that same ancestor. Now Boeing was still building military aircraft like the B forty seven, and it had begun production on the B fifty two A, so things were going pretty well for the company in nineteen fifty six. On September, William Boeing, who was the founder of the company but had you know, sold off all of his entry in years before, passed away. He had

a heart attack aboard his yacht. I can only hope that I go the same way. But it was three days before his seventy five birthday, and I'd prefer to

last a little longer than that. But other than that, I think, um passing away on board your luxury yacht, that's a pretty baller way to go if you've gotta if you gotta choose, I think on May fift nifty eight, the US Air Force put in an order for three of the new seven oh seven's, specifically the seven oh seven one twenties, because you remember they're all those variations, and these planes would receive a new designation, which would be VC one thirty seven A. They were meant for

something very special. They'd be used for transportation for the president and for other high ranking government officials. And when the president steps aboard one of those planes, that plane then becomes known as air Force one for as long as the president is on it. And that's fun bit of trivia. Air Force one does not refer to a single goal plane. It's the designation that we give whatever plane happens to be carrying the president at any given time.

So there's no one air Force one. It's whatever plane the president happens to be on that is air Force one. These planes were not the first to be used for presidential transportation. I mean they were customized specifically for that, but they weren't even the first for that. They were the first from Boeing Um. They were also not the first planes to be called air Force one when the president was aboard, but it was the first time Boeing would be the company providing planes for that purpose, and

they would continue to do so. Boeing has frequently provided well sold planes to the United States government for use as presidential transportation. On October t n eight, Boeing landed a contract to assemble an intercontinental ballistic missile or ICBM, called the minute Man. This was named after the members of the American militia who were participated in the militia leading up to the Revolutionary War. They were so called the minutemen because they had to be ready to deploy

within a minute of getting a message. The i c b M would rely upon solid rocket fuel, which would also allow those missiles to stand ready for use indefinitely, as opposed to the liquid fueled rockets of that time, which had to be fueled pretty much immediately before use and thus required more time to actually deploy. Now, it would come about that they would find workarounds for that limitation for liquid fuel, but at the time that was

not really you know, those rear options. Now, while the Minutemen I c b M had been proposed earlier, the US military originally dismissed those proposals, and the idea was that they had already started development on other missiles, so they thought, well, it doesn't make sense for US to devote even more resources to building different types of missiles.

Were already building missiles. But then there was a report which was later found to be inaccurate that suggests said that the Soviet Union was actually far ahead of the United States and missile production and deployment, and that pretty much scared the dickens of the U. S. Government, and soon the minute Man was given the fast track for production and Boeing was in business. In nine Boeing began development on what would have been a predecessor to the

Space Shuttle. I think I referred to this a little bit in the Space Race episodes I did a year ago. It was called the X twenty and was later known as the Dina sore d Y in a dash s O A R. It was a space plane meant to be able to return to Earth as a sort of plane or glider like the Space Shuttle. So this was different from the Gemini or Giminy if you prefer, and

Apollo designs. Those were ballistic spacecraft, which meant they would hurtle to Earth like you know, uh, just a cannonball, and then deploy a parachute to slow them down, as well as angle themselves properly so that you know, their heat field was at the right angle, and then eventually

they would land in the water. From nineteen fifty nine to the early nineteen sixties, Boeing would work on the dinosaur design, and hundreds of millions of dollars were dedicated to this development from the U. S government, But ultimately the US government decided that the ballistic approach, which was much less expensive and technically less complicated, would get priority, so the project was canned in nineteen sixty three. It's a shame too, because it was actually a pretty cool design.

I'll talk about a bit more after the break, but first let's go and thank our sponsor. The dinosaur looked pretty darn cool in a chunky way. It measured thirty five and a half feet or ten point eight meters long and had a delta wingspan of nearly twenty one ft. Boeing had built a mocked up model of it and was working on building out a prototo hype when the project got jumped. The official decision was that the spacecraft would have no military applications, so it would be useless

as a military vehicle. You couldn't use it for you know, wartime. You couldn't use it for reconnaissance, so there was no practical use of it in that sense. And it was considered to be too expensive to be of any practical use as a research and science vehicle, So there was no practical scientific application. And so the dinosaur went the way of the dinosaurs. And yes, I was waiting to make that joke for ages. I couldn't wait for the

break to be over. In the spring of nineteen sixty, Boeing acquired the Vital Aircraft Corporation and it formed a new division within Boeing. Vital was a play on the phrase vertical takeoff and landing, so it's this part of Boeing's company that develops v t o L aircraft like helicopters and related vehicles. Um they actually would be involved in developing lots of helicopters. They don't talk about a

lot of them in this episode. That's one of the thing things that I'm having to skip over quite a bit. But they had a hand in designing several helicopters, both for the military and for civilian use. In late nineteen sixty one, Bowing would land a contract to produce the first stage booster for the Saturn five, which would be used in the Apollo program. That's pretty darn cool, And the following year Boeing would test its first hydrofoil vehicle,

the high Point. So what's a hydrofoil. Well, as the name suggests, it has to do with water, you know, hydro water, and a foil is a surface that uh provides lift. So a hydrofoil is a surface that, when it moves in water, acts as a lifting surface. So it's sort of like the wings on an airplane, except, of course, an airplane moves through the air, hydrofoil moves through the water, and of course water and air both

obey fluid dynamics. So if you've ever seen a boat that travels really fast and it's on top of skis that are on these long struts, that's a hydrofoil, and Bowing would go on to produce hydro of foil vehicles for the Navy as well as for other uses. And hydrofoil boats can travel pretty darn fast, and it's largely because they have decreased drag. There's reduced surface area making contact with the water, so they can go much faster than boats that have their full surface or you know,

the full lower surface in contact with the water. In nineteen sixty two, Boeing began producing seven twenty seven aircraft. So I guess now it's a good time to just do a full run down on the seven hundred family of commercial jets and get a general timeline for each and describe how they are different. I'd like to get them all all the way collectively, though obviously obviously we're gonna have to come back for the seven thirty seven

Max designed to close out this episode. But yeah, let's let's do all the seven hundreds, because if I just keep on going through the timeline, it's just gonna get tedious anyway. So it all started with the seven oh seven that got things moving, and then next was the seven twenty that was the variation on the seven oh seven that was designed for the shorter flights and smaller airports, and then after that came the seven twenty seven. Now, depending on the lay out, it could hold between a

hundred forty nine to eighty nine passengers max. And it had three engines. It had an engine under each wing, and then the third engine was located at the tail of the aircraft. It was built into the tail of the fuselage, and it was also intended for short to medium routes. The original seven thirty seven would follow in the late nineteen sixties, and the original seven thirty seven had twin engines, was also meant for short to medium length trips, and Boeing has updated this particular line many

many times. There are several variations of the seven thirty seven seven thirty seven seven thirty seven Classic, seven thirty seven NG, seven thirty seven Crystal seven thirty seven Low Calorie. I might be making some of these up, though, but there really is a seven thirty seven n G that stands for next Generation, just like Star Trek and uh that one was a little bit more narrow than the

original seven thirty seven. And of course there's the seven thirty seven MAX that here about in the News Currently, there are several variants of these jets, even within these families, and each variant has slightly different stats and passenger layouts, and the variety means it's really hard to talk about seven thirty seven's as a collective because there's so much variation between them. There are versions that had a maximum capacity of eighty five passengers and there are versions that

could carry up to two fifteen passengers. That's a pretty big difference there. Seven seven would go on to be Boeing's biggest commercial success. It is the highest selling commercial jet liner model of all time, though again there are a ton of variations, and that consideration has taken all of them and putting them in a big collective group. They've been in continuous production since their introduction in the nineteen sixties, so a very big working horse for Boeing.

The Bowing seven forty seven was the very first aircraft to receive the descriptor of eumbo jet, and it is a beast of an aircraft. Now. I have never flown on a seven forty seven, but I have toured a grounded seven forty seven. They have one at Delta's Air Museum in Atlanta, Georgia, and the seven forty seven is

a wide body airplane. If you were to look at one in profile, you notice that at the front end of the airplane has a hump on the top of it, and that's because the forward section of the plane has a second floor. It's a double decker. UH. Passenger cabin, so you actually have a staircase inside the cabin that leads up to the second floor. Uh. They can get real swanky up there. The at least the model that I went on, they had the the first class set up in the upper deck and it was pretty nifty.

So when this seven forty seven debuted in nineteen seventy, it was known as the commercial jet with the largest capacity for passengers, and it would actually hold on to that title for nearly forty years. There's also several variations of the seven forty seven, and the seven eight is still in production today. The seven fifty seven is kind of a study in contrast to the seven forty seven. It first went into production in n one and it's a narrow body plane, has a single aisle down the

passenger cabin. It's got two engines and Boeing generally intended it to take the place of the older seven twenty seven's for those short to medium flight routes. It can hold nearly three hundred passengers in at least some of the configurations for the seven fifty seven, and it makes it Boeing's largest single aisle passenger jet. This one, however, is no longer in production. Then you have the seven

sixty seven that's a mid to long range aircraft. It has a wide body and has two jet engines, and there are lots of variations of this one to that allow for a maximum passenger capacity of up to three hundred seventy five passengers, depending upon the variation. Obviously, not all buildouts can hold that many. In fact, some of them top out at closer to passengers, which is less than half of that other maximum. Like the seven fifty seven.

The seven sixty seven went into production in one and it shares many design components with the seven fifty seven, and it's so similar in operation that the f a A said that pilots who had the proper type of rating to fly a seven fifty seven could also fly a seven sixty seven because the differences, at least in operation were so few and far between they were practically the same aircraft by operation, even though by actual specs like by width and length and all that, they were

very different. The seventy seven sixty seven was much wider than the seven fifty seven. Boeing still makes the seven sixty seven aircraft today, but most of those are not being used as passenger jets are being used for other stuff. Then we have the Triple seven, the seven seventy seven. It's a wide body, long range aircraft, the first one to production in It is the largest twin jet commercial aircraft in the world, and some variations of the seven

seventy seven can hold nearly four hundred passengers. It's also the first Boeing commercial aircraft to have computer mediated controls, which is going to become part of our story towards the end of this episode two for the seven thirty seven Max. The seven seventy seven became a big success for Boeing, and airlines ordered enough of them to make the seven seventy seven the best selling wide body commercial

jet of all time. It beat out the record that was previously held by the seven forty seven, and as I record this, Boeing is working on the latest generation of the Triple seven family of aircraft with the seven seventy seven X, which would start flying the skies in twenty twenty. One of those is the seven seventy seven nine and it's a huge, huge plane. It can hold up to four fourteen passengers. Big plane. And now we're up to seven eighty seven a k a. The Dreamliner.

It's an the wide body jet, though it's in the mid size range, so it's not as big as the seven seventy sevens, and it went into production in two thousand nine. It's meant to replace the seven sixty seven. So Boeing's goal was to create a commercial jet that could fill the same role as the seven sixty seven,

but have much better fuel efficiency. And they did this with lots of different changes in design, including using mostly composite materials for the aircraft, which helped cut down on the aircraft's weight, which therefore cuts down on the amount of fuel it needs to stay in the air. It can hold up to three five passengers, depending again upon the layout, and it also can travel on long distance routes. Oh and then there is one other one I should

mention the seven seventeen. So why would I leave that one last? Why would I work up from seven oh seven all the way up to seven eighty seven, then go back to seven seventeen. Well, it's because Bowing didn't actually design the seven seventeen, the Boeing seven seventeen, at least the commercial jet version of the seven seventeen. There was a Boeing military aircraft that had a seven seventeen designation back in the nineteen fifties, but that's not what

we're talking about here anyway. It wasn't a Bowing aircraft. Originally. It used to have the name MD and it was designed by Boeing's competitor McDonald Douglas in the mid nineties. But before the plane could go into production, something else would happen. And I'll get back to that in a little bit, all right. So that's the family of Boeing commercial jets, and honestly, each of those could merit their own episode. There are lots of stories about each of them.

There are stories about the different crazy configurations the airlines would have for those aircraft, their stories about accidents with those aircraft. Um, the seven forty seven has had a lot of accidents, not not to say that the seven seven itself was at fault. There were plenty of accidents that were judged to be human error, not mechanical error. But there's you know, there's just so much to talk about, and again we've got it in this series at some point,

so I'm just gonna calling all double here. Also, it's good to remember a few general notes about these planes. First, the number designation doesn't indicate size. This took me a long time to figure out. When I was a kid, I just assumed that every number bigger was meant there's gonna be a bigger plane. So when I heard I was gonna fly on the seven sixties seven, I thought, Wow, it's gonna be even bigger than the seven seven, And

I was wrong. Still getting over that. Also, another is that the variations within a single family in the seven series can be significant. It's not just about the seat layout. It's also about the aircraft's dimensions, which engines it has, and other design elements. And these differences, at least according to Boeing, aren't so great as to necessitate a totally new designation. You wouldn't call it a different type of plane, but it does mean that not all seven forty seven's

are alike. For example, and there are a lot of these Boeing aircraft out there in the wild. Boeing delivered more than nine thousand seven thirty seven aircraft alone. That's if you lump all the versions of the seven thirty seven together. If you do that, then it's delivered more than nine thousand of them to customers. That's nearly half of all the commercial aircraft that Boeing has delivered since

it started producing the seven family. So it's pretty impressive that the seven thirty seven takes up almost of all the planes Boeing has ever sold, at least in the commercial jet world. Okay, so back to the timeline and bowing in the nineteen sixties. Gotta finish this episode out before the number seven ceases to mean anything to me anymore. Boeing would continue to play a crucial role in the space race, landing the contract with NASA to build the

Lunar Orbiter spacecraft. Now, these were unmanned spacecraft that would fly around the Moon and map out sites of the Moon that could potentially be used by the Apollo program for landing sites. Boeing would work with other companies to produce the spacecraft, and the mission was a success. And was very important for the planning of the Apollo missions.

In nineteen sixty six, Boeing celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, and it did so by flying a replica of the old B and W biplane that had started it all so many years before. On a less celebratory note, Boeing would also land a contract and design a short Range Attack

missile or SRAM s RAM. This was a nuclear air to surface missile, so this was meant to be fired by bombers that would penetrate enemy airspace, presumably after the surface to air missile capabilities of the enemy had been knocked out and by enemy everyone was essentially thinking the

Soviet Union. This was still in the Cold War, so Boeing would first produce the missiles in nineteen seventy two and would continue to do so, upgrading the line, making changes to it, but continuate producing these missiles until which was when the program was discontinued. In nineteen sixty nine, Boeing began production on the Lunar Rover vehicle, that's the moon car that astronauts would us to make some wicked donuts on the Moon. I'm told they also used to

do science and stuff up there too. Not everything went without a hitch, however, Boeing had landed a contract to develop a supersonic transport or s ST vehicle. This would be a passenger aircraft capable of breaking the sound barrier. In the nineteen sixties, Boeing landed a contract to develop such an aircraft, and it would have been the first

of a new family of aircraft in Boeing. It had the designation to seven oh seven, but the government scrapped the project in nineteen seventy one and Boeing canceled the development on the project. So what happened, Well, if you listen to my episode about the Concorde, you know that supersonic travel is challenging, not just from a technical standpoint,

but also an economical one. The expense of developing and building the aircraft, of training crews and pilots of how to fly them, and maintenance crews about how to maintain them, also just paying to fuel the darned things. All that ends up being a considerable amount of money. On top of that, breaking the sound barrier means you produce more sonic booms than I do after a dinner at Taco Bell.

So while Boeing was tackling the challenge with zeal The general opinion in the industry was that it wasn't a good idea to pursue, and the general public was concerned about the environmental impact that such aircraft would have. So at uh, it never got off the ground. Now, when we come back, I'll quickly rush through the timeline and then we'll talk about the seven thirty seven Max. But

first let's take a quick break. So while the SST program went belly up, Boeing was continuing to not just work on space, military and commercial air vehicles, but also to diversify. That involved creating alternate uses for Boeing owned land, like turning some of it into farmland, for example, And this way they could put the land to work rather than just you know, have it be land. And it also involved Boeing bidding for contracts to develop rapid rail

transit technology. So at this point, Bowing is building components for spacecraft, for military aircraft, including helicopters, for commercial aircraft, for hydrofoil vehicles, and rail transit systems. Oh And by the late nineteen seventies it was also building wind turbines for electricity production. So it was really getting into lots

of stuff. One of the spacecraft Bowing created was the Mariner ten, which was a satellite that did flybys of Venus and Mercury sending information back to us on Earth, which is pretty darn cool. And Boeing would contribute components to the Space Telescope Hubble as well. Would also continue designing and building missiles for the military, like the a l C m or air launched Cruise missile, which was designed to fire from a Bowing B fifty two, originally

getting up to the nineteen eighties. Now Boeing would work on components for the boosters used by the Space Shuttle. It would also design and build major sections of the International Space Station, would was an incredibly lucrative contract. A division called Boeing Computer Services would produce software to be

used on the International Space Station. The company produced the Chinook military helicopter as well at this time, and Boeing was one of the companies working on the osprey, which is a vertical takeoff and landing aircraft that has a tilt rotor assembly. You've probably seen pictures of these, if not one in person. It kind of looks like a helicopter and kind of looks like a propeller plane. And those tilt rotors actually can can angle to serve either

as a helicopter or an airplane. So you can have it tilted so that they the propellers are facing up and then do a vertical takeoff, and then you can start to transition and tilt them in a more horizontal wing position, and then with the propellers being ninety degrees from that and turn it into essentially an airplane. I have to do a full episode about the osprey at some point because it's really an odd type of aircraft. But it's also incredibly expensive and there was a lot

of controversy around it as well. But they're still ospray aircraft in service today. That's more than thirty years after Bowing first started working on them. Set it's impressive. In the late nineteen eighties, Boeing built an unmanned aerial vehicle called the Condor. This is a bigin has a wingspan measuring two hundred five feet or sixty two meters, and it has propellers for propulsion. It's not a jet drone,

it's it's a propeller drone. It looks kind of like a very wide, like almost an unrealistically wide propeller plane. It has an effective ceiling altitude of around seventy thousand feet or twenty one thousand meters, and it can fly completely under computer control from takeoff to landing. Only two of them were ever built, and they were really meant for Boeing to kind of research effective strategies for unmanned

aerial vehicles. In general, they weren't intended necessarily to be production vehicles, and in fact, the military said there were very few practical applications because they would be far too vulnerable by to enemy attack if you were to try and use them as reconnaissance vehicles. For example, Boeing was involved in the design and production of the B two stealth bomber, which was a top secret vehicle at the time. I've talked about stealth technology and other episodes, so I'm

not going to go into detail here. It largely involves creating surfaces with odd angles so the incoming radar waves don't reflect back to the radar stations. But it gets a little more compleated than that. But I've talked about in previous episodes, Boeing and McDonald Douglas would get the nod from NASA to lead R and D efforts into the design of supersonic passenger aircraft, again, this time with an eye to mitigate the challenges I mentioned earlier. This

is called the High Speed Civil Transport Project. And occasionally you'll hear about various studies and ways to try and do things like reduce or eliminate the sonic boom as much as possible, which is tricky to do. It's hard to fool physics. You ken in decrease its effect, it's hard to get rid of it because air, you know, nature still abhors a vacuum, so do I hate vacuuming.

In December nine, Boeing merged with Rockwell Aerospace, and Rockwell became Boeing North American and it operated as a subsidiary company. Also in August, Boeing would merge with its old competitor McDonald Douglas. Harry Stone Cipher, who had been the CEO of McDonald Douglas, would then come over to be the Boeing president and the Boeing CEO and Chairman, Phil Condent

would remain at his role at the top. On September seven, the f twenty two Raptor, which was based off an experimental aircraft from a couple of years earlier, would make its first flight. This is a high speed, stealth tactical fighter and on that first flight it climbed to an altitude of fifteen thousand feet in less than three minutes. Boeing was responsible for several parts of this aircraft, but it was working in a partner a ship with other companies,

including Lockheed, on this particular project. In Boeing would change the name of the McDonald Douglas m d N that I mentioned earlier, and when was the plane that had not yet gone into production when Boeing had merged with McDonald Douglas, and the new name was the seven seventeen, So now it's the Boeing seven seventeen. In ninety nine, Bowing landed a one point six billion dollar contract to serve as the lead systems integrator for the National Missile

Defense Program. And there's a ton of other odds and ends we could cover, like the Joint helmet mounted Queuing system or the Joint Direct Attack Munition or j DAM platform, or the rock and Roll satellites that Bowing produced for XM satellite radio or the space launch complex at Cape Canaveral, not to mention the various missiles and bombs and aircraft that Boeing has worked on since two thousand for the

United States and other countries. But I'm running out of time, and we still need to talk about the seven thirty seven Max. Boeing announced this particular generation of its seven thirty seven back in two thousand eleven, and they're very similar in many ways in capacity to early generations of the seven thirty seven, but in other ways they're very different.

The seven thirty seven Max aircraft received certification in two thousand seventeen, staying the aircraft was suitable to enter into service. But in October two thousand eighteen, a seven thirty seven Max eight operated by Lion air Jet UH crashed into the Java Sea off the coast of Indonesia less than twenty minutes after it had taken off, with all aboard lost. The cause appeared to be a problem with the flight

control system. More on that in a moment. On March tenth, two thousand nineteen, and Ethiopian Airlines flight also a seven thirty seven Max eight crashed less than ten minutes after it had taken off from Addis Ababa. There were no

survivors in that crash either. Investigations are ongoing as of the recording of this podcast, but in any case, the global fleet of seven thirty seven Max aircraft is currently grounded and may continue to be so for the rest of twenty nineteen, and Boeing has stated that it may soon need to slow or even halt production on the aircraft. So what actually happened, Well, it's premature to say everything,

but we have some ideas now. Boeing has maintained that the aircraft were designed properly and they were operating properly, but that cruise were not following the correct procedures as indicated by the flight manual. Pilots have stated that they were not adequately informed of a new type of software that was incorporated into the flight control system that may

have played a part in these accidents. So what's going on? Well, first, it's helpful to know that the seven thirty seven Max is different from earlier seven thirty seven aircraft in its construction. The engines are different from earlier seven thirty seven aircraft, and they are placed further forward and higher up on the fuselage. And that changes the balance of the aircraft.

It actually creates a tendency for the seven thirty seven's nose to start pointing upwards, starts to pitch up when it's traveling at lower speeds, and this in turn can lead to engines stalling out. They don't get enough air in them, and then they stall, and then you're in a real dangerous situation. And this is where the software comes in. The software is called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System or m CASTS, and the software detects when the

aircraft's nose is pointed upward at lower speeds. It has sensors to detect the angle of attack, and if the angle of attack is too great, it sends a command to the horizontal stabilizers. They're at the tail of the plane. The stabilizers tilt so that the aircraft will level out, which supplies the air the engine's need for continuous operation

without stalling. So that's important. So in the case where this aircraft is slowing down and it's just naturally the noses creeping up, this computer system is supposed to account

for that. In the Lion air crash, here's what seems to have happened the m casts incorrectly detected that the nose of the aircraft was pointed too far upward and the engines would be in dature of stalling, so it's sent the command to the horizontal stabilizers, which tilted and that caused the aircraft's nose to pitch downward, sending the aircraft into a dive, and the crew were unable to stop this malfunction or correct for it, and the plane crashed.

The same thing may have happened with the Ethiopian Airlines crash, but that investigation is ongoing as of the recording of

this show. Now, I have seen several aviation industry experts say that a big part of the issue is that the seven seven Max is different enough from earlier seven thirty seven models like the seven thirty seven in g that it should necessitate an entirely new, distinct and thorough highlot training program, and that a lot of airlines had more casual training programs, like the kind you could complete in an hour on a tablet, so that could be

a problem that might require much more extensive training for pilots so they can familiarize themselves with the changes in the seven thirty seven max before piloting the newer aircraft.

In addition, newspapers like The New York Times have investigated the f a A and have come to the conclusion that that agency is not well enough equipped to perform adequate testing and certification procedures on aircraft in general, which allows the possibility of malfunctions and mistakes to make their way through the certification process because there's just not enough funding and expertise to detect all of these, and that

means that you could have potentially tragic consequences. Boeing Bird's part began working on a software patch to address problems with the m casts pretty much immediately, and this was made more difficult, the company said, because it's simulators were unable to replicate the problems that the actual production aircraft

were experiencing. But the updated software, which puts measures into place to prevent the m CAST system from activating prematurely, has been completed and as I record this episode, it's essentially awaiting f a A certification for distribution. So in other words, the company says that they found a fix for the issue and it just has to make sure that the certification um agrees and that they can then

distribute it to all the aircraft. As I record this, the future of the seven seven Max is in doubt. There's the possibility that Boeing might have to scrap production on that jet entirely. There are hundreds of outstanding orders

that could be canceled. It's possible that airlines would rather look at alternatives than stick with the seven thirty seven Max, even with software updates and training programs to help fix these previous problem because now the seven thirty seven Max has a very negative association with it, and so it's

hard to get away from that. It's hard to tell passengers no, no, everything's fine now if, especially with the amount of reporting then has happened on this issue, uh, I think it's reasonable to say that a lot of people would have reservations about getting on that type of plane, even if they were told that things have been worked out since the accidents. It's an ugly thing to see it happened. I mean, obviously it's a tragedy and it's terrible that people lost their lives in this. Uh. It's

also frustrating to see the blame game going around. I don't honestly know ultimately who is to blame. Boeing says that they felt the Flying Manual had all the information needed to deal with these kind of situations. Pilots say they weren't even really told about the m casts UH software on the flying control system. I don't know who to believe, UH. I just know it is a tragedy and that things have to be fixed for people to have at least the confidence that these aircraft can go

back into service safely. And that concludes our little series on Boeing. As I said, I skipped over a ton of stuff in this episode, and I apologize for that. If you had a favorite Bowing story that I didn't get to. But if you do have things you would like me to talk about, whether it's about Boeing or anything else, get in touch with me. You can send me an email the addresses tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or you can pop on over to

our website that's tech stuff podcast dot com. You're gonna find an archive of all of our old episodes. You'll find links to where we are on social media. You also find a link to our online store, where every purchase you make goes to help the show. We greatly appreciate it, and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is a production of I heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen

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