Boeing 787 Dreamliner - Mark Wagner [9]
The X-32’s one-piece wing was an equally vital bellwether for the goals set for the Dreamliner. Thanks to the lean assembly tools, the ungainly fighter was assembled in half the expected time, and for almost 40 percent less than projected.
The ex-HSCT group had proposed a basic Y-2 design that would cruise right on the edge of the sound barrier in the transonic zone, where drag rise was usually notoriously high. “They were pretty positive about this concept and had advanced CFD visualization of why it would work at Mach 0.98,” Jackson recalled. “So it was a very exploratory effort, but it had to be, and it was led from more of an aerodynamic perspective than from a traditional configuration sort of approach.”
Jackson also briefed Mike Bair, the newly appointed vice president of business strategy and marketing, to “acquaint him with what we were doing.” Boeing’s continuing efforts to develop and launch a stretched 747, dubbed the 747X, based on the back of a freighter version, were meanwhile foundering, and the results of the ninety-day study made extra-fascinating reading to both Bair and Condit, with whom he shared the details.
For all this period, despite the growing focus on the midmarket, “the story of a bigger 747 kept coming up,” recalled Gillette. “By 2000 we were looking at a 17 percent increase in payload capacity with the 747X.” In June 2000 Boeing had even brought in all its key 747 customers for a detailed presentation on three proposed variants: a 747-400X, 747X, and 747X Stretch. Assuming orders were taken for ten to thirty aircraft, the new program was expected to be launched in the first quarter of 2001.
Although externally similar to the current 747, the advanced derivative plan included a host of new 777-style features, including flight deck, avionics, and cabin, as well as lighter- weight materials to help increase range and payload. The $4 billion plan included the design and construction of a larger wing with 17 percent more area and an 8 percent bigger span.
But airlines were simply not interested in the 747X project, or even, it seemed, the large-capacity market. “Instead we started getting some extremely explicit input from the customers for Boeing to start looking at something in the middle of the market—and something with more range. It kind of fitted in well with where we were going with Glacier,” recalled Roundhill.
As 2001 began and with the clock ticking toward the cutoff point at the middle of the year when the 747X needed to be launched to still make the 2005 service entry target, the market appeared to make up Boeing’s mind for it. FedEx, which Boeing really hoped would save the day by ordering the 747X, ordered the A3XX—by now launched as the A380.
By 2000 Boeing’s focus appeared firmly fixed on yet another attempt to launch a new 747X derivative family. The $4 billion Next-Gen 747 family program was based around a larger wing box, wing root inserts, and a fuselage stretch with seating for up to 520 in three classes. Springing from 747X, with its takeoff weight of 1.04 million pounds, was to have been a 747X Stretch freighter, a 600-seat Stretch “domestic” for high-density Japanese routes, and a 430-seat 747X to replace the 747-400 and 400X. The program, which aimed for service entry in 2005, floundered on poor market reaction and the loss of a pivotal freighter order from FedEx to the A380.
An early outstation of the Phantom Works, Boeing’s version of Skunk Works, the “black building,” visible in the lower right of this view of the company’s Renton facilities, was the setting for the “ninety-day” study that gave birth to the Sonic Cruiser. These later transferred north to a new site at the “Bomarc” building in Everett, named for the company’s supersonic antiaircraft missile development with Canada that took place in that facility during the Cold War. Mark Wagner
One of the ninety-day-study candidates