23 ms·

Joe Sutter, who guided creation of the Boeing 747, has died

129 points by NaOH 10y ago

matthewmcg 10y ago
His book, 747: Creating the World's First Jumbo Jet and Other Adventures from a Life in Aviation, is a good read.
WalterBright 10y ago
The 747 is an amazing engineering achievement. Even more than that, it's an amazing business achievement. The 747 was an "all in", "bet the company" program for Boeing. It took many, many years for the company to break even on its investment, but after that the 747 was a money-making machine for Boeing and for the airlines. When I worked at Boeing in the early 80's, every time a 747 rolled off the assembly line a gigantic paycheck went into the company. (Just walking down the assembly line in the Everett plant was more fun (for me, as an aero nerd) than an E-ticket ride.) Airlines loved the 747, because it was a money-making machine for them, too. Nobody could compete with the 747 for decades. The 747 provided the technology and the money to develop the 757, 767, etc.
- acemarke 10y ago
  Absolutely random note: I had never heard the phrase "E-ticket ride" in my life until earlier today, when one of my dad's buddies mentioned it while we were out golfing and explained the context. Just a few hours later, I see it here. Amusing.
  - gregpilling 10y ago
    E ticket, is a reference to how Disneyland used to price rides. The most exciting rides like Space Mountain, required an E ticket; this was before the pay-once-ride-anything plan was introduced. I went to Disneyland for the first time in 1979, and the E ticket was in use then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_ticket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_ticket
    - WalterBright 10y ago
      Disneyland was another of those totally game-changing innovations like the 747.
      - Bluestrike2 10y ago
        The outsized effect of Disneyland on the American psyche has always fascinated me. In a lot of ways, Disneyland is synonymous with the idea of the family vacation. I remember reading a fascinating article a few months back about a column Elie Wiesel wrote about his trip to Disneyland [0]: > I don’t know if a Garden of Eden awaits adults in the hereafter. I do know, though, that there is a Garden of Eden for children here in this life. I know because I myself visited this paradise. I have just returned from there, just passed through its gates, just left the magical kingdom known as Disneyland. And as I bid that kingdom farewell, I understood for the first time the true meaning of the French saying ‘to leave is to die a little’ [partir, c’est mourir un peu] For a theme park--of all things--to create that sort of effect on its visitors is nothing short of remarkable. 0. http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/206125/elie-wiesel-visits-disneyland http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/206125/elie...
        rangibaby 10y ago
        > Disneyland is synonymous with the idea of the family vacation Hoo boy http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/read-john-hughes-original-national-811591 http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/read-john-hughes-o... and the no-celebrities-harmed film adaptation "Vacation".
  - handedness 10y ago
    https://www.damninteresting.com/the-baader-meinhof-phenomenon/ https://www.damninteresting.com/the-baader-meinhof-phenomeno...
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    In addition to the Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon, I think there's also the notion of having a concept move into the scope of awareness. I'm doing a lot of worldview refactoring, reading and thinking on many subjects and topics. As I start assimilating new models and references, I'm going back to older sources and revisiting them in light of the new models I've been acquiring and developing. The effect can be profound, with many "familiar" works suddenly taking on highly unexpected dimensions. My own first exposure to "E-Ticket" came from Julie Brown's "The Homecoming Queen's got a Gun" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xG3yGdQYwqg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xG3yGdQYwqg (A song and video which probably wouldn't fly today.)
    - Mickchicken2 10y ago
      Can you explain worldview refactoring? This sounds like something I have been mulling on recently. (Concept not phrase)
      - dredmorbius 10y ago
        https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4cudix/21st_century_refactory_worker/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4cudix/21st_ce... If you take "worldview" to be the aggregate of models, premises, axioms, rules-of-thumb, personal and cultural context, etc., etc., you end up with a pretty hairy melenge of crud. Some of it is useful and accurate. A lot of it isn't. (All models are wrong, some are useful.) Almost all of it has very strong path dependencies. Language itself is problematic as we define things in terms of other things, and if all the ground is soft and/or unstable, then that shifts. I'm looking at ideas involving progress, models, institutions, limits, and interactions among them. I've been thinking for a while of adding "values" to that list as well. There are large constraints in discussing this with others, particularly as much of the thinking is novel (though as I dig through dusty and rusty corners I'm finding I'm reinventing a lot of ideas previously considered -- something I find heartening), but moreso, that those who hold the mainstream worldview are heavily vested in it. There's an as-yet-unwritten essay on apocalyptic thinking. Not in the sense of fire-from-the-sky the world will explode meaning, but in that the roots of the words "revelation", "enlightenment", "apocalypse", "catastrophe", and "revolution", among others, refer to an overturning. "The scales dropped from my eyes". There's a Cupertino mystic I bumped across online (no, not Steve Jobs) who has a really expressive little bit that enlightenment is not in the least comforting. Or to borrow from Arthur C. Clarke's title -- it's a childhood's end. Solidifying a bit, I'm finding the ecologists far more convincing and reality-based than (most of) the economists. Howard Odum, William Ophuls, Vaclav Smil, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (economist), Herman Daly (ecological economist). But the roots of economic thought, in particular 18th and 19th century, are also pretty fascinating. There's Steuart (almost wholly ignored by Smith), and as a recently discovered example, T. E. Cliffe Leslie, "The Political Economy of Adam Smith" (1870), which does an excellent job of expressing what I've been trying to put my finger on about economics (and all philosophy) being grounded in specific circumstances. http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/leslie/leslie01.html http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/leslie/leslie01.ht... No branch of philosophical doctrine, indeed, can be fairly investigated or apprehended apart from its history. All our systems of politics, morals, and metaphysics would be different if we knew exactly how they grew up, and what transformations they have undergone; if we knew, in short, the true history of human ideas. And the history of political economy, at any rate, is not lost. It would not be difficult to trace the connection between every extant treatise prior to the `Wealth of Nations,' and conditions of thought at the epoch at which it appeared. But there is the less occasion, for the purpose of these pages, or of ascertaining the origin and foundation of the economic doctrines of our own day, to go behind the epoch of Adam Smith, that he has himself traced the systems of political economy antecedent to his own to a particular course of history, to `the different progress of opulence in different ages and nations,' and `the private interests and prejudices of particular orders of men.' What he did not see was, that his own system, in its turn, was the product of a particular history; that what he regarded as the System of Nature was a descendant of the System of Nature as conceived by the ancients, in a form fashioned by the ideas and circumstances of his own time, and. coloured by his own disposition and course of life. Still less could he see how, after his time, `the progress of opulence' would govern the interpretation of his doctrines, or how the system he promulgated as the system of liberty, justice, and divine benevolence, would be moulded into a system of selfishness by `the private interests and prejudices of particular orders of men.' Also claimed is that Smith is entirely deductive. I'm not so convinced of this (Smith actually does cite observations and behaviour frequently), though it is true in parts, and most true in those parts of Smith that are most widely and loudly championed today, particularly the wholly fabricated notion that an "Invisible Hand" is some mechanism by which markets operate. It's not mechanism but apparent outcome, an outcome, it turns out from much subsequent studies. fantastically sensitive to actual conditions, and not in the least guaranteed. (See epecially Joseph Stiglitz.) Anyhow, small bits. But yes, I'm running an abattoir for sacred cows and received truths. The linked subbreddit (above) is where I'm exploring much of that. Conversation spills out in other places, including HN.
- asimuvPR 10y ago
  Airplane assembly lines are amazing. I did a tour of the Lockheed atlanta plant and ir blew my mind. Seeing a handful of c130 in line in various states of assembly was mindblowing. The scale of the place is just ridiculous. I can't imagine how the 747 line might have been.
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    The 747 assembly line is just a thing of beauty. Boeing assembly lines are also spotlessly clean, and meticulously organized. The parts themselves are also very well made, just compare them with auto parts.
- dingaling 10y ago
  > Airlines loved the 747, because it was a money-making machine for them, too. Quite the opposite for most of the 1970s and much of the 1980s. Many smaller national airlines such as Aer Lingus, Air Canada and Sabena bought the 747 for the 'prestige' and its range, but struggled to make any money from it and eventually ditched it for smaller trijets and twins. KLM managed to keep going by flying them in Combi configuration with half of the main deck given over to cargo.
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    If you buy one for prestige purposes, of course you're going to lose money. Airplanes only make money when they're packed with payload. An airplane sitting on the ground, or flying half-full, is going to lose money like a firehose drains a tank. But if your logistics are set up to keep the 747 flying as close as possible to 24/7 packed with payload, you can make a crapton of money, which is why Boeing was selling so many.
- agumonkey 10y ago
  It's odd, for a reason, even as a young kid, the 747 was the de-facto standard for "king of airplanes".
- FigBug 10y ago
  I never understood why Boeing risked it all on the 747. The Boeing 2707 was supposed to be the future of passenger travel and the 747 was supposed to get relegated to freight. Why risk it all for what was expected to be a stop gap product? For the first wide body, why not start with something 767 sized? Why start with the biggest?
  - sjm-lbm 10y ago
    You answered it yourself: freight. Basically everything about the 747 was optimized around requirements for transporting freight (including fuselage width and placing the flight deck above the main level).
  - ak217 10y ago
    The requirements for the 747 were largely driven by the USAF and then Pan Am. If I understand right, both customers were so influential that Boeing felt it had to accommodate them.
    - WalterBright 10y ago
      The USAF never did buy any 747s.
      - emp_zealoth 10y ago
        The Space Shuttle never flew any polar missions either
      - hga 10y ago
        Formally, there's the Civil Reserve Air Fleet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Reserve_Air_Fleet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Reserve_Air_Fleet and in general these planes can be used in emergencies. The transport planes the US military tends to buy have additional requirements that aren't conducive to civil air fleet profitability.
      - ak217 10y ago
        Right, because Lockheed won the bid, and Boeing had to shop their design around to Pan Am and civilian freighters.
bootload 10y ago
Love how the 747-400 has a max cruising speed of mach .761 (939km/h). That is fast.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  And that's of course airspeed, going in the right direction with the jetstream in your back you can go well above 1000 Km/h.
  - bootload 10y ago
    "going in the right direction with the jetstream in your back" Indeed, I often think the choice of jet for AF-1 was chosen for that reason, Mach 1 capability.
qq66 10y ago
The 747 is one of mankind's crowning achievements. It's not only a technical marvel but an aesthetic one -- it looks truly beautiful while an A380 looks like it just got punched in the stomach. Along with the massive network of airports, air traffic controllers, mechanics, regulators, pilots, engineers, forensic analysts, financiers, etc... I think that commercial air travel is a more impressive achievement than the moon landing and the 747 its glorious peak moment.
- jdale27 10y ago
  What a great comment. I went through a period in my life where I hardly traveled at all, and more recently I've been traveling frequently for work. I still feel the same childish joy every time I feel the plane leave the ground -- we're actually flying! And the fact that basically on a whim, I can buy a ticket, show up at an airport, wait a bit, sit on a plane for a while, and then basically show up on the other side of the world in a few hours, what it used to take humans months, or even years, to do, when it became possible at all. So yeah; from someone who's a geek about it, but outside of the aviation industry: it's cool.
  - rdtsc 10y ago
    > I still feel the same childish joy every time I feel the plane leave the ground -- we're actually flying! I aways remember this bit by Louis CK about flying. It is just so true. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3dYS7PcAG4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3dYS7PcAG4
    - mercer 10y ago
      I'm a grown man and I still often ask if I can sit by the window (if I can't make sure I'll be assigned a window seat for a reasonable price)!
  - MattRogish 10y ago
    I have over 500,000 BIS lifetime miles and I'm still exited by the takeoff roll. Airlines are starting to retire 744s. If you have a chance, find a way to ride in the upper deck. It's quite something!
gregpilling 10y ago
a good quote from him (and the article) "“You know things are going to happen,” he explained, “and sometimes it’s going to be severe. You still should be able to come home.”
helloworld 10y ago
So much happened in aviation between the Wright Flyer's first flight in 1903 and the 747's in 1969. Since then, at least from a passenger experience viewpoint, relatively little has changed. Is that because most new technologies eventually reach plateaus? Or have unique factors -- like environmental concerns about supersonic travel -- held back progress in aviation?
- paulsutter 10y ago
  You could say the transonic barrier is a big nonlinearity, and that it wasn't worth going further. Peter Thiel says it's caused by pessimism, and that's a much better explanation. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/530901/technology-stalled-in-1970/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/530901/technology-stalled... (I'm not related unfortunately. Joe Sutter's father Frank Sutter was born Franc Suhadolc in Slovenia)
  - pulse7 10y ago
    Maybe I am related, because I am also from Slovenia... ;-) Becuase we are a small nation (just 2 millions) I am very proud of him...
  - hodgesrm 10y ago
    That's perhaps true to a small extent perhaps but I think simple economics have more explanatory power. Subsonic air travel is an 80/20 solution that meets the needs of a very large market. Once you can fly from New Your to London in 7-8 hours dropping the flight time to 3.5 hours has limited utility especially when you consider it does not drop overall travel time by anywhere near as much. For most passengers it's not worth the far greater cost to make SSTs safe. The same thing applies in a much bigger way to travel to low-earth orbit. Costs escalate dramatically.
- blakeyrat 10y ago
  Maximum speed and capacity aren't increasing because those aren't problematic factors. Right now the most important place for improvement is in fuel economy, and at that modern planes are doing much better than their 1970s equivalents. The 747-400 costs $47.34 per nautical mile, the 787-8 only $27.35. Sure it's not as visible to the passengers (except indirectly in the form of cheaper tickets), but that is a huge improvement in an important metric.
hackuser 10y ago
It's well know that the 747 is extraordinary in terms of engineering. Why? From the naive perspective, it's the-same-thing-only-bigger. I'm not quite that naive, but I'd love to hear an authoritative analysis rather than the popular wisdom. I would guess that engines powerful and efficient enough to fly a plane so much larger than any predecessors, and to fly it further, would also be a significant achievement.
bambax 10y ago
> Adam Bruckner of the University of Washington’s department of aeronautics and astronautics later described the 747 as “one of the great engineering wonders of the world, like the pyramids of Egypt, the Eiffel Tower or the Panama Canal.” Absolutely true. It's one of the most beautiful machines of the world, and unlike the Eiffel tower or the great pyramids, it serves a purpose; it's a tool, and the nicest one. One morning in 1992 I drove a friend to JFK; when he departed, I spent the rest of the day watching 747s take off and land; I just couldn't leave the spot. It was a great day. > In 1986 President Ronald Reagan appointed him to a panel investigating the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. Richard Feynman was a member of this panel; I wonder if the two got along well?
hodgesrm 10y ago
Joe Sutter did a lecture on the Shuttle disaster investigation at the University of Washington shortly after leaving the committee. He gave a memorable explanation of the risks of flying the Space Shuttle, which he described as an experimental vehicle with 700 flight safety-critical parts [1]. "Safety-critical" means that if the part fails you lose the aircraft. Sutter claimed that thanks to redundant design the 747 had zero flight safety-critical parts. I have never been able to confirm this independently but it has stuck with me ever since. Anyway, he instantly cut through the prevailing NASA propaganda that the shuttle was the beginning of regular travel to low-earth orbit. It was a great talk by a great engineer. [1] http://www.faa-aircraft-certification.com/faa-definitions.html#F http://www.faa-aircraft-certification.com/faa-definitions.ht....
TimMeade 10y ago
He did an amazing feat in such a short time in accomplishing the design. There is a fantastic documentary shown on the Smithsonian channel ever few weeks about the design of the 747. If you are interested in this kind of thing, it is well worth the 2 hours watch time. Joe is in it both in current day reflections and footage from the design period. RIP.
- TimMeade 10y ago
  http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/shows/747-the-jumbo-revolution/0/3407070 http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/shows/747-the-jumbo-revolu...
cletus 10y ago
It just so happens I randomly caught a documentary about the development of the 747 recently. From an engineering perspective it's amazing. A few tidbits: - it went from an idea on a gold course to engineering prototype in 2.5 years in an era almost without computers - Boeing had to build what I believe is the world's largest building to make them - Boeing saw the 747 as a stopgap while their main focus was on the (doomed SST so Sutter had to try to go any resources. With the SST's cancellation and huge development cost it almost bankrupted Boeing. - all of this was before simulators so they basically had to build one and take off and see how it flew or even if it flew. - for much of the development there were no engines powerful enough to fly it, eventually a Pratt and Whitney prototype was used that had a nasty habit of exploding for over a year of flight testing before they figured out why. Nowadays engines are so reliable that the four engine design is essentially dead and many planes will serve their entire life never having their engines replaced. - the distinctive (now iconic) design with the cockpit and upper deck bulging at the front was to fulfill a dual purpose as a cargo plane. You open up the nose and still get the full body height to load and remove cargo. - when Boeing agreed to make it (because of a Pan Am request) they had no idea what it would look like. I think the show was an episode of Mighty Aircraft. Well worth watching. RIP joe Sutter.
- TimMeade 10y ago
  Sounds exactly like the documentary on Smithsonian. http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/shows/747-the-jumbo-revolution/0/3407070 http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/shows/747-the-jumbo-revolu...
madengr 10y ago
So did they increase the passenger capacity from 360 to 500 without increasing the size?
paulpauper 10y ago
I wonder what the limits to airplane size are? Would it be possible to make a version that seats thousands of passengers
- arprocter 10y ago
  I think the size limitation is the airports, not the planes. Before it became a regular sight, there was speculation as to whether or not the A380 was 'too big' for Gatwick
- gumby 10y ago
  A lot of them are system issues: you need a LOT of passengers going point-point, and you need the airport infrastructure. Consider the A380: it can only fly into airports that have been modified/built for them; takes forever to load/unload passengers, and only works for a few long haul routes. Most airlines are losing money on it (few are in the Qantas/Emirates mode) and thus the order book is not strong. I doubt anyone will build a larger plane.
gumby 10y ago
What boggles my mind is that the 747 and Concorde were designed with slide rules and built by hand without CNC. Not just the airframes but the motors and everything else. They must have had some simple computer simulation, but not much. I don't want to return to those days but if we had to build software that way it would be much more reliable. It would take longer and have much less functionality too of course.

129 points by NaOH 10y ago

His book, 747: Creating the World's First Jumbo Jet and Other Adventures from a Life in Aviation, is a good read.

The 747 is an amazing engineering achievement. Even more than that, it's an amazing business achievement. The 747 was an "all in", "bet the company" program for Boeing. It took many, many years for the company to break even on its investment, but after that the 747 was a money-making machine for Boeing and for the airlines. When I worked at Boeing in the early 80's, every time a 747 rolled off the assembly line a gigantic paycheck went into the company. (Just walking down the assembly line in the Everett plant was more fun (for me, as an aero nerd) than an E-ticket ride.) Airlines loved the 747, because it was a money-making machine for them, too. Nobody could compete with the 747 for decades. The 747 provided the technology and the money to develop the 757, 767, etc.

acemarke 10y ago
Absolutely random note: I had never heard the phrase "E-ticket ride" in my life until earlier today, when one of my dad's buddies mentioned it while we were out golfing and explained the context. Just a few hours later, I see it here. Amusing.
- gregpilling 10y ago
  E ticket, is a reference to how Disneyland used to price rides. The most exciting rides like Space Mountain, required an E ticket; this was before the pay-once-ride-anything plan was introduced. I went to Disneyland for the first time in 1979, and the E ticket was in use then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_ticket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_ticket
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    Disneyland was another of those totally game-changing innovations like the 747.
    - Bluestrike2 10y ago
      The outsized effect of Disneyland on the American psyche has always fascinated me. In a lot of ways, Disneyland is synonymous with the idea of the family vacation. I remember reading a fascinating article a few months back about a column Elie Wiesel wrote about his trip to Disneyland [0]: > I don’t know if a Garden of Eden awaits adults in the hereafter. I do know, though, that there is a Garden of Eden for children here in this life. I know because I myself visited this paradise. I have just returned from there, just passed through its gates, just left the magical kingdom known as Disneyland. And as I bid that kingdom farewell, I understood for the first time the true meaning of the French saying ‘to leave is to die a little’ [partir, c’est mourir un peu] For a theme park--of all things--to create that sort of effect on its visitors is nothing short of remarkable. 0. http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/206125/elie-wiesel-visits-disneyland http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/206125/elie...
      - rangibaby 10y ago
        > Disneyland is synonymous with the idea of the family vacation Hoo boy http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/read-john-hughes-original-national-811591 http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/read-john-hughes-o... and the no-celebrities-harmed film adaptation "Vacation".
- handedness 10y ago
  https://www.damninteresting.com/the-baader-meinhof-phenomenon/ https://www.damninteresting.com/the-baader-meinhof-phenomeno...
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  In addition to the Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon, I think there's also the notion of having a concept move into the scope of awareness. I'm doing a lot of worldview refactoring, reading and thinking on many subjects and topics. As I start assimilating new models and references, I'm going back to older sources and revisiting them in light of the new models I've been acquiring and developing. The effect can be profound, with many "familiar" works suddenly taking on highly unexpected dimensions. My own first exposure to "E-Ticket" came from Julie Brown's "The Homecoming Queen's got a Gun" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xG3yGdQYwqg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xG3yGdQYwqg (A song and video which probably wouldn't fly today.)
  - Mickchicken2 10y ago
    Can you explain worldview refactoring? This sounds like something I have been mulling on recently. (Concept not phrase)
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4cudix/21st_century_refactory_worker/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4cudix/21st_ce... If you take "worldview" to be the aggregate of models, premises, axioms, rules-of-thumb, personal and cultural context, etc., etc., you end up with a pretty hairy melenge of crud. Some of it is useful and accurate. A lot of it isn't. (All models are wrong, some are useful.) Almost all of it has very strong path dependencies. Language itself is problematic as we define things in terms of other things, and if all the ground is soft and/or unstable, then that shifts. I'm looking at ideas involving progress, models, institutions, limits, and interactions among them. I've been thinking for a while of adding "values" to that list as well. There are large constraints in discussing this with others, particularly as much of the thinking is novel (though as I dig through dusty and rusty corners I'm finding I'm reinventing a lot of ideas previously considered -- something I find heartening), but moreso, that those who hold the mainstream worldview are heavily vested in it. There's an as-yet-unwritten essay on apocalyptic thinking. Not in the sense of fire-from-the-sky the world will explode meaning, but in that the roots of the words "revelation", "enlightenment", "apocalypse", "catastrophe", and "revolution", among others, refer to an overturning. "The scales dropped from my eyes". There's a Cupertino mystic I bumped across online (no, not Steve Jobs) who has a really expressive little bit that enlightenment is not in the least comforting. Or to borrow from Arthur C. Clarke's title -- it's a childhood's end. Solidifying a bit, I'm finding the ecologists far more convincing and reality-based than (most of) the economists. Howard Odum, William Ophuls, Vaclav Smil, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (economist), Herman Daly (ecological economist). But the roots of economic thought, in particular 18th and 19th century, are also pretty fascinating. There's Steuart (almost wholly ignored by Smith), and as a recently discovered example, T. E. Cliffe Leslie, "The Political Economy of Adam Smith" (1870), which does an excellent job of expressing what I've been trying to put my finger on about economics (and all philosophy) being grounded in specific circumstances. http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/leslie/leslie01.html http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/leslie/leslie01.ht... No branch of philosophical doctrine, indeed, can be fairly investigated or apprehended apart from its history. All our systems of politics, morals, and metaphysics would be different if we knew exactly how they grew up, and what transformations they have undergone; if we knew, in short, the true history of human ideas. And the history of political economy, at any rate, is not lost. It would not be difficult to trace the connection between every extant treatise prior to the `Wealth of Nations,' and conditions of thought at the epoch at which it appeared. But there is the less occasion, for the purpose of these pages, or of ascertaining the origin and foundation of the economic doctrines of our own day, to go behind the epoch of Adam Smith, that he has himself traced the systems of political economy antecedent to his own to a particular course of history, to `the different progress of opulence in different ages and nations,' and `the private interests and prejudices of particular orders of men.' What he did not see was, that his own system, in its turn, was the product of a particular history; that what he regarded as the System of Nature was a descendant of the System of Nature as conceived by the ancients, in a form fashioned by the ideas and circumstances of his own time, and. coloured by his own disposition and course of life. Still less could he see how, after his time, `the progress of opulence' would govern the interpretation of his doctrines, or how the system he promulgated as the system of liberty, justice, and divine benevolence, would be moulded into a system of selfishness by `the private interests and prejudices of particular orders of men.' Also claimed is that Smith is entirely deductive. I'm not so convinced of this (Smith actually does cite observations and behaviour frequently), though it is true in parts, and most true in those parts of Smith that are most widely and loudly championed today, particularly the wholly fabricated notion that an "Invisible Hand" is some mechanism by which markets operate. It's not mechanism but apparent outcome, an outcome, it turns out from much subsequent studies. fantastically sensitive to actual conditions, and not in the least guaranteed. (See epecially Joseph Stiglitz.) Anyhow, small bits. But yes, I'm running an abattoir for sacred cows and received truths. The linked subbreddit (above) is where I'm exploring much of that. Conversation spills out in other places, including HN.
asimuvPR 10y ago
Airplane assembly lines are amazing. I did a tour of the Lockheed atlanta plant and ir blew my mind. Seeing a handful of c130 in line in various states of assembly was mindblowing. The scale of the place is just ridiculous. I can't imagine how the 747 line might have been.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  The 747 assembly line is just a thing of beauty. Boeing assembly lines are also spotlessly clean, and meticulously organized. The parts themselves are also very well made, just compare them with auto parts.
dingaling 10y ago
> Airlines loved the 747, because it was a money-making machine for them, too. Quite the opposite for most of the 1970s and much of the 1980s. Many smaller national airlines such as Aer Lingus, Air Canada and Sabena bought the 747 for the 'prestige' and its range, but struggled to make any money from it and eventually ditched it for smaller trijets and twins. KLM managed to keep going by flying them in Combi configuration with half of the main deck given over to cargo.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  If you buy one for prestige purposes, of course you're going to lose money. Airplanes only make money when they're packed with payload. An airplane sitting on the ground, or flying half-full, is going to lose money like a firehose drains a tank. But if your logistics are set up to keep the 747 flying as close as possible to 24/7 packed with payload, you can make a crapton of money, which is why Boeing was selling so many.
agumonkey 10y ago
It's odd, for a reason, even as a young kid, the 747 was the de-facto standard for "king of airplanes".
FigBug 10y ago
I never understood why Boeing risked it all on the 747. The Boeing 2707 was supposed to be the future of passenger travel and the 747 was supposed to get relegated to freight. Why risk it all for what was expected to be a stop gap product? For the first wide body, why not start with something 767 sized? Why start with the biggest?
- sjm-lbm 10y ago
  You answered it yourself: freight. Basically everything about the 747 was optimized around requirements for transporting freight (including fuselage width and placing the flight deck above the main level).
- ak217 10y ago
  The requirements for the 747 were largely driven by the USAF and then Pan Am. If I understand right, both customers were so influential that Boeing felt it had to accommodate them.
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    The USAF never did buy any 747s.
    - emp_zealoth 10y ago
      The Space Shuttle never flew any polar missions either
    - hga 10y ago
      Formally, there's the Civil Reserve Air Fleet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Reserve_Air_Fleet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Reserve_Air_Fleet and in general these planes can be used in emergencies. The transport planes the US military tends to buy have additional requirements that aren't conducive to civil air fleet profitability.
    - ak217 10y ago
      Right, because Lockheed won the bid, and Boeing had to shop their design around to Pan Am and civilian freighters.

bootload 10y ago

Love how the 747-400 has a max cruising speed of mach .761 (939km/h). That is fast.

jacquesm 10y ago
And that's of course airspeed, going in the right direction with the jetstream in your back you can go well above 1000 Km/h.
- bootload 10y ago
  "going in the right direction with the jetstream in your back" Indeed, I often think the choice of jet for AF-1 was chosen for that reason, Mach 1 capability.

qq66 10y ago

The 747 is one of mankind's crowning achievements. It's not only a technical marvel but an aesthetic one -- it looks truly beautiful while an A380 looks like it just got punched in the stomach. Along with the massive network of airports, air traffic controllers, mechanics, regulators, pilots, engineers, forensic analysts, financiers, etc... I think that commercial air travel is a more impressive achievement than the moon landing and the 747 its glorious peak moment.

jdale27 10y ago
What a great comment. I went through a period in my life where I hardly traveled at all, and more recently I've been traveling frequently for work. I still feel the same childish joy every time I feel the plane leave the ground -- we're actually flying! And the fact that basically on a whim, I can buy a ticket, show up at an airport, wait a bit, sit on a plane for a while, and then basically show up on the other side of the world in a few hours, what it used to take humans months, or even years, to do, when it became possible at all. So yeah; from someone who's a geek about it, but outside of the aviation industry: it's cool.
- rdtsc 10y ago
  > I still feel the same childish joy every time I feel the plane leave the ground -- we're actually flying! I aways remember this bit by Louis CK about flying. It is just so true. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3dYS7PcAG4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3dYS7PcAG4
  - mercer 10y ago
    I'm a grown man and I still often ask if I can sit by the window (if I can't make sure I'll be assigned a window seat for a reasonable price)!
- MattRogish 10y ago
  I have over 500,000 BIS lifetime miles and I'm still exited by the takeoff roll. Airlines are starting to retire 744s. If you have a chance, find a way to ride in the upper deck. It's quite something!

gregpilling 10y ago

a good quote from him (and the article) "“You know things are going to happen,” he explained, “and sometimes it’s going to be severe. You still should be able to come home.”

helloworld 10y ago

So much happened in aviation between the Wright Flyer's first flight in 1903 and the 747's in 1969. Since then, at least from a passenger experience viewpoint, relatively little has changed. Is that because most new technologies eventually reach plateaus? Or have unique factors -- like environmental concerns about supersonic travel -- held back progress in aviation?

paulsutter 10y ago
You could say the transonic barrier is a big nonlinearity, and that it wasn't worth going further. Peter Thiel says it's caused by pessimism, and that's a much better explanation. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/530901/technology-stalled-in-1970/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/530901/technology-stalled... (I'm not related unfortunately. Joe Sutter's father Frank Sutter was born Franc Suhadolc in Slovenia)
- pulse7 10y ago
  Maybe I am related, because I am also from Slovenia... ;-) Becuase we are a small nation (just 2 millions) I am very proud of him...
- hodgesrm 10y ago
  That's perhaps true to a small extent perhaps but I think simple economics have more explanatory power. Subsonic air travel is an 80/20 solution that meets the needs of a very large market. Once you can fly from New Your to London in 7-8 hours dropping the flight time to 3.5 hours has limited utility especially when you consider it does not drop overall travel time by anywhere near as much. For most passengers it's not worth the far greater cost to make SSTs safe. The same thing applies in a much bigger way to travel to low-earth orbit. Costs escalate dramatically.
blakeyrat 10y ago
Maximum speed and capacity aren't increasing because those aren't problematic factors. Right now the most important place for improvement is in fuel economy, and at that modern planes are doing much better than their 1970s equivalents. The 747-400 costs $47.34 per nautical mile, the 787-8 only $27.35. Sure it's not as visible to the passengers (except indirectly in the form of cheaper tickets), but that is a huge improvement in an important metric.

hackuser 10y ago

It's well know that the 747 is extraordinary in terms of engineering. Why? From the naive perspective, it's the-same-thing-only-bigger. I'm not quite that naive, but I'd love to hear an authoritative analysis rather than the popular wisdom. I would guess that engines powerful and efficient enough to fly a plane so much larger than any predecessors, and to fly it further, would also be a significant achievement.

bambax 10y ago

> Adam Bruckner of the University of Washington’s department of aeronautics and astronautics later described the 747 as “one of the great engineering wonders of the world, like the pyramids of Egypt, the Eiffel Tower or the Panama Canal.” Absolutely true. It's one of the most beautiful machines of the world, and unlike the Eiffel tower or the great pyramids, it serves a purpose; it's a tool, and the nicest one. One morning in 1992 I drove a friend to JFK; when he departed, I spent the rest of the day watching 747s take off and land; I just couldn't leave the spot. It was a great day. > In 1986 President Ronald Reagan appointed him to a panel investigating the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. Richard Feynman was a member of this panel; I wonder if the two got along well?

hodgesrm 10y ago

Joe Sutter did a lecture on the Shuttle disaster investigation at the University of Washington shortly after leaving the committee. He gave a memorable explanation of the risks of flying the Space Shuttle, which he described as an experimental vehicle with 700 flight safety-critical parts [1]. "Safety-critical" means that if the part fails you lose the aircraft. Sutter claimed that thanks to redundant design the 747 had zero flight safety-critical parts. I have never been able to confirm this independently but it has stuck with me ever since. Anyway, he instantly cut through the prevailing NASA propaganda that the shuttle was the beginning of regular travel to low-earth orbit. It was a great talk by a great engineer. [1] http://www.faa-aircraft-certification.com/faa-definitions.html#F http://www.faa-aircraft-certification.com/faa-definitions.ht....

TimMeade 10y ago

He did an amazing feat in such a short time in accomplishing the design. There is a fantastic documentary shown on the Smithsonian channel ever few weeks about the design of the 747. If you are interested in this kind of thing, it is well worth the 2 hours watch time. Joe is in it both in current day reflections and footage from the design period. RIP.

TimMeade 10y ago
http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/shows/747-the-jumbo-revolution/0/3407070 http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/shows/747-the-jumbo-revolu...

cletus 10y ago

It just so happens I randomly caught a documentary about the development of the 747 recently. From an engineering perspective it's amazing. A few tidbits: - it went from an idea on a gold course to engineering prototype in 2.5 years in an era almost without computers - Boeing had to build what I believe is the world's largest building to make them - Boeing saw the 747 as a stopgap while their main focus was on the (doomed SST so Sutter had to try to go any resources. With the SST's cancellation and huge development cost it almost bankrupted Boeing. - all of this was before simulators so they basically had to build one and take off and see how it flew or even if it flew. - for much of the development there were no engines powerful enough to fly it, eventually a Pratt and Whitney prototype was used that had a nasty habit of exploding for over a year of flight testing before they figured out why. Nowadays engines are so reliable that the four engine design is essentially dead and many planes will serve their entire life never having their engines replaced. - the distinctive (now iconic) design with the cockpit and upper deck bulging at the front was to fulfill a dual purpose as a cargo plane. You open up the nose and still get the full body height to load and remove cargo. - when Boeing agreed to make it (because of a Pan Am request) they had no idea what it would look like. I think the show was an episode of Mighty Aircraft. Well worth watching. RIP joe Sutter.

TimMeade 10y ago
Sounds exactly like the documentary on Smithsonian. http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/shows/747-the-jumbo-revolution/0/3407070 http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/shows/747-the-jumbo-revolu...

madengr 10y ago

So did they increase the passenger capacity from 360 to 500 without increasing the size?

paulpauper 10y ago

I wonder what the limits to airplane size are? Would it be possible to make a version that seats thousands of passengers

arprocter 10y ago
I think the size limitation is the airports, not the planes. Before it became a regular sight, there was speculation as to whether or not the A380 was 'too big' for Gatwick
gumby 10y ago
A lot of them are system issues: you need a LOT of passengers going point-point, and you need the airport infrastructure. Consider the A380: it can only fly into airports that have been modified/built for them; takes forever to load/unload passengers, and only works for a few long haul routes. Most airlines are losing money on it (few are in the Qantas/Emirates mode) and thus the order book is not strong. I doubt anyone will build a larger plane.

gumby 10y ago

What boggles my mind is that the 747 and Concorde were designed with slide rules and built by hand without CNC. Not just the airframes but the motors and everything else. They must have had some simple computer simulation, but not much. I don't want to return to those days but if we had to build software that way it would be much more reliable. It would take longer and have much less functionality too of course.