Book Review: Creating the 747 Jumbo Jet and Other Adventures from a Life in Aviation
The Chief Engineer of the Boeing 747 Lets it Fly in a New Memoir
By Eve Lichtgarn, published Sep 30, 2006
Published Content: 92 Total Views: 72,596 Favorited By: 1 CPs
By Joe Sutter with Jay Spenser
Smithsonian Books, 2006
Hardcover, 272 pp., illus., $26.95
ISBN 0-06-088241-7
It is surprising to find insight into the mind set of the space program from a book seemingly devoted to the nuts and bolts of airplane engineering. It is even more surprising to find an endorsement blurb from Neil Armstrong on the book jacket of a Boeing employee’s memoir. But Joe Sutter’s book iconically titled 747 delivers both due to his rarified position of being hand selected by the Reagan Administration in 1986 to serve, along with Armstrong, Chuck Yeager, Richard Feynman, Sally Ride and nine other heavyweights, to serve on the presidential commission to investigate the Challenger explosion.
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Takeaways
- The Boeing 747 was the first major aircraft without a military predecessor.
- While other jetliners had two hydraulic systems, the 747 had four systems for safety.
- The designer of the engine placement for the 737 was paid $50 for the patent.
Did You Know?
In the 1960s the Boeing 747 was considered merely an interim conventional airliner, useful only until the SST, the Super Sonic Transport, took over air travel.
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