Andreas Spaeth joins Boeing historian Michael Lombardi to climb inside the nose section of the 1969 2707 mock-up in Washington state
It's the 1960s and America is in a race with Russia to be the first nation to put a man on the moon. Boeing is busy building the world's biggest passenger aircraft, the 747, and several other manufacturers are vying to build a supersonic transport (SST).
Veteran Boeing historian Michael Lombardi sets the scene: "We were going to the moon and there was just this whole belief in America that there was nothing we couldn't achieve. That whatever we set ourselves to, no matter how much it cost or how much work it entailed, there were no limits. The SST is a symbol of that period when we could do anything we were planning on doing. It was the biggest programme at Boeing and, other than NASA’s Apollo moon mission, it was the biggest aerospace programme in America. Joe Sutter, the father of the 747, frequently complained about how difficult it was to get engineers to construct his aircraft because everyone was always busy with the SST.”
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