97 “Is it going to be like radio waves, where one day someone will figure out how to leverage it (recently detected gravity waves) into things we’ve never even dreamed of? We are only on the cusp figuring out how we can actually use this to do beneficial things.” 2015 KC-46A Pegasus military tanker Based on the Boeing 767 commercial jetliner, the KC-46 tanker is a widebody, multi-mission aircraft with the latest advanced technology. make sure that we are never caught by surprise by somebody coming along with something like a cold fusion energy system and you no longer need airplane gas turbines.” As for predicting what will happen during the next 100 years, that’s difficult, Tracy said. Who knows what the “next big thing” might be that will change the world, much as computers have. Tracy recalled that when he started at Boeing as a stress analyst with McDonnell Douglas in 1981, at Huntington Beach, Calif., his job was plotting test data—by hand. There were no personal computers. “I remember the first time they brought a personal computer into our work area that could plot that same data in seconds,” he said. “It dramatically changed how much time an engineer spent doing engineering versus clerical work. The problems that we are able to solve today analytically, using computers, would have been unfathomable back then. And we are far from where computer technology is heading.” So what will be the next big thing that could radically change technology and the world? That’s still to be determined, since scientists continue to make discoveries and envision ways to turn these findings into life-changing innovations, Tracy said. He noted, for example, how the discovery of radio waves changed the world. Radio waves were first predicted in 1867 by Scottish mathematical physicist James Maxwell. His mathematical theory, now called Maxwell’s equations, described light waves and radio waves as waves of electromagnetism that travel in space. About 20 years later, Heinrich Hertz demonstrated the reality of Maxwell’s electromagnetic waves by generating radio waves in his laboratory. “In less than 150 years,” Tracy said, “we went from not even knowing that radio waves existed to today, where you can be on your cellphone and calling home from anyplace in the world.” The world, he added, could change as much, and perhaps even more, in the next 100 years, as it has since Bill Boeing made his first seaplane, the B & W, on the shores of Seattle’s Lake Union. “We’re still learning about basic science and physics,” he said. “As we learn more, that will lead to inventions that will change the world.” One example of how we continue to learn more about basic physics was the recent announcement by scientists that they had, for the first time, detected gravitational waves, which had been predicted 100 years earlier by Albert Einstein. “Is it going to be like radio waves, where one day someone will figure out how to leverage it into things we’ve never even dreamed of?” Tracy asked. “We are only on the cusp of figuring out how we can actually use this to do beneficial things.” So what will The Boeing Company of 2116, and the world, look like? Space will be a huge component of that future, Tracy predicted. “Boeing will be moving people from Earth’s surface back and forth to space. We will be in the space habitat business,” he said. “We are in the space habitat business today. We are the ones who built much of the International Space Station. And we also built the space shuttles. Nobody has more experience in this area than us. And I’ve got to believe that as long as we are not arrogant, and as long as we are not too bureaucratic when it comes to investigating new ideas, we will continue our leadership in the movement of people where they want to go. That’s going to be on the surface of Earth to go see your mother or your father in a different city, but it’s also going to be into space if they’re living in space—or if you just want to go there.” But getting there, Tracy added, will require the leaps of imagination and innovation that played an essential role in charting the course these past 100 years, of daring to dream big and then turning those dreams into reality. “Our biggest challenge,” he said, “is creating a fertile environment where people feel safe coming up with ideas that are different, and not having a system that instantly says ‘no,’ because they have never seen somebody do the high jump that way before … that just can’t be the right way to do it.” •
Frontiers July 2016 Issue
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