{"id":18339,"date":"2018-09-30T20:47:24","date_gmt":"2018-09-30T12:47:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/from-farm-to-final-frontier-how-boeings-ceo-plants-the-seeds-for-tomorrows-tech\/"},"modified":"2018-09-30T20:47:24","modified_gmt":"2018-09-30T12:47:24","slug":"from-farm-to-final-frontier-how-boeings-ceo-plants-the-seeds-for-tomorrows-tech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/from-farm-to-final-frontier-how-boeings-ceo-plants-the-seeds-for-tomorrows-tech\/","title":{"rendered":"From farm to final frontier: How Boeing\u2019s CEO plants the seeds for tomorrow\u2019s tech"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_451376\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-451376\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-451376\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/180928-muilenburg-630x420.jpg\" alt=\"Dennis Muilenburg\" width=\"630\" height=\"420\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/180928-muilenburg-630x420.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/180928-muilenburg-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/180928-muilenburg-1260x840.jpg 1260w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/180928-muilenburg.jpg 1311w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-451376\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg grew up on a farm in Iowa. (Boeing Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Dennis Muilenburg is leading Boeing into a second century of innovation with dreams of hypersonic flight, self-flying planes and journeys to Mars. But to lead the way, the 102-year-old company\u2019s CEO, chairman and president turns to the values he learned from his dad growing up on a farm in northwest Iowa.<\/p>\n<p><strong>GEEKWIRE SUMMIT:<\/strong> Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg is a featured speaker at our annual conference this week. Tickets and more details.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe was never a big business executive, but at his core he taught me about integrity, the value of hard work, the fundamentals,\u201d Muilenburg, 54, recalled during a recent conference on innovation. \u201cAnd even in a big business, those work.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Boeing certainly qualifies as a big business, and since Muilenburg took on the top post in 2015, the company\u2019s ambitions have become even bigger.<\/p>\n<p>Under his leadership, the company has rolled out the latest generation of its best-selling airplane, the single-aisle 737 MAX. It\u2019s begun production of its next-generation, wide-body 777X. Boeing has also created a new business unit focused on servicing the airplanes that it sells \u2014 a power play that Muilenburg says could eventually contribute $50 billion a year to Boeing\u2019s revenues. And just in the past month, Boeing Defense, Space &amp; Security has won three high-profile&nbsp;defense contracts.<\/p>\n<p>Looking ahead, Muilenburg and Boeing are closing in on key decisions about its next clean-sheet airplane design, known variously as the New Midsize Aircraft, NMA or 797. And two Boeing 747-8 jets are being remade into red-white-and-blue Air Force One planes, thanks in no small measure to Muilenburg\u2019s personal sales pitch to President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n<p>Not bad work for an Iowa farmboy.<\/p>\n<p>At this week\u2019s GeekWire Summit in downtown Seattle, we\u2019ll be talking with Muilenburg about his Midwest past, and we\u2019ll touch on the challenges he\u2019s presently facing at Boeing (including this summer\u2019s&nbsp;logjam of 737 jets at Boeing\u2019s Renton factory and next month\u2019s anticipated first delivery of Boeing\u2019s KC-46 tankers to the Air Force). But most of the attention will be focused on Muilenburg\u2019s vision for Boeing\u2019s second century.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Dennis A. Muilenburg, Chairman, President, and CEO, The Boeing Company\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XeGnHR6Bjuw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Few people are more familiar with how far the company has come&nbsp;\u2014 in part because Muilenburg has spent his entire 33-year career at Boeing, starting out as an intern from Iowa State University and moving on to engineering and management roles in Boeing\u2019s defense programs, air traffic management and executive strategy.<\/p>\n<p>Few people are more anxious to take the company further&nbsp;\u2014 in part because of Muilenburg\u2019s early love of the space program. Like another 54-year-old CEO, Amazon\u2019s Jeff Bezos, Muilenburg was inspired in his youth by the first moon landing in 1969. His childhood hero? Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong, of course.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wanted to design aircraft and spacecraft, to someday be on the team that puts the first person on Mars,\u201d Muilenburg told an interviewer.<\/p>\n<p>Decades later, Muilenburg is working to make that wish come true. Here are five high-tech frontiers that are on his mind&nbsp;\u2014 including Mars:<\/p>\n<h3>Aerospace as a service<\/h3>\n<p>The spinout of Boeing Global Services as a separate business unit is only the most visible sign that Muilenburg is putting more emphasis on what happens to Boeing\u2019s airplanes after they\u2019re delivered.<\/p>\n<p>The company is growing the data analytics branch of its business, Boeing AnalytX, to offer products and services that optimize its customers\u2019 operations. And it plans to use the New Midsize Aircraft as the proving ground for a business model that leverages big data in every phase of an airplane\u2019s life cycle.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is perhaps the biggest transformation that\u2019s happening at our company,\u201d Muilenburg said at the Farnborough Air Show in July.<\/p>\n<h3>Manufacturing innovations<\/h3>\n<p>The 777X production process is blazing new trails for automation and the use of composite materials in aerospace manufacturing, but Muilenburg doesn\u2019t intend to stop there.<\/p>\n<p>Last year, Boeing revved up its HorizonX program to uncover and accelerate potentially transformative technologies through targeted investments in startups. The HorizonX portfolio now includes companies specializing in additive manufacturing, electric propulsion, advanced batteries, augmented and virtual reality, exotic metal alloys and other technological twists that are likely to turn up in next-generation Boeing aircraft.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have to be willing to out-innovate ourselves,\u201d Muilenburg has said.<\/p>\n<h3>Autonomous air vehicles<\/h3>\n<p>Muilenburg made a splash this year when he predicted that self-flying air taxis will \u201chappen faster than any of us understand\u201d&nbsp;\u2014 but Aurora Flight Sciences, which became a Boeing subsidiary last year, is already working to make that prediction come true.<\/p>\n<p>Last month, Boeing announced that the development of autonomous air vehicles would be the focus of a new research center to be opened in Cambridge, Mass., staffed by engineers from Aurora and other Boeing teams. Even before its acquisition, Aurora was developing an electric-powered, vertical-takeoff-and-landing craft for Uber\u2019s planned air taxi service.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThink of it as flying cars,\u201d Muilenburg said recently. \u201cWe hope to fly a first prototype next year.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Another Boeing subsidiary, Insitu, has long fielded fixed-wing drones for military and emergency response applications. Last month, Boeing won a competitive contract for the U.S. Navy\u2019s autonomous refueling air vehicle, known as the MQ-25 Stingray. And several of Boeing\u2019s HorizonX investments have gone to drone-related startups such as Matternet, Kittyhawk, Fortem Technologies and Near Earth Autonomy.<\/p>\n<h3>Hypersonic flight<\/h3>\n<p>Remember the Boeing SST?&nbsp;Boeing proposed building a Concorde-like supersonic transport plane in the 1960s, but support for the concept was canceled in 1971 amid concerns about noise and pollution. The dream hasn\u2019t died, however. Boeing is working on technologies aimed at making supersonic planes quieter, cleaner, faster and more financially viable.<\/p>\n<p>This summer, Boeing unveiled its latest concept for a hypersonic transport plane, capable of traveling more than five times the speed of sound. Such a plane could fly between New York and London in as little as two hours. Muilenburg said it\u2019s a concept that \u201cone day could redefine aviation and connect the world faster than ever.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Boeing\u2019s interest isn\u2019t merely a case of creating computer-generated concept art. This year, Boeing participated in a $37.3 million investment round for Reaction Engines, a British venture working on hybrid rocket-jet propulsion technology for hypersonic flight.<\/p>\n<h3>The space marketplace<\/h3>\n<p>SpaceX and Blue Origin have been getting a lot more of the spotlight lately in the commercial space race, but Boeing and its assimilated companies have been making space history since the days of Project Mercury. Boeing was the prime contractor for the International Space Station, and its CST-100 Starliner space taxi is due to start flying astronauts to the station next year. It\u2019s also working on the XS-1 Phantom Express space plane for the Pentagon.<\/p>\n<p>Muilenburg isn\u2019t as brash as SpaceX\u2019s Elon Musk, which fits the Iowa farmboy image. But he\u2019s just as ambitious when it comes to imagining humanity\u2019s long-term future in space. During a recent talk at Northwestern University, not far from Boeing\u2019s corporate headquarters in Chicago, Muilenburg laid out a vision for an entire transportation ecosystem that extends Boeing\u2019s reach from air travel to an \u201ceconomically viable marketplace\u201d in Earth orbit.<\/p>\n<p>And what about Mars? Muilenburg notes that Boeing is a leading contractor for NASA\u2019s Space Launch System, which is being built to send astronauts beyond Earth orbit and eventually to the Red Planet. NASA\u2019s schedule calls for trips to Mars to begin in the 2030s, but Muilenburg sounds as if he wants to accelerate that timetable&nbsp;\u2014 and overtake SpaceX in the process.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI certainly anticipate that we\u2019re going to put the first person on Mars during my lifetime, and I\u2019m hopeful that we\u2019ll do it in the next decade,\u201d Muilenburg said in April. \u201cAnd I\u2019m convinced that the first person that gets to Mars is going to get there on a Boeing rocket.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Got a question for Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg? Leave your suggestions as comments below. You can hear Muilenburg live onstage during a Q&amp;A with Alan Boyle (who\u2019s also a former Iowa farmboy) on Wednesday at the GeekWire Summit in downtown Seattle.&nbsp;Check out the Summit website for complete information, but don\u2019t delay: Ticket sales end on Monday, Oct. 1.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg grew up on a farm in Iowa. (Boeing Photo) Dennis Muilenburg is leading Boeing into a second century of innovation with dreams of hypersonic flight, self-flying planes and journeys to Mars. But to lead the way, the 102-year-old company\u2019s CEO, chairman and president turns to the values he learned from his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[39,564,670,4997],"class_list":["post-18339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-aerospace","tag-aviation","tag-boeing","tag-dennis-muilenburg"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18339"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}