The CX-HLS was just a design study. (A design study is several years from a prototype airplane.) As 747 Chief Engineer Sutter put it:
"I should add that fostering large high-bypass engines was all that the USAF C-5 competition contributed to the Boeing 747, as my new airplane would be called. Time and again there appears in print the logical but false assumption that Boeing took its losing military C-5 bid and revamped it as the commercial 747. In fact, the 747 would be an entirely original design that owes nothing to the C-5."
"[...] CX–HLS program - which resulted in the C5 - [...]"
"In fact, the 747 would be an entirely original design that owes nothing to the C-5."
I sadly have not time to dig deeper, but this looks suspicious, b/c the planes look highly similar and both were planned as freighters by the same company at the same time. And although he is a primary source, if you ask me about some of my projects from 20y ago, I'm hard pressed to recall all details. Also considering the legal lawsuits between Boeing and Airbus in any case this is a wise thing to say.
But perhaps if I have more time next holidays. Thanks for the link.
If this helps any, the 757 was the result of the availability of new engine designs. Engines affect everything, and one thing led to another, and Boeing decided it was worthwhile to design a new wing, and a new wing led to a new fuselage, and pretty much a ground up design.
Airplanes just do not have interchangeable designs.
Boeing tried to save money by sharing parts between the 757 and 767, but this didn't work out very well. The designs were just different enough that the 767 engineering group had essentially nothing to do with the 757 engineering group, I don't remember even meeting my counterpart there.
The assembly lines were in different plants and completely independent, the tooling was all custom designed/built and so different, the testing/certification process was all different, and on and on.
And besides, a design study is mostly an outline that survived enough wind tunnel testing that one knows what the performance would be.
When I joined the 757 team, we started with a hole we were allocated that the machinery had to fit in. It's true that there's a family resemblance among Boeing designs, because they like to continue with what works. Design studies, though, are not proven designs.
> legal lawsuits
That is common among all highly competitive industries, whether they have merit or not. There's certainly enough of that going on in the tech sector.
I'm just a suspicious guy, and when I wrote an ecommerce cart system for one customer, and then move on to the next customer, I never take source with me. Did I benefit from designing and thinking through the first very similar system? Yes. Did I take things with me? No. Do I adhere to best practices that were developed in projects in the new company? Yes. Do I reuse code? No.
So - again - from my suspicious point of view, declaring we - hundereds of engineers and the company - took no knowledge and expertise except the engines from the CX–HLS program makes me suspicious.
AND as a CEO I would probably not be happy with engineers that do not use knowledge from other inhouse projects in a highly competitive market.
The CX-HLS was just a design study. (A design study is several years from a prototype airplane.) As 747 Chief Engineer Sutter put it:
"I should add that fostering large high-bypass engines was all that the USAF C-5 competition contributed to the Boeing 747, as my new airplane would be called. Time and again there appears in print the logical but false assumption that Boeing took its losing military C-5 bid and revamped it as the commercial 747. In fact, the 747 would be an entirely original design that owes nothing to the C-5."
http://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/Aerospace-Notebook...