An Aerospace Giant Tries Earthwork

AS members of an industry that is fading in both glamour and profits, aerospace companies are frequently exhorted by authorities on the nation's resources to come back to earth for their recovery. The same technological precision and managerial skill that succeeded in landing men on the moon, so the theory goes, should be of enormous value in solving problems that many Americans today consider far more crucial than exploring space--cleaning up the environment, for example, or getting around faster on the ground. There is more than a little glibness in the notion, because it embodies the peculiarly American assumption that any problem is amenable to technological solution. Even so, one of the hardest-hit aerospace giants--Seattle's Boeing Co.--is proving that there is potential profit in earthwork too.

Unique Advice. Boeing's problems grew increasingly acute over the past three years when virtually its only two customers, the U.S. Government and commercial airlines, cut back drastically on orders. As the company's employment in the Puget Sound area fell steadily from a high of 102,000 in 1968 to 47,838 a year ago, plunging Seattle into a depression, Boeing President T.A. Wilson appointed a top-level task force to study possibilities for new projects. After two months of work, the group submitted a recommendation unique in the annals of blue-sky business: Boeing should get busy in the areas of surface transportation and community development, among others. As if to validate the committee's judgment, the Senate promptly voted to withdraw federal support from the $1.2 billion supersonic transport project, for which Boeing was prime contractor. Vowed Wilson: "Our objective is to have 33% of Boeing's total business in nontraditional areas by 1980."

Boeing lost little time in starting toward that goal. In August the company was named manager of a Transportation Department-sponsored project that will provide rapid transit along a 3.5-mile stretch of traffic-clogged roadway in Morgantown, W. Va., connecting the three campuses of West Virginia University and the downtown area. Boeing and subcontractors will build the track line and about 85 electrically powered, computer-operated cars. Commuters will be able to signal the vehicles, which carry 17 passengers and run at speeds up to 30 m.p.h., to stop by pushing buttons located inside the cars and at each terminal. Boeing officials have promised to have the system in full operation by the end of 1973. Boeing also won a $10.5 million contract to oversee research into the latest technological and design advances in urban rapid transit.

The Boeing diversification committee's recommendation for community development projects was logical because of a lease that the company holds until the year 2040 on 100,000 acres of land in northeastern Oregon. Originally planned as a test site for rockets, the sagebrush-dotted wilderness now is scheduled to become a thriving agricultural and industrial community. Later this month Boeing will begin construction of a 42-in. irrigation pipeline. The company plans to plant a potato crop in March, and it has sublet part of the tract to Japanese chicken growers, who will use the land to grow alfalfa. To enrich the sandy soil. Boeing and a Portland group, Columbia Processors Cooperative, are experimenting with a fertilizer made from Portland's waste products. "Even for the Boeing Co.," says Aerospace Vice President Oliver Boileau, "it's never too late to start hauling manure, irrigating land and planting potatoes."

"Farmer Boeing," as project officials sometimes call the company, plans to follow the potatoes with industrial development. Eventually, plans call for creation of a 10,000-resident city on the site of Boardman, Ore. (current pop. 337). In addition to these projects, Boeing has gone into a variety of other fields. The Los Angeles police department recently bought several units of a Boeing radio scrambler that prevents public monitoring of police calls. The company is also overseeing construction in the Seattle area of housing projects that demonstrate new modular and prefabricated building techniques. In partnership with El Paso Natural Gas Co. and Reading & Bates, Boeing formed the Resources Conservation Co., which last week opened a desalination plant in El Paso and recently won a contract to build a similar operation at Cancel Bay Plantation in the Virgin Islands.

Striking Glimpse. The sudden interest in earthwork at Boeing has hardly taken the company out of the skies. On the contrary, Boeing engineers are producing ever more spectacular aircraft designs, including one for a twelve-engine "brute lifter" three times the size of the 747 jet that could haul, for example, 8,000 bbl. of crude petroleum. Recent successes in aerospace sales accounted for almost all of the company's nine-month earnings of $18.2 million this year, up nearly $1,000,000 over the same period in 1970. But Boeing's new outlook may well provide a striking glimpse into the future. As the troubled aerospace giants find themselves forced to diversify, some of them could move into radically new areas. Says Boeing's Glenn L. Keister, head of aero space research and development: "We are going to respond to social needs. If we do not, we will be a limited company."

For some 5,000 Boeing employees, the company's new directions have already satisfied an important social need. After the collapse of the SST project, Boeing officials predicted that Seattle employment would sink to 29,500 by year's end. Instead, thanks primarily to early successes in its socially oriented experiments, Boeing plans to end 1971 with a work force of 35,000.

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