Ten years ago, Boeing was trying to figure out whether the next step in air travel was increased speed or increased efficiency. The 787 Dreamliner should clue you in to what the decision was, but the increased speed option is not entirely off the table, and a new patent filed just last month might mean that Boeing's "Sonic Cruiser" is still alive and kicking.

It doesn't have crazy swept wings and it doesn't fly at Mach 7, but this concept aircraft from Boeing is what we'll all probably be stuffed into by 2045. It runs on cryogenic liquified natural gas, and beats the fuel efficiency by the current generation of passenger jets by a whopping 60%.

Air travel nowadays is perhaps best described as dull: it's possible to make it all the way across the country without even knowing what kind of airplane you're on. But airplanes are still these giant, magical machines that allow people to fly, and one of the best places to get in touch with everything that goes into making such things possible is Boeing's stupendously large production plant in Everett, Washington. The Boeing Everett Factory is where 747s, 767s, 777s and the new 787 Dreamliners are all put together. Airplanes are big, and Boeing is building a lot of them all at once, so the company needs a huge building to get it all done in. In fact, "huge" doesn't even begin to cover the size of this place.

It's unfortunate that forest fires almost never happen on islands in the middle of lakes. If they did, we wouldn't have this problem of having to get lots of water into what's usually the middle of nowhere to put them out. Aircraft specially rigged to do this are expensive (and few), so Boeing wants to just use giant water balloons tossed out of cargo aircraft instead.