787's Dreamlifter is one huge plane
SEATTLE--I was driving into Seattle from the airport today, on my way up to Boeing's Everett, Wash., factory--the world's largest building by volume--for the official launch of its brand-new 787 Dreamliner, when I saw something interesting off to the side of the highway.
For anyone who's driven in from Sea-Tac airport, the sight of Boeing Field on the west side of Interstate 5 is very familiar. But today, I noticed that the "Dreamlifter" was parked on the tarmac there. The Dreamlifter is the mammoth plane--it's a modified 747-400 with a huge hump--that flies in the 787's fuselage.
So this was a pretty cool sighting, I thought, given my destination. The only problem was that I was on the freeway and, well, that's not the safest place to take pictures from.
But I had a little time, so I jammed over to the nearest exit and backtracked, turned up a hill and drove around until I found a spot that looked like a promising place for a vista onto Boeing Field.
Sure enough, at the end of a dead end dirt road, I found it, on the other side of a fence, and through a wide swath of blackberry bushes and other weeds: a perfect view of the airfield and the plane.
Boeing's Dreamlifter is the plane that flies in the 787's fuselage.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)After yelling out some rather loud exhortations of my glee, I snapped off a few dozen pictures.
Then I noticed some small planes taking off and landing from the airfield, and as one of them taxied in, I was able to get it in the same frame as the Dreamlifter.
Boeing's Dreamlifter, which is based on the 747, dwarfs nearby small planes.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)And, wow. Seeing the two planes in the same frame gave a pretty good sense of just how big the Dreamlifter really is.
Anyway, stay tuned for more coverage later today of the 787 launch event itself. It should be even bigger.
Daniel Terdiman is a staff writer at CNET News covering games, Net culture, and everything in between. E-mail Daniel. 
