Gazing into a clear sky to eye the International Space Station or mapping out a drive on a cellphone, aerospace giant Boeing’s Orange County facilities have impacted the lives of people around the world in ways they might not suspect.
Boeing celebrated its 100th anniversary this month. The company’s massive size today reflects mergers and acquisitions over the decades involving some of the most prominent aerospace companies in the world – companies that had major facilities right here in the O.C.
Michael Lombardi, Boeing’s senior corporate historian, said Orange County contributions have been critical not just to Boeing, but also to the history of aerospace advancement. While Houston and Florida are famously attached to America’s legacy of rockets, space stations and satellites, core components of some of history’s most impactful projects were handled much closer to home, he said.
“When we went to the moon, most of the Apollo and Saturn vehicles that made that possible were built right there. It’s incredibly important,” Lombardi said.
While the Apollo capsule was built in Downey, the second and third stage boosters that would rocket our first men to the moon were built in Seal Beach and Huntington Beach. These projects were by North American Rockwell and McDonnell Douglas divisions since folded into Boeing.
Orange County’s history of striving for the stars doesn’t stop there: The county has been home to major developments with space stations and satellites. In 1973, Boeing’s Huntington Beach site, then McDonnell Douglas, was responsible for converting a Saturn V rocket into Skylab, America’s first space station.
Just a few years after Huntington Beach paved the way for humans to live in space, Seal Beach worked to ensure we wouldn’t lose our way here on the ground. In 1978, the site developed Block I Global Positioning System satellites, the earliest GPS system. People relying on their phones to get from point A to point B wouldn’t have map apps without the groundwork set by workers in Seal Beach.
“It’s changed our lives, Seal Beach has touched every human being in the world now,” Lombardi said.
Boeing’s Anaheim facilities shut down in 2006, but half a century ago the area mirrored Orange County’s space feats with work in the sky and below the sea. Once known as Autonetics, a division of North American Aviation, and then Rockwell, the sprawling campus was renowned for cutting edge guidance systems that supported three generations of Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles and allowed the famed submarine, the USS Nautilus, to be the first to dive below the North Pole’s ice.
At its peak, during the Cold War, the Anaheim facility boasted as many as 36,000 employees. Aerospace employment has dropped considerably over the years, but Boeing remains one of Orange County’s largest employers.
Boeing’s Seal Beach facilities have evolved into a major commercial airplane operations center. Huntington Beach has been contracted by NASA to develop a Crew Space Transportation System to ferry astronauts between Earth and the International Space Station and recently designed a next generation underwater vehicle for ocean exploration.
Orange County and Boeing over the century
1916: William Boeing incorporates the Pacific Aero Products Co.
1917: Pacific Aero Products becomes Boeing Airline Co.
1923: The company develops and tests its first fighter plane.
1960: NASA successfully launches the first Delta rocket. This family of rockets, which later would be developed at Boeing’s Space and Communication facility in Huntington Beach, were NASA’s primary launch vehicle for more than 20 years.
1960s-70s: S-II and S-IVB, the second and third stages of the Saturn V rocket are built in Seal Beach and Huntington Beach.
July 16, 1969: The Huntington Beach-built S-IVB upper stage pushes the Apollo 11 crew to the moon.
1973: McDonnell Douglas, at its Huntington Beach facility, converts a Saturn V rocket into Skylab, America’s first space station.
1978: Block I Global Positioning System satellites, which pave the way for modern GPS, are developed in Seal Beach by Rockwell International.
1980s-90s: Space shuttle parts are manufactured by aerospace companies in Orange County.
1996: Rockwell International’s defense and aerospace businesses merge with Boeing, bringing the Anaheim and Seal Beach facilities under the Boeing fold
1997: McDonnell Douglas merges with Boeing, making its Huntington Beach campus part of Boeing
1997: Production of Delta III and design of Delta IV rockets spurs expansion at Boeing’s Huntington Beach facility.
2006: Boeing shuts down its Anaheim campus, which had 36,000 workers at its peak, shifting the remaining 3,700 jobs to Huntington Beach.
2015: An autonomous rendezvous and docking system for NASA’s Crew Space Transportation is manufactured in Huntington Beach by Boeing. The pod is scheduled to carry astronauts to the International Space Station by 2017.
March 2016: Boeing introduces the Echo Voyager, an extra-large unmanned undersea vehicle built at its Huntington Beach facilities. The autonomous vehicle requires no support vessel for launch or recovery.
Source: Register archives, Boeing, Orange County Business Journal
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