[acoard]

True, but this ignores the fact that Boeing employees were actively "designing new planes" in that time, and thus had the skill set. From your wiki link, some choice excerpts (not one whole paragraph):

> In 1963 [edit: 6 years before], the United States Air Force started a series of study projects on a very large strategic transport aircraft. Although the C-141 Starlifter was being introduced, officials believed that a much larger and more capable aircraft was needed, especially to carry cargo that would not fit in any existing aircraft

> In 1965, Lockheed's aircraft design and General Electric's engine design were selected for the new C-5 Galaxy transport, which was the largest military aircraft in the world at the time.[1] Boeing carried the nose door and raised cockpit concepts over to the design of the 747.

And from some other articles:

> At Boeing, Sutter worked on many commercial airplane projects, including the 367-80 "Dash 80", 707, 727 and 737. He eventually became a manager for the new jumbo-sized wide body airplane, the four-engine Boeing 747. [0]

My only point is they didn't go from zero to 747 in 3 years. They went from having an active culture of building jets, and doing R&D in this area, and having people that had successfully worked on other new jet design projects. They went from that to having a 747 in 3 years. Still incredibly impressive, but if we admit that culture is lacking now, it's entirely conceivable it'd take longer than 3 years to build a comparable jet today. (Look at how much slower north america builds rail now, or anything, compared to the 60s).

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Sutter

[hedora]

Absolutely. I'm pointing out that this is a Boeing problem (and probably a regulatory capture problem), not an engineering problem.

That goes double for trains in North America (but different companies and regulators are involved, of course).