"Amazing," he said. He pointed upward at a broad flat surface. "Is that the wing?"

"The vertical stabilizer," Casey said.

"The what?"

"It's the tail, Bob."

"That's the tail' Richman said.

Casey nodded. "The wing is over there," she said, pointing across the floor. "It's two hundred feet long-almost as long as a football field."

A Klaxon sounded. One of the overhead cranes began to move. Richman turned to look.

"This your first time on the floor?"

"Yeah…" Richman was turning around, looking in all directions. "Awesome," he said.

"They're big," Casey said.

"Why are they all lime green?"

"We coat the structural elements with epoxy to prevent corrosion. And the aluminum skins are covered so they don't get dinged during assembly. The skins are highly polished and very expensive. So we leave that coating on until Paint Shed."

"Sure doesn't look like GM," Richman said, still turning and looking.

"That's right," Casey said. "Compared to these aircraft, cars are a joke."

Richman turned to her, surprised. "A joke!"

"Think about it," she said. "A Pontiac has five thousand parts, and you can build one in two shifts. Sixteen hours. That's nothing. But these things"-she gestured to the aircraft looming high above them-"are a completely different animal. The widebody has one million parts and a span time of seventy-five days. No other manufactured product in the world has the complexity of a commercial aircraft. Nothing even comes close. And nothing is built to be as durable. You take a Pontiac and run it all day every day and see what happens. It'll fall apart in a few months. But we design our jets to fly for twenty years of trouble-free service, and we build them to twice the service life."