I’m a Detroiter. Field trips in my youth included tours of the Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan to watch the assembly lines in action spitting out new cars every ten minutes. The mechanics of large vehicle production are no mystery to me. But none of that prepared me for the awesome scale of the Boeing Everett Factory just north of Seattle, Washington.

In a building that is the largest in the world by volume (its footprint covers 98.3 acres) dozens of airplanes are being built on an assembly line that moves along at 1.8 inches per minute. All of them are green, coated with a protective film that is easily removed when its time to paint them. Some are made from as many as 6 million parts.

The stats are staggering, and our guide, who had once been “on the line”, dropped them liberally throughout our one and a half hour tour as she took us on a brisk mile and a half walk through tunnels and around catwalks, and up and down freight elevators painted to look like the interior of a cargo plane.

Fore example:

The 747 has logged more than 42 billion nautical miles, equivalent to 101,500 trips from Earth to the moon and back.

The 787 Dreamliner has approximately 70 miles of wiring.

Each of the hangar doors (there are six of them) is more than half the size of a U.S. football field.

It takes 21 days from start to finish to complete an airplane. Several days of that are required to cure the final paint job, the majority of which is done by hand.

She saved the best for last, the assembly line for the new Dreamliner. Scheduled to be launched in September, this plane of the future provides an environment that mimics your destination by subtle manipulations of the lighting so that jet lag will be minimized. Some seats are constructed like mini-cubicles for maximum privacy and comfort, and it’s designed to use 20% less fuel and be substantially quieter because of the chevron design on the covering of the engine. The neatest innovation is the window shading, accomplished with the push of a button that will lighten or darken the window automatically. The windows are larger too, which make the interior feel brighter and more open. No puddle jumper, this plane is an ocean hopper, designed to get you from Hong Kong to New York with maximum comfort in minimal time.

While I highly recommend the tour, the Visitor Center is worth stopping to see as well. it has several good exhibits on the walls and two great shops with a huge collection of airplane models to choose from almost as awesome as the factory itself.