The key to Orville and Wilbur Wright’s historic 1903 flight was wing warping. Today, NASA engineers are developing a similar technique to increase the performance and efficiency of fixed-wing aircraft.

For the past decade, carbon-fiber composites have been the darling of the aerospace sector, receiving countless praise and widespread attention. Reinforced polymers have dramatically changed the way that many types of airframes are designed and built.

Boeing and its heritage companies, such as Douglas Aircraft Co., McDonnell Aircraft Corp. and North American Aviation Inc., have produced hundreds of different types of airplanes, helicopters, missiles, rockets, satellites, spacecraft and other flying objects over the last 10 decades.