Today the Boeing 787 "Dreamliner", said to be 20 percent more efficient, 60 percent quieter, and significantly cheaper to maintain, passed a huge milestone as it finally took off and landed.

Watching the televised takeoff of the 787--after two years of delays brought on by manufacturing errors and structural problems--brought back some memories. Six years ago I visited Boeing's rain-drenched tarmacs and vast hangars in Everett, WA, to report a feature for Technology Review on the then-new project to build what was dubbed the "7E7" commercial jet.

The idea was to gain an edge on Airbus by offering a midsized super-fuel-efficient jet, with better jet engines, and reduced weight enabled by far wider use of composite structural materials as well as fewer bulky pneumatic control systems.

In 2003 Boeing engineers and executives spoke excitedly about how the 7E7 would take collaborative Internet-enabled design and widely distributed manufacturing processes to new heights. Designers around the world would collaborate on the same master file over the Internet. Then subcontractors around the country and world would get a copy of those files, whip together big chunks of the structure, and ship those chunks back to Everett. Boeing would simply snap together the parts. No problem. "We call it our Lego airplane," Frank Statkus, Boeing's vice president of technology and processes, joked to me at the time.

The improved computer design process was meant to eliminate problems. Previously, Statkus explained, a supplier would sometimes "have to digitize our picture to tell his machine how to build it. This translation sometimes caused errors."

Well, of course, Boeing didn't squeeze out all the errors. Production was hampered by ill-fitting parts and structural problems that led to five delays, extending the commercial delivery date two years (it's now scheduled for late 2010). In 2008, for example, the company found that parts of the center wing box--the massive structure at the center of the plane, extending to two-thirds of the wingspan--required stiffening with new brackets, which in turn forced the re-routing of some wiring. The component--15 meters long and 5 meters wide--had been designed and built by Boeing, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Fuji Heavy Industries, in Japan. And, earlier this year, Boeing also had to resolve another structural issue.

Back in 2003, Mark Jenks, Boeing's director of technology integration told me that the plane was "the future. It really is. It's a huge deal for us. If we get it wrong, it's the end. And everyone here knows that."

After today's historic flight, and with orders for 840 planes already taken, the hard part may finally be done.

Next-generation nuclear power plants could produce much less waste than conventional reactors, eliminating a serious objection to a potentially abundant and otherwise clean source of energy. But the new technology requires materials that can withstand both high temperatures and radiation. Using conventional methods, it could take decades to develop such materials. But new computer simulations could cut this time down to months, says Steven John Zinkle, a researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Zinkle presented his recent work at the Materials Research Society conference in Boston.

The materials proven to work in today's nuclear power plants operate within a small range of temperatures that won't work in many new designs. Outside that range, the materials can become brittle or develop holes that make them look like "Swiss cheese," Zinkle says. But researchers are learning that changing the composition of an alloy by a fraction of a percent can change its operating temperature by hundreds of degrees. Tweaking the heat treatment of the materials can also have a big effect. The problem is that sorting through the large number of possible subtle changes can take a very long time.

Zinkle says that computer modeling is making it possible to shrink development times from decades to months. Models allow researchers to quickly evaluate subtle changes without having to go through the time-consuming process of making a lot of slightly different materials. As a result, researchers have been able to identify small changes that, for example, transform materials that would normally break apart after a couple of days into materials that last for years without showing significant damage.

Oak Ridge researchers have already demonstrated the techniques with new materials for diesel engines, and they're applying the techniques to speed the development of more environmentally benign nuclear power plants.

NASCAR Nextel Cup racing is returning to ESPN on Sunday, for the first time since 2000, with an innovative technology that will give fans a reason to watch the race from home. The technology, called Draft Track, is a computer animation developed by ESPN and SportsVision that lets viewers see the air flowing behind and over race cars.

The swirling air animation, which looks like green flames, enables television viewers to better understand drafting, or slipstreaming, an important technique in sports racing in which competitors align in a close group in order to reduce the overall effect of drag. Two cars cutting through the air together are able to run faster than a single car.

"As a driver, you can feel [the draft], you can feel what it does when you're side by side, you can feel what it does when you're behind each other, and you can feel what it's supposed to do," said Rusty Wallace, an ESPN race analyst and the 1989 NASCAR Cup champion, at a press conference on July 24. "The story is letting the viewers see it."

What viewers will see with the new technology is a visualization of the turbulent air based on real-time information--a car's location and speed--derived from GPS. This data will be loaded into a computer model that uses computational fluid dynamics to turn the information into a graphic of green waves that will represent the airflow or slipstream. Viewers will be able to see when a car enters it and when the car comes out of it. (Click here to see the animation during a race.)

Jed Drake, ESPN's senior vice president, developed the idea in 1998, but when ESPN lost rights to the sport in 2000, it went dormant. Now that the idea has been revived, Drake believes that the technology will be a "real strong item" for ESPN, and he plans to add it to the network's coverage of many different things.

The new technology goes on the list of innovations that ESPN has created to enhance the television viewer's experience and show those watching at home the unseen elements of sports. The line of scrimmage in football and the strike zone in baseball are two other well-known visualization technologies that ESPN developed in collaboration with SportsVision.

Draft Track will debut this weekend during ESPN's coverage of the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard in Indianapolis, and initially it will only be used during replays.