FROM THE WILDERNESS

Airbust

By James Strauss

America’s airline industry, from production, quality, sales and management has sold out to the Europeans almost in total, and that includes a good part of the military aviation and space industry as well.  Has it occurred to any of the readers here that the aviation passenger plane business is somehow stuck back in the seventies?  Planes made in America, once the proud leader, by a huge margin, for producing almost seventy percent of all passenger and cargo planes, now travel long routes at four hundred to four hundred and fifty miles per hour.  In the seventies and even before, they plied the skies at six hundred and fifty, with supersonic travel coming at us from a very near future. Supersonic stopped dead, and in fact, was only existent because he European Union was allowed to enjoy a monopoly on its development and then usage.  Airline design has been mired in a static desert of copy cat production.  One little change after another is made to designs that were flying in the sixties and most all of those newer designs have been made at the expense of passenger comfort and profitability of the companies who make and fly the things.

Boeing was allowed to take over a complete monopoly on all freight and passenger production, its only competitor for anything larger than forty passenger craft a European Union company called Airbus.  Boeing, along the way, moved its management team from Seattle to Chicago and then to the East Coast.  Their planes became and are still put together in the USA but their parts are made mostly in Asia, under the very worst of employment and environmental quagmires.  Airbus took over the lead in airliner production a few years ago.  Boeings distant management allowed for the nightmare of the “supposedly new” Boeing 737 Max and its initial failure.  Airbus took over.  All U.S. airlines lined up to buy Airbus products.  Today, United Airlines claims that the backbone of its fleet is the Boeing 787.  The company reported that this month while producing its own figures that showed Airbus planes making up the majority of not only its existent fleet but on orders for future aircraft.   Pratt and Whitney, and General Electric used to the leaders in airliner turbine engines, but not anymore.  A French ‘international’ company now beats them both out by a substantial margin.  The French company was boosted by American sales by American airline companies and helped with design and labor by Americans.

Recently, one of the main contracts, subsidized by $160 million U.S. taxpayer dollars, was awarded to Northrup, one of the larger aeronautical companies building airline parts and space vehicles.  That company promptly decided that the effort would be a partnership with Airbus, and that 140 of the 160 million would be turned over to that company. The project is the next space station as the International Space Station will be closed in three years.  For ten years the American space program, after shutting down the Space Shuttle program, bought and flew all manned missions using old Soviet-designed rocket engines instead of building U.S. designed engines.  Only the Russians, threatening not to sell the U.S. anymore rocket engines because of Ukraine changed that.

The U.S. is giving its lead in aviation and space away to Asia and Europe and it’s doing it in every area and it’s doing it in plain sight.

The current leaders of the industries discussed here in this article are being paid millions and billions to kill the aviation and space industries in the exact same way as high-speed rail travel was conceded to Europe and Asia.  Meanwhile, the aging and wealthy male industry leaders have been and still are pocketing huge amounts of money, all basically ‘stolen’ from Americans in every way…and that includes in every area of comfort, safety, speed, and good sense.  Is it any wonder that the heart and soul of American ingenuity appears to be laying by the side of an old broken freeway road on the ground.

Elon Musk’s Starship sits on a Texas tarmac like a fading image of an old science fiction book cover illustration.  Boeing’s competing rocket, to take men to the moon again, is little bigger than the rockets that took men there way back in the sixties, except this one doesn’t really work yet.  The Starship’s wonderful futuristic looks don’t totally reveal that it’s not really real, just as America  has pulled itself away from believing in science to believing in fairytales, ‘ordained’ leaders and the acceptance of bald-faced lies as being a part of alternate fact-based life.