I was working for a business in New England and my Mom and Dad were vacationing about 60 miles away. Drove my Jeep over to their rental and watched the landing with them.
WeaponsMan sums it up:
46 Years Ago Today
The US was still confident enough to do this:
The trustafarian Baby Boomer bums of ’68 were still in the universities, in jail, or on the run after blowing their townhouses up. Meanwhile, the grown-ups still were running things, and were able to pull this one off.
We thought of this because we’re reading a book that was a birthday gift from the Blogbrother, Moon Lander: How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module by Thomas J. Kelly, who we’d bet has never worn his hair in an unwashed grey ponytail.
Kelly was the chief engineer of the Lander project, something he calls “an aerospace engineer’s dream job.” Bankrupted by the guns & butter 60s, which LBJ funded by kicking the can of payment down the road with inflation, and the bread and circuses 70s, which Nixon, Ford and Carter funded the exact same way, the US withdrew from space and from greatness.
And the ponytails and Birkenstocks and lawyer-leeches took great joy in that.
Apollo was possible in part because of the dreaded Military-Industrial Complex. Most of the engineering of the space capsules took place in the tight-knit Southern California aero engineering community. The Command Module was made by North American, and after the Apollo 1 fire, there were actually consequences: several managers were fired, including legendary test pilot turned manager Tex Johnston. North American Aviation is a casualty of mergers and downsizings, as is Grumman (maker of the LEM, whose name lives on in Northrop Grumman), as are Douglas, Republic, McDonnell, Fairchild and today, Sikorsky, bought today by Lockheed Martin for $9B, probably sentencing the remaining industry in Bridgeport, CT to an overdue death.
Lockheed Martin, formed from the merger of SoCal and Baltimore companies, now is located in the National Capital Area, as are all of them. Dependent on government handouts, skilled in little but manipulating the procurement system, they couldn’t build an LEM with the blueprints.
So damn sad because it is so fscking true.
I'm still waiting for my Jet Pack - they promised me a Jet Pack dammit!!!
Leave a comment