Aerospace dying in SoCal.

[AztecWilliam]

This piece has special meaning for me, since my father worked for Douglas and then McDonald/Douglas from 1940 until 1979. The West Coast, from Seattle to San Diego (but especially in L.A. county) was the heart of the aerospace industry for seven decades. No more.

www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-0208-lopez-saldana-20150208-column.html#page=1

AzWm

[AlwaysAnAztec]

Feb 8, 2015 12:26:45 GMT -8 AztecWilliam said:

This piece has special meaning for me, since my father worked for Douglas and then McDonald/Douglas from 1940 until 1979. The West Coast, from Seattle to San Diego (but especially in L.A. county) was the heart of the aerospace industry for seven decades. No more.

www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-0208-lopez-saldana-20150208-column.html#page=1

AzWm

Not just aerospace.  All heavy manufacturing has left California over the last 30 - 40 years.  Land is just too valuable to support large factories.  The same can be said for agriculture in So Cal.  I can remember when Orange County was full of orange trees.

[AztecWilliam]

Feb 9, 2015 10:28:32 GMT -8 AlwaysAnAztec said:

Feb 8, 2015 12:26:45 GMT -8 AztecWilliam said:

This piece has special meaning for me, since my father worked for Douglas and then McDonald/Douglas from 1940 until 1979. The West Coast, from Seattle to San Diego (but especially in L.A. county) was the heart of the aerospace industry for seven decades. No more.

www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-0208-lopez-saldana-20150208-column.html#page=1

AzWm

Not just aerospace.  All heavy manufacturing has left California over the last 30 - 40 years.  Land is just too valuable to support large factories.  The same can be said for agriculture in So Cal.  I can remember when Orange County was full of orange trees.

Yes, indeed! I was there running through orange groves back in the late '40s and early '50s. As a society, we all placed a bet on the idea that there would always be enough water. I think the population of CA in the '30s was about 8-9 million. Now it's over 30 million. Plenty of houses and freeways but not so much agriculture. And not so much manufacturing, though that is probably due to the recovery and development of much of the world after 1945.

AzWm

[Deleted]

It depends upon how you define "airplane". If you define it such that an airplane means that there's a pilot on-board, then it's true, we don't make many of those any more. However if you include UAV's, we are the world's capitol of UAV production with General Atomics making Predators and Reapers and Northrop Grumman making all or part of several UAV plaforms to include Global Hawk, UCAS (X-47), UCLASS, and Fire Scout. All of this activity takes place here in San Diego which last time I looked at a map was in Southern California. Also, Scaled Composites, Burt Rutan's company out in Mojave is doing a lot of cutting edge stuff.

Space Dev, in Poway is a leader in commercial space flight and again, Northrop Grumman makes all manner of satellites up in Redondo Beach. So Cal still has plenty of "aerospace" work going on as long as you use the modern definition of aerospace.

The C17 though is a sad story. It's a beautiful airplane and I think if you were to ask the AF AMC folks, they would love to have more of them. There's really nothing else like it.