Planes, Space and What's Next
Anyone who has been flying knows that planes are flying older, way past their retire-by dates. As airlines continue to make huge profits (and not repay the government a single dime of their bail-out package thanks to the House), they are turning to new aircraft to swap with old.
The most successful airplane for short haul is the Boeing 737. There are eight versions flying and after next year there will be another called 737-Max, adding another 5 rows of seats (almost back to the 1958 Boeing 707 length; which was its daddy). Airbus has a 320Neo coming out which is equally fuel efficient but not as robust many companies feel. Meanwhile, operators of the Boeing 787 report it exceeds its fuel economy, making it more profitable than thought. And still ticket prices don’t come down.
Then there is China that rolled out the Comac ARJ21 – but that is probably a few years off. Seems that building complex modern, certifiable, aircraft is harder than they thought. Just ask Sukhoi and their Superjet 100 – which has so far failed all international standards testing. Meanwhile, Airbus is faced with a fall-off in demand for the giant AB380 and may shutter that plant, spelling political and financial disaster for Airbus.
US airlines, given a free hand by the FAA and Congress, will squeeze more passengers on every plane in 2015. Remember the Wall Street Motto, issued publically for Jet Blue: “Care more about profit than passengers!”
And then there is the US military, struggling with the F35 Joint Strike Fighter (which isn’t a good compromise nor cost effective – already being replaced on the drawing board). Maybe the Marines will get theirs by December, but the AF and Navy are already looking at another 18 month delay with electronic problems. They fly, yes, but stuff doesn’t work and the plane is vulnerable.
India is now also a plane developer with the cheap and effective (less sophisticated) Hindustan Aero Tejas Mk. 1 fighter. Development cost to date? $1.2 billion. Less than 10% of the F35 development cost (that was reported!). Russia, meanwhile, desperate for foreign currency to offset the drop in oil prices, is stepping up its sales and discounting of military jets – and very competent jets they are too. Not as electronically sophisticated, but effective, reliable.
As for space, the frosty US-Russia relations after the Ukraine has several companies scrambling in the US to get a US government contract to make US rockets again instead of relying on the Russians for space deployment. So it’ll be boom time for SpaceX, Orbital Sciences, Kisler, and Boeing. Of course, the AF’s space plane is still secret for manned launch, so Boeing and SpaceX’s Dragon capsule and Nasa’s Orion capsule (which flew twice around the world in orbit last month, in case you missed it) will get a good deal of publicity in tests. And if the massive Falcon rocket booster by SpaceX launches successfully, it’ll become America’s most powerful rocket since the Saturn 5 which took men to the moon: Falcon will lift a massive 22 tons to geosynchronous transfer orbit!
