Apparently the US has bought about all the V22's it wants. To keep the Boeing production line open, and all the workers employed, Boeing is looking to sell the V22 tiltrotor to any foreign country with money. A lot of money, V22 is expensive. Much more expensive than helicopters.
According to Aviation Week, notes that "V-22's ship board accoutrements- including folding wings and electro magnetic hardening- account for nearly half the cost." Wow.
And "A particular headache for the V-22 has been engine on wing time, now averaging 100-200 hours in the harsh conditions of Afghanistan" Double wow. J-75 fighter plane engines gave 1000 hour service back in the 1960's.
Boeing has an expensive-to-buy and expensive-to-fly machine here. Good luck finding customers for it.
This blog posts about aviation, automobiles, electronics, programming, politics and such other subjects as catch my interest. The blog is based in northern New Hampshire, USA
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Protect electric power grid
Op ed piece in the Wall St Journal, decrying to failure of the government to "protect the electric grid" from hostile Chinese hackers.
Sorry, it is the responsibility of the power companies to protect their assets, not the government. All that is necessary is to make sure that control of generators and other machinery never goes over the public internet, and that Windows computers are never connected to the internet. They can even use cheap PC's so long as they run Linux and not Windows.
State public utility commissions should be asking their regulated power companies about use of the public internet.
Sorry, it is the responsibility of the power companies to protect their assets, not the government. All that is necessary is to make sure that control of generators and other machinery never goes over the public internet, and that Windows computers are never connected to the internet. They can even use cheap PC's so long as they run Linux and not Windows.
State public utility commissions should be asking their regulated power companies about use of the public internet.
There ougtha be a law
Against robo callers who ring your phone but fail to answer when you pick it up.
Monday, June 13, 2011
How GM sank, by Bob Lutz
Bob Lutz is a long time GM executive responsible for product development. He calls himself a "car guy", although the real GM car guy was Zora Arkos-Duntov the father of the Corvette. Lutz claims the bean counters are responsible. He describes what happened to Cadillac. Once upon a time Caddy was top of the line, best car out there. A new Caddy sold for maybe three times what a new Chevy sold for. Cost to manufacture a new Caddy was about the same as a new Chevy.
According to Lutz, GM decided to ramp up sales of Caddy, to sell more Caddies than Ford sold Lincolns. Production was increased, vast numbers of Caddies were sold to rent-a-car companies, who turned around and sold nice clean low mileage Caddies for less. Resale value of Caddy dropped, a lot, and used Caddies were so cheap anyone could and did buy them. People with money stopped buying new Caddies 'cause they were a dime a dozen, everybody had one. The lucrative new luxury car sales went to Mercedes and BMW.
Lesson not learned, a top of the line product has to be scarce, if you make to many of them, it stops being top of the line.
Then Lutz talks about Saturn. "despite some heroically mediocre cars there were at one time vast legions of happy Saturn owners." But Saturn was more than just a product, it was a whole car company with it's own engineering, personnel, dealership network, legal staff and so on. This massive overhead had to be paid for by the sales of just one compact car.
Lesson not learned, save money by consolidating the overhead operations.
This all comes from the Wall St Journal's excerpts of Bob Lutz's new book.
According to Lutz, GM decided to ramp up sales of Caddy, to sell more Caddies than Ford sold Lincolns. Production was increased, vast numbers of Caddies were sold to rent-a-car companies, who turned around and sold nice clean low mileage Caddies for less. Resale value of Caddy dropped, a lot, and used Caddies were so cheap anyone could and did buy them. People with money stopped buying new Caddies 'cause they were a dime a dozen, everybody had one. The lucrative new luxury car sales went to Mercedes and BMW.
Lesson not learned, a top of the line product has to be scarce, if you make to many of them, it stops being top of the line.
Then Lutz talks about Saturn. "despite some heroically mediocre cars there were at one time vast legions of happy Saturn owners." But Saturn was more than just a product, it was a whole car company with it's own engineering, personnel, dealership network, legal staff and so on. This massive overhead had to be paid for by the sales of just one compact car.
Lesson not learned, save money by consolidating the overhead operations.
This all comes from the Wall St Journal's excerpts of Bob Lutz's new book.
"We have turned this economy around"
The Democratic National Chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, delivered this preposterous assertion on NBC's Meet the Press yesterday morning. This was too much for even the NBC moderator David Gregory, who called her on it, on air. It's so outrageous that Fox News is rerunning it today, just to make sure nobody misses it.
Either Debbie is totally clueless or she is deliberately lying. Either way it's a bad sign. How many other office holding democrats believe they have turned the economy around?
Either Debbie is totally clueless or she is deliberately lying. Either way it's a bad sign. How many other office holding democrats believe they have turned the economy around?
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Quid Pro Quo.
The US needs, (or thinks it needs)to increase the national debt ceiling. Which we have hit. Treasury figures they run out of money beginning of August, say eight weeks.
Republicans are reluctant to do this. They are milling around, making ugly noises, but they haven't figured out what they want as a trade for raising the debt ceiling.
They could ask for ending farm subsidies, and abolishing the Agriculture Dept. They could ask for abolishing the Education Dept. They could ask for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. They could ask for tax reform. They could ask to abolish the EPA.
They ought to ask some damn thing...
Republicans are reluctant to do this. They are milling around, making ugly noises, but they haven't figured out what they want as a trade for raising the debt ceiling.
They could ask for ending farm subsidies, and abolishing the Agriculture Dept. They could ask for abolishing the Education Dept. They could ask for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. They could ask for tax reform. They could ask to abolish the EPA.
They ought to ask some damn thing...
We must be doing something right.
This website ranks NH first in freedom in the United States. What's no to like?
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