Demolition of Rockwell Downey Building 1
Sad Photos: Rockwell Downey Building 1 Demolition
“The following photos were taken by a longtime Rockwell (now Boeing) Downey employee last week. They are tearing down much of Building 1. It will be replaced by a shopping center. This is where large portions of the Space Shuttles and Apollo spacecraft were built.”
It is really sad, when you think of the technology that was developed here, and the manufacturing capacity and the jobs that this plant once represented, that are now long gone.
And if you think about the fact that on the opposite coast the Grumman Bethpage plant where the Apollo LM and the Shuttle wings and numerous Navy fighters were designed and built was shuttered long ago and now all remains is a small museum, you have to realize that what this country was able to do fifty years ago, sending humans into orbit and to the moon, and designing and building a space shuttle, it is no longer able to do.
I got a bit of a kick out of a friend’s post that ‘those Chinese are working hard and they are now able to do what we were able to do in the 1960s’. What he forgets is that what we were able to do in the 1960s, we are no longer able to do.
In the words of President Lyndon Johnson, we have now succeeded in pissing it all away (as he shut down the Saturn production lines).
I had trepidations at the time, as did many others, that Apollo / Saturn / Shuttle … wasn’t sustainable. Even before the Vietnam war step-up.
I had no such trepidations about Gemini. Or even … MOL.
Suggest you read John Logsdon’s book “”The Decision to Go to the Moon”. What use is a launch system of any stripe … if you know you can’t keep it going, but need to shut it down because your GDP is insufficient.We never could afford the colossal arrogance of a “manifest destiny” space program that asserted our greatness w/o continuity.
People lament the “failed transitions”, the program conclusions, the layoffs, etc. All of these were predestined by such projects.While there was dislocation with Atlas/Delta/Titan transition to EELV, the effect was minor league in comparison.We need as a country to make mature decisions and stick by them as far as HSF is concerned. We needed it then, and we need it now.
Wow – its gone! So much has changed since the 70’s.
More “progress”–another mall! To quote Tom Petty, “As we celebrate
mediocrity..”
ugh! my grandad worked there!!! bastards!!