Concorde Jet and Decline Trajectory

Concorde Jet and Decline Trajectory

Some say that they height of civilization was the reign of Louis XIV.  Others say that it was after Wellington and Blucher’s defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo with 50 years of peace ending in the Industrial Revolution that was the height of civilization.

However, in the technical fields, the undisputed champion is Concorde.  Concorde was the height of technical civilization, and perhaps the last product of the Industrial Revolution.  It was the only supersonic passenger jet, aside from a minor Soviet copycat version. 

There a no more supersonic passenger jets.  Concorde is gone – it was retired in 2003. 

We may think that the smart phone is a high-tech device, not remembering that it is just a telephone, and the telephone was invented in France in 1854 by Charles Bourseul.  Phones are 160 years old.  Computers?  Computers are a collection of millions of switches.  Switches have been around since electricity was industrialized back in the 1880’s.   

2003 seems to be a year of watershed when we will look back and see that things went down fast from that year forward.  Yeah, the Space Shuttle is gone.  We are no longer smart enough to send men out into space.

What is next for decline?  I think computer operating systems are on the way down from bloatware, a phenomenon happening at an accelerating pace in the last 15 years.  There is some evidence that we will decline in the technology of passenger jets also – there have not been many produced in the last 30 years.  Embraer out of Brazil is an exception, but it is a smaller jet for regional flight along with the likes of Canadair Jet.  We are in a military decline despite having advanced weapons (we are told) – we can no longer defeat enemies on the battlefield unless they are a conventional army.  GM went bankrupt along with many of its former suppliers like Delphi.  The Midwest core of the automotive world is a giant rusting hull.  Silicon Valley is dead, I am told, because people there only want to develop “apps” for phones and computers – toys to play with. 

So, we are no longer producing anything useful, but government is growing, spending is growing, and people are debating “heath care.”  We are more concerned with the sick and the dead than the living and growing.

What are we to do?  Study philosophy.  Philosophy always buries its undertakers.  It will remain when we no longer have Science or Engineering.  It will never die as long as men have the ability to think.

Freddy Martini