05 Nov 2018, 04:13
Really neat program.....I remember reading Milt Thompson's book when I was in high school, where he outlined his experience/involvement with it. Sounded like a great time, the way he wrote about it. I'm sure it is still going on in a significantly nerdier way these days, but the innovation that the Southern California aerospace industry had in the 1970's is maybe the most impressive and important time period of aviation history IMO. Certainly, very ground breaking things are happening right now, but so much of the groundwork was laid back then.......I guess in short, it was the real transition to a digital age of aircraft, and all the impressive capabilities that presented. It was all kind of taken for granted by the time I was an aviation buff as a kid in the 1980's, and certainly by the time I started flying military fighters a couple decades later, but there was really a lot of work that went into all the cool stuff that we just *have* now. I have all the respect in the world for those fine Americans who worked billions of man hours and likely tore out millions of miles worth of hair, in order to give us things like our current military fleet, the Space Shuttle, etc.