Aviation News, Boeing, Airbus

Mugu, Calif. The solid rocket booster successfully ignited and accelerated the HyFly to a speed of greater than Mach 3. This test was the second of five HyFly flight tests that are scheduled from 2005 to 2007. In the first flight test, an un-powered HyFly vehicle demonstrated safe separation from an F-15E as well as vehicle guidance and control functions. During the next three test flights, the HyFly vehicles will be powered by a booster and a dual combustion ramjet, or DCR, engine (supplied by Aerojet) at speeds up to Mach 6. The objective of the HyFly programme is to mature the DCR hypersonic missile concert. Flight tests feature a missile configuration that is compatible with surface ships and submarines as well as US Navy and US Air Force aircraft.

I mean, I could have gotten LaMar’s doughnuts, which, by all accounts, are every bit as good as those at Krispy Kreme. I have been to LaMar’s and can attest to their tasting heavenly, but I have never had a Krispy Kreme doughnut, and I really want to know what all the fuss is about.

I didn’t get the chance that day in line, for a woman came by after getting her doughnuts and informed us that she had started about where we were, and it would take something just short of an hour and a half to order.

There’s a limit to what people ought to be made to put up with for the honor of doing business with a particular establishment — and an hour and a half in line for doughnuts exceeded mine. I left.

Driving back to my office, I needed something to take my mind off my near-Krispy Kreme experience. For some reason, Boeing jumped to mind.

Boeing, as everyone probably knows, announced in March that it would move its corporate headquarters from Seattle, where it has been for 87 years, to one of three cities: Dallas, Chicago or Denver, I know from experience — the United Airlines maintenance facility, the super-conducting super-collider — that Boeing has already made up its mind where it wants to go. As I write this, the decision hasn’t been announced, but it doesn’t matter. The only reason to make an announcement of three, unsuspecting finalists is so a bidding war for corporate perks ensues.

If history is any guide, Denver was placed on the Boeing short list because we have a reputation for excessive drooling when it comes to corporate attraction and the goodies our governments and chambers of commerce will throw on the table.

Put Denver on the list, and the other places — including the “winner” — will have to up their antes.

I’m all for economic development, and it truly would be a coup to get a company like Boeing to move to Denver. But at what cost? There must be a better way for corporations to conduct relocation analyses than in the media. This is simply a strategy to whip up a frenzy in the potential locations and get more than what is prudent from them.