Monuments and Misalignments

By the 1990s, with the Cold War over, the US Aerospace Enterprise found itself in uncharted waters, and the institutions, accumulated infrastructure, and organizations designed for the successful campaign to thwart Communism were without a rudder. To make matters worse, a host of other destabilizing forces — which had been masked by the Cold War — suddenly appeared. The Cold War’s end unleashed a wave of commotion that affected not only the military sector of the US Aerospace Enterprise, but also the commercial and civil space sectors. The once shared interests of aerospace customers, workers, and manufacturers had become misaligned, and products had matured. As the new millennium began, the US Aerospace Enterprise needed a new equilibrium.