I'm feeling a lot of anger here, Kwasi. Is there something you'd like to talk about?
Surely you can admit that the idea of a gigantic plane is kind of cool? Though, I must say, I don't want to be last in the queue for disembarking. You could be there for days!
Are you talking about our allies? ; )
Uh, I hate to break it to you, C-Guy, but neither Boeing nor LockMart nor NorGrumm would exist but for massive legal subsidies from the U.S. government. The Big Three are more like government design bureaux than private companies, with Boeing in the Mikoyan role, Lockheed as Antonov, and NorGrumm as Tupolev.
For that matter, the same is true for the major airlines (save perhaps Southwest). In todays business, regulatory and litigation environment aerospace development and certification is so expensive and risky that it has to be subsidized up front by the taxpayer. No group of shareholders can afford the risk of bringing a new aircraft to market nowadays.
And then there's direct cash subsidy. Congress bailed out the whole airline industry post-911. If it hadn't, we'd all be taking Amtrak today. (Hmm...) Speaking of rail, do you think railroads would have gotten the same sweet taxpayer cash if the terrorists had used a train to blow up, say, Grand Central? Hell no, they wouldn't've. Billions for big aerospace (and the motor freight industry) but not one dime for the railroads - that's our national transportation policy.
And of course there are the airports to consider. Airplanes require airports, and without taxpayer dollars every airport in America would be forced to shut down. (Railroads own and maintain their own infrastructure without government subsidy and still turn a profit.) And who builds and maintains the national navigation and air traffic control system? Uncle Sam, that's who. So much for the free market there!
Market, schmarket. There is no such thing as a free market in the aerospace business. Air transportation is essential to national security and national prestige, and no nation can afford to risk the loss of same due to the viccisitudes of the market. This is why Airbus is subsidized by the EU, and why Congress shucks out and will continue to shuck out massive moola to keep our own "private" aerospace industry afloat. The only difference between the U.S. and other countries of the world is that the other countries are simply more upfront about their government-sponsored aerospace industries and their government-owned national airlines.
All things considered, it might be more efficient (as well as more honest) if the U.S. were to go the same route and fold all the aerospace companies into one quasi-governmental body a la Airbus -- at least we could meet the Euros on a level field then. Call it BoeLockThrop.
As for the airlines, I suspect that 911 was their death knell. Ten years from now there will probably be just one major carrier -- AmericanDeltaSouthwest -- operating long-distance services (i.e. troop transport, coats-2-coast, and international routes) on government money, plus a bunch of small, privately-owned point-to-point air taxi services for civilian traffic. There is also a good chance that one or more operators will be offering hyper-fast travel via commercial suborbital spaceflight to the wealthy. In any case, it is only through quintessentially American-style innovations such as air-taxi services and commercial passenger spaceflight that we can hope to stay ahead of the Euros. The market is just too rigged.