The reason that the American Aerospace industry is in such bad shape is because of a lack of competition both here and from other nations. North American, McDonnell Douglas, General Dynamics and others are gone because of the very high costs of staying in business, which is directly tied to both government regulation and Union work rules.
Lockheed Martin is responsible for some of the worst waste fraud and abuse of government contracts that it is a wonder they are still around.
Maglev will never take off in this country until contractors can build and do research without having to work around environmentalists, unions and government restrictions raising the costs beyond affordability.
Maglev is a lot of nonsense. There are existing technologies that are far more possible. Pushing for unknown technologies is not wise when other proven technologies already exist, such as the bullet train in Japan.
For another example, the proven technology of solar hot water heating for use as hot water and heating systems has been nearly completely ignored, even though it has been demonstrated to work very efficiently since the seventies.