Orders are up. Supply chain problems are solved. And the aerospace industry is the Valley area is booming. Well, for one company, the focus is on not booming at all.
A fast-flying airplane that will muffle the usual ear-hurting sonic booms is scheduled to be unveiled on Jan. 12 at Lockheed Martin Corp.’s Skunk Works plant in Palmdale. Sonic booms will be reduced to about the same noise as a car door slamming shut. The aircraft’s main use may be in the commercial airline industry.
That’s just one of the projects and companies profiled in this special report about the aerospace industry in the Valley area.
Other examples: Northrop Grumman in Palmdale is building a drone for use by the Australian military on the same production line it is using to construct the B-21 Raider, the sixth-generation stealth bomber for the U.S. Air Force. Both aircraft had maiden flights over Palmdale in November.
And the Aerojet Rocketdyne plant in Chatsworth is busy repurposing rocket engines – the same type that sent man to the moon – to be used aboard Artemis II, the NASA mission that will take humans around the moon in the next year or two.
Some companies are using their aerospace technology to explore nonaerospace uses. Sage Cheshire Aerospace Inc. in Lancaster, for example, is working on developing an underwater aqueduct that would carry fresh water from the Columbia River to Southern California.
Art Thompson, the company’s chief executive, said such a system could provide 100% of what Los Angeles needs and even help deliver water to California’s central valley, “which would solve a lot of problems they are having with the farmers.”