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Thread: The Heavy Press program and the decline of US heavy industry.
03-12-2012, 09:43 AM #1Diamond
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The Heavy Press program and the decline of US heavy industry.
"Now is not the time for America to build new forges: eight really is enough. But the original heavy presses, which have lived far longer and spurred far more innovation than was ever imagined, set an example that I think might yet be followed. Big machines are the product of big visions, and they make big visions real. How about a Heavy Fusion Program?"
The machines that made the Jet Age - Boing Boing
These types of programs are a dangerous violation of democratic principles. When tax dollars are used to capitalize certain specific companies by building machines for them it creates unfair competition and damages all the companies that are trying to compete with the priveleged one. How do you think Vought Aircraft and Grumman felt about Boeing getting a free 50,000 ton press paid for with tax dollars? In fact, the entire Alcoa company is a poster child for government interference with a free economy and enrichment of a few priveleged insiders at the expense of the tax payer.
While this sort of action may seem perfectly normal in Nazi Germany, the model for the "Heavy Press Program", and the Stalinist Soviet Union, these programs have no place in a free society. Our experimentation with such totalitarian economic initiatives is one of the things which are eroding the principles the United States were founded upon and which were specifically warned against by Eisenhower when he cautioned Americans about the dangers of the military industrial complex. These dangers are clear: they lead to totalitarianism and unnecessary war such as those started by Nazi Germany.
03-12-2012, 02:58 PM #3Stainless
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Thanks for posting this article. This link to Mesta Machine near the end of the article has a lot of very good pictures from their shop in the early 20th Century. Plant and product of the Mesta Machine Company, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A
I thought a 600 ton Minster was big.
Thanks for the link.
I can Shirley understand the issue there, but near as I can tell - nobody would have ponied up for those bad boys on their own? Thus it was done as a matter of National Defence.
BTW - this whole project timeline is during the Eisenhower administration...
Thanks for posting. Very interesting for those of us not in the forging business.
I am Ox and I approve this h'yah post!
I wish our government cared as much about manufacturing as it used to. I have no problem with them making large investments in our manufacturing base. Hell they pumped billions into the useless banks, how about a few billion for manufacturing so we can dominate the world like we used to.
The Soviet Union is a perfect example of such economic ideas. They had what is called a "directed economy" which means highly trained "planners" decided what industries should be given money and resources. The failure and misery this created is obvious. The allure of this kind of thinking is that it seems to produce a success. The planners would say, "Look how great our CO2 lasers are! Best in the world!", but they ignore the costs, what is being taken away from everyone else to make the lasers.
I was in Vienna recently and had a firsthand look at suburbs, which are mile after mile of dilapidated, cheap, faceless, Soviet apartment blocks populated by grim, zombie-like residents still living in the shadow of an occupation that ended over 50 years ago in 1955. This is the hell you create when you start talking about grand ideas using the money of the innocent.
From what I get from the link, the government helped out 'cause there was specific need for this type of machine. They only "helped" with the implicit understanding that the product of these behemoths would advance U.S. airpower by leaps and bounds, which they did.
Seeing as these machines remain productive 60 years after ther initial investvent, I'd call that a decent investment.
03-13-2012, 12:06 AM #10Diamond
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can't you see that the free market would have built this stuff, cheaper and faster than the government... The ChiComs and Ruskies have it totally wrong. Gutting each other on a quarterly report schedule works better. I mean look at how we are kicking China's ass in productivity and growth...duh.
The insidious nature of so-called "investments" like this is that they are a product of a totalitarian "your-money-is-our-money" mindset that leads to one thing: more totalitarianism and more unjust enrichment. The early days of the Soviet Union are a perfect example of how this mindset spirals into oppression and suffering. Shortly after the Bolsheviks took power they decided they needed stuff, like, for example, pencils. I guess when you are making a bureaucracy pencils are key. So at great expense, using money extracted literally at gunpoint from starving people they built a giant pencil factory. What a great investment! Guess who got the money? Armand Hammer, the same guy who gave Al Gore a free zinc mine. Actually the money really went to Hammer's father, a sinister mover if there ever was one. Armand was the public face. This is the kind of ugly, uneconomic "wealth transfers" where all these "great ideas" end up.
Yesterday we had a visitor in the shop. He was with the chineese telecom company that we sell alot of our products to. Actually a pretty nice guy, and very cordial. He was fascinated with my two Gerstners. He said the only thing they won't attempt to build is airliners. They don't think they have the quality Boeing and Airbus do.
This ties directly into this thread quite nicely.
I've never been the type to be all against goverment and it's programs. As long as the oversight system works, and we can get things tweeked as the world advances. I mean who else but the Feds could've built the massive dam projects, the highway system, Food safety, and river managment. I think this program falls right in with those.
Do I think they picked favorites? Probably.
But the machines are doing thier job.
Now we need to find some video
03-13-2012, 03:18 PM #13Stainless
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Alcoa50KRevFINAL2-16.wmv - YouTube - the video is mainly about ALCOAs rebuild of the press, but shows a little of how it runs.
03-13-2012, 05:17 PM #14Diamond
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For what its worth i would far rafter give my tax pounds as the case is here to a company like forge masters than prop up a frigging useless banker. Equally most of the loans i have heard mentioned are tiny only a few tens of millions and there loans that will be repaid. Worth bearing in mind most modern industry runs of nuclear power to at least some degree and a lot of the key bits are colossal forgings. Buying toys from china is one thing, reactor pressure vessels i would rather source or at least see sourced else were!
EVERY single Airbus and Boeing plane, and EVERY single american military plane, has parts made on these presses.
There is no evidence whatsoever that if the US Government had not subsidised the commercial jetliner, by paying Boeing to build the KC-135, and then looking the other way when all that taxpayer funded work was converted to the 707, that we would even HAVE a commercial airline industry.
And using the Soviets, which were failures in so many ways, as an example for why ALL government funded research, and subsidies to industry is wrong- thats throwing the baby out with the bathwater, if you ask me.
If the US taxpayers had not ignored jscpm's ideas, we would have
NO railroads- (government subsidies and land giveaways)
NO interstate freeway system (government paid for 100% and imminent domain)
NO ports or airports- (government subsidies,imminent domain, outright government employees like the FAA)
NO satelites- (100% government funded)
NO Computers (100% government funded for the first ten years or so)
NO lasers, NO internet, NO national powergrid with hydro electric dams, NO nuclear power plants, NO jet aircraft, NO GPS, and on, and on, and on.
Government subsidies just like the ones that paid for these presses paid for things such as full automatic weapons, Tang, Velcro, Teflon, even most CNC machine tools.
Maybe, just maybe, a few of these things would have been done by private industry, 50 years later, but, in most cases, if we hadnt done them, they would never have been developed, or been developed by countries whose governments WERE willing to pay for em.
Free enterprise in the USA has never been free of government subsidies, outright payments, contracts, and money. Thats why we are so successful.
03-13-2012, 06:57 PM #16Titanium
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I guess it comes down to this who do want to be screwed by, a big corporation that you have no say over or by a big government that you get a vote in. I will take uncle sam any day over goldman ball sacks.
Here is an interesting fact about these presses- they were requested, and paid for, by the Air Force.
At the time of this, the Air Force was FAR bigger than the biggest company in the USA, by almost any measurement-
here is a quote from the book 15 Minutes which is a history of the SAC.
Amazon.com: 15 Minutes: General Curtis LeMay and the Countdown to Nuclear Annihilation (9781250002082): L. Douglas Keeney: Books
-In 1954, SAC had a direct fixed capital investment greater than an estimated $8.5 billion -- only the cost of aircraft and installations. The largest company in the United States was Standard Oil of New Jersey which represented a $4.5 billion investment. SAC's 185,000 personnel trumped Standard Oil's 119,000 personnel as well.-
Thats ONLY the SAC, not even the air force as a whole, much less the entire military.
So at the time of our biggest success by many measurements- our largest middle class, our glory days of american manufacturing and export, high employment, decent wages, technological innovation, and so on- the amount of Government involvement in the economy was huge.
And thats why, and how, we have commercial airliners, among many other "private industry" things.
There has never been a commercial airliner industry in any country since WW2, which was not heavily government subsidized and controlled- Airbus, of course, is the classic example, and the Heavy Press Program actually proves that Airbus could not exist without US government subsidies, in the form of letting them use our heavy forging presses, never mind EU subsidies.
The other much smaller scale contenders for civilian jets are all also heavily subsidised- Japan, Brazil, Germany, and Canada are the current ones, with China looming on the horizon.
So, if for some reason, we chose to cease funding, coordinating, and subsidizing our airliner industry, we would NOT see private industry rushing in to fill the gap- instead, we would see other governments and their programs expanding to eat our lunch. Assuming, of course, we let them use our Soviet Style Socialized Heavy Presses...
03-14-2012, 11:44 PM #19Diamond
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At least twice now I've asked you to back up some of the rubbish you write with examples but so far silence. Can't say I'm surprised. You seem to have an obsession with comparing everything to nazi Germany and/or Stalinist Russia. Hate to be the one to tell you but neither exist today Do you even know what century this is?
I'm usually reasonably polite in my posts and try to avoid negative personal criticism but with you it sho' ain't easy.


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