The Wright Stuff

Are you wondering about the title of the post?! I am going to talk about the aerospace industry in this post. It is quite different from the posts I have been writing. But I am doing some research on the industry. So I thought I can share it with you all. The aerospace industry consists of companies which produce aircraft, spaceships and the jets, engines and rockets that propel them. The defense industry produces a complementary group of goods, including satellites, ships and submarines, tanks and armored vehicles, and guns, bullets, explosives and other weapons. These industries are closely allied, with companies frequently participating in both spheres. The aerospace industry makes most of its money by supplying individuals and commercial airlines with planes for business or pleasure. The commercial airline industry is notoriously cyclical, operating at the mercy of the business cycle; factors like the price of airline tickets and terrorism (or the threat thereof) can also affect the number of people who travel by air—and hence the rate at which airline companies purchase new planes. The lucrative nature of defense contracts shouldn’t be underestimated, either: the U.S. government had planned to spend a whopping $480 billion on defense in 2008—give or take the odd hundred million allotted for special items during the year. Since making fighter jets and cargo planes doesn’t require wildly different skill sets, and defense contracts are a generally recession-proof form of revenue, nearly all many aerospace and defense companies have arms that handle both commercial and military production. Major manufacturers of engines for planes include Pratt & Whitney, a subsidiary of United Technologies, Westinghouse and GE, Rolls Royce and Daimler-Benz, which put the vroom in more than just cars.