NextGen in a Nutshell
Posted by Paul Cox on April 10th, 2009
(I didn’t write this post- someone calling him/herself “Who Knows” did, in the comments section. I only wish I could write this well. Enjoy this comment, promoted to be a post of its own.)
You go to a car dealership looking to trade in your 1997 sedan. You’re surprised to find they have only one car in the entire dealership. It’s the 2010 model and, well, it’s covered in a tarp and has no spec sheet at all.
So you ask the rep, a sleazy looking guy with greasy hair. “What’s the deal with the 2010 car?”
“Oh, it’s great!” he replies.
“Okay… but how’s the mileage compare to my ’97?”
“It’s better.”
“How much better?” you ask.
“You get more miles per gallon.”
“And… how many more?”
“Better than the ’97 gets.”
You raise your eyebrow at the circularness of it all. “You guys have tested it?”
“Ho ho, no! But the people we contracted to build the engine and transmission swear it’ll burn less fuel.”
“What about carrying capacity? How much can it tow? How many people can it hold?”
“More than your ’97.”
“How much more? Who says so?”
He laughs. “More. Because we say it does.”
“What about safety? Airbags? Seatbelts? Crumple zones? Strong bumper?”
“It has less of them. But they’ll do the job.”
“Even though there’s less of them?”
“Yeap!” He smiles.
“Alrighty then. What about speed?”
“It’ll go faster than what you have.”
“How much faster?”
“Faster. That’s according to-”
“-the people you contracted to build the engine and tranny. I getcha.” You look around, curious. “What happened to all the other cars?”
“Oh,” the salesman sales proudly, “we decided this is the only car people want.”
“And… you don’t even know how it performs?”
“When you don’t have a choice,” he says, “does it really matter?”
“So you’re asking me to trade in my working car for a mystery vehicle whose mileage is untested, whose safety is reduced, whose performance is unproven, and which may or may not carry the load I need it to carry?”
He picks his teeth with a fingernail. “That’s about the size of it.”
You turn around and start walking for the door, keys to your old car in hand.
“Where are you going?” the salesman asks, running after you.
“Remember that choice you said I didn’t have?” you say. “I’m making it.”
April 10th, 2009 at 4:02 am
Hey! You forgot about maintaining that new vehicle! You’ll be able to fix the entire system with a few keyboard strokes from a laptop! You’ll troubleshoot and fix it over the FTI system even though you’re ten thousand miles away! That is…if it breaks…and it won’t…
April 10th, 2009 at 7:20 am
That scenario could easily appy to Rope and Chains errr, I mean Hope and Change that so many voted for in the last election. Government Motors. “We build what’s good for you.”
April 10th, 2009 at 7:59 am
It’s a nice analogy, but it’s not as apt as it could be.
Imagine a family of deeply retarded millionaires, who are told by the salesman that this car will finally give them the same performance that drivers in Mongolia expect. They’ll have to trade in their existing car, though, so it can be compacted, stripped down and sold for scrap.
The deeply retarded millionaires are the U.S. Congress and the Transportation Committees in the House and Senate, and NATCA’s screaming and pleading for help inside the trunk of the car.
April 10th, 2009 at 8:27 am
At least some of these FAA management types will be able to find work in the car industry.
April 10th, 2009 at 8:32 am
In a nutshell, Nextgen was and is Blakey’s meal ticket. The LM FSS screw job and Nextgen, her two keys to the AIA job. A mere 8 weeks after she left that smoldering heap called the FAA.
And any time there’s a story about Nextgen, Blakey feels the need to respond to it in the press.
Watching her haughty arrognant behavior at a recent Congressional hearing told the whole story.
As soon as Costello gaveled the hearing closed, she clutched her purse in those insectoid claws of hers and made a bee line up the aisle to Costello.
April 10th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Nice story. Except that there is no car under the tarp. Only an empty space on the showroom floor where the new car will go, after it is conceived, designed, modeled, constructed, and tested in about 25 years. And we’re not even sure its really going to be a car. It might move on the ground, it might hover in the air, it might fly high in the sky. We might even invent molecular teleportation in the meantime. All we really know for sure is we have developed an accessory called ADS-B that’s going to be part of it all and we’re working like mad to deploy it to make it look like we’ve accomplished something. We’re not really sure what to do with it, exactly, but it will share some nifty information between other units and we’re working like crazy to get other drivers to buy it so we can start making some money.
The final delivered product is not nearly as high a priority as ensuring that there is an unbroken stream of taxpayer funding to carry all of the manufacturers through these tough economic times. In 25 years no one will even remember what the original target was.
April 10th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
glad_to_be_FCT Says:
April 10th, 2009 at 7:20 am
That scenario could easily appy to Rope and Chains errr, I mean Hope and Change that so many voted for in the last election. Government Motors. “We build what’s good for you.”
Except in “Who Knows” scenario there’s a decent ’97 sedan to fall back on, in the last election we had to get rid of a 2001 malfunctioning lemon.
April 11th, 2009 at 5:40 am
NonConforming_AF_Hamster Says:
April 10th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
“Except in “Who Knows” scenario there’s a decent ‘97 sedan to fall back on, in the last election we had to get rid of a 2001 malfunctioning lemon.”
I fear that the terms on the “Hope and Change Type D” model are going unnoticed. It may have all the bells, whistles, freebies, goodies and incentives that you think you want; but at what final cost? How many decades will it take us to pay it off, if ever?
April 11th, 2009 at 6:13 am
Well done!
April 11th, 2009 at 7:27 am
“I fear that the terms on the “Hope and Change Type D” model are going unnoticed. It may have all the bells, whistles, freebies, goodies and incentives that you think you want; but at what final cost? How many decades will it take us to pay it off, if ever?”
Do you really believe that this mess is Obama’s fault? The guy has been president for about 7 weeks! Would we be better off if he follows the bush path to certain ruin?
If you have somehow diluted yourself into thinking that Bush is not to blame for everything that is still happening drug testing needs to be enhanced in the FCT facilities.
April 11th, 2009 at 11:54 am
Ben Dover – EXCELLENT analogy (you beat me to it, btw….)
The empty space under that tarp is nothing more than an idea made possible by the marriage of a currently mismanaged system that allows the users to overload it, with the seemingly miraculously expanding horizons of tomorrows technologies being developed today! (i smell snake oil….)
Remember folks, when your laptop crashes, you cuss, reboot it, wait a couple minutes, maybe you have to restore it, run a quick diagnostic, maybe you lose that memo you were writing up (or that blog reply you were banging out)….nobody dies.
Now try that with your ERAM’ed or Next-gen’d feeder sector during the rush. No problem? We got back-up plans?
Now imagine your wife , kids and parents are on those airplanes. Still OK with that? If you are, then you’re either blissfully ignorant or stupid.
April 11th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
AL, Well said!
April 13th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
The only thing you left out is the part about getting paid 150k a year to keep the 97 model running. Every year that NEXGEN is delayed, gets you a year closer to retirement.