Los Angeles: Proud Bird, aerospace watering hole, about to run dry

With a martini in hand, John Cashen was deep in a discussion of military electronics, when a 747 jetliner seemed to float past in slow motion onto LAX's south runway complex.

Cashen, who pioneered the radar-evading design of the B-2 Stealth bomber, stopped to watch the plane — just a few hundred yards away — thunder past his table at the Proud Bird, the aerospace industry's favorite watering hole for more than a half-century.

"There's no place else like this in the world," said Cashen, 76, who retired from Northrop Grummanin 1993 but still consults for the firm.

The biggest names in aerospace have sat at the bar here to watch the planes land, people such as Jimmy Doolittle, Charles Lindbergh and Neil Armstrong.

But the Proud Bird's days may be numbered.

John Tallichet, the current owner and son of the late founder, said it will close Nov. 21, after an unsuccessful two-year effort to negotiate a new lease from the property owners, Los Angeles World Airports.

The Los Angeles World Airports Commission says it can't help the historic gathering place, saying that federal law, which controls some aspects of airport operations, requires current market value for rents.

Although Boeing Co., Northrop Grumman Corp., the Aerospace Corp. and Raytheon Co. all have major facilities nearby, the industry is much smaller than in its heyday and less able to support the red-meat-and-fish dining room.

Nonetheless, supporters of the restaurant are outraged by the upcoming closure, saying that it would mean the loss of an important piece of Los Angeles' history.

Tallichet blames a tangle of federal and city laws that have raised his costs.

Via: LA Times

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Neil Armstrong dead at 82

The first man to walk on the surface of another world is dead.

American Neil Armstrong, who walked on the surface of the moon on July 21, 1969, died Saturday afternoon following complications from heart bypass surgery.

NBC News:

Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, died Saturday, weeks after heart surgery and days after his 82nd birthday.

His family reported the death at 2:45 p.m. ET. A statement said he died following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures. 

Armstrong commanded the Apollo 11 spacecraft that landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, and he radioed back to Earth the historic news: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."

He spent nearly three hours walking on the moon with fellow astronaut Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin.

Armstrong and his wife, Carol, married in 1999, made their home in the Cincinnati suburb of Indian Hill, but he had largely stayed out of public view in recent years. His birthday was Aug. 5.

Armstrong was an intensely private man who always made a point to emphasize the fact that the Apollo 11 mission that went to the surface of the moon couldn't have occurred without the assistance of literally hundreds of thousands of workers, technicians, mission control personnel, and other astronauts. It is estimated that 500,000 people laid hands on the Saturn V rocket, the service module, and the lunar lander before it left the earth. That is more workers than the number that built the Panama and Suez canals, the Great Pyramid, and the transcontinental railroad -- combined.

As long as humans are writing history, Neil Armstrong's name will be mentioned.

Via: American Thinker