“no-one had welded steel that thick since 1945”
My grandpa did that. He went to Pearl Harbor to weld damaged ships back together. Apparently also had a randy old time with the locals that nearly destroyed his marriage. I wear his 1960s Pendleton shirts and custom Wyoming shearling coat.
In the 1950’s our engineers built the SR71 (and its predecessors) using slide rules, not computers. Airplane capable of flying across CONUS is about one hour. Today “we” can’t properly install a door plug on a production aircraft without it getting sucked out of the airplane while in flight.
Today we have incredible computational power in every cell phone but we lack folks that are capable of ingenuity. Our colleges are cesspools that teach students to hate America. We think men can be women and vice versa. We are lost at sea, rudderless, and taking on water.