In April 2010, Glen Davis was taking stock of the company's assets.
When he was young, he had believed people from the United States would fly all the way to the moon, Mars, and beyond. But now Washington had cut the lunar program, the space shuttles were nearing retirement, and the factory's young engineers stood in the hallways holding coffee mugs, not knowing where they would go next month.
Their little factory was finally going to be sold.
Over the past twenty years, the United States aerospace industry had undergone a wave of "mega-mergers." Boeing swallowed McDonnell Douglas, Lockheed and Martin merged into Lockheed Martin, and Northrop swallowed Grumman. Then these giants vertically integrated their supply chains: big fish ate little fish, and then the winners took all.
He had worked at this factory in El Segundo for twenty-six years. It specialized in combustion chamber liners for NASA. Four suppliers could do the job, and their products were the best.
But they had not been acquired by Boeing, Lockheed Martin, or Northrop Grumman, so they were going under.
He had been fortunate enough to catch the tail end of the golden age of United States aerospace and pay off his mortgage, but the young men at the factory, with their limitless prospects, suddenly faced bleak futures.
Davis was the administrative director and had majored in human resources in college. He could still swallow his pride and make calls on Wall Street, but where were these brilliant graduates supposed to go?
The owner and Davis had been friends for years. They called countless banks, but the managers all shook their heads. No one was willing to lend the factory money.
Only one mysterious investor was willing to assume their debts, but on the condition that the factory be integrated into an