The Hush House Affair is a true adventure story that could be a novel, but the plot might be rejected as fictional. A three-year journey of cliff-hangers, across five countries, results in a $49,000,000 U.S. government contract. It is a tale of Creative Destruction that gives the reader a window into how a government procurement agency responds when routine is threatened by a disruptive new technology. Creative Destruction is a term economists apply to the never ending process that replaces traditional products and methods with better means of accomplishing the task. We usually see only the results, the shiny and the new, but not the pain and chaos rooted in the battle between the old and the new. The book describes the replacement of an environmentally hazardous process with a more benign method. The author gives a view of the hidden struggle behind changing the U.S. Air Force's method of testing aircraft and engines. The complexity and viciousness of the battle are beyond imagination as the antagonists fight for their jobs in a dying industry. The story is born in conflict, but the convoluted end-game results in a $49 million contract with the US Air Force. 'Creative Destruction, ' a term, popularized by Austrian/American Economist and Harvard Professor, Joseph Schumpeter, to describe the process by which old products are replaced by new devices, ideas or methods. A more mundane expression of this idea is the 'buggy whip' analog: A whip for one's buggy is unnecessary when it is powered by a gasoline engine, and an industry disappears. The "Hush House Affair" chronicles a nearly four-year odyssey that spans five countries and replaces the historical use of water for cooling aircraft noise suppressors with an air-cooling technique. It is a head-on collision: Water cooling, with its columns of black smoke, acid rain and other operational undesirables, becomes environmentally untenable. Air cooling eliminates these negatives, and significant cost savings result as a bonus. In addition, the lawsuits brought by noise and acid rain are eliminated. Air, as a cooling agent, wins handily for many reasons. The protagonists engage in an explosive conflict on first meeting but combine their talents to engage in a classic Schumpeterian conflict with the US government: One industry is destroyed and is replaced by a new enterprise, producing a superior, environmentally more benign product, under a government contract. The battle is not easily won. The traditional industries fight back. Government agencies, steeped in comfortable operational and business relationships, indulge in an internecine rivalry. The new technology is often threatened but is rescued by fortuitous and almost mysterious happenings. When the contract is finally consummated, one of my principal adversaries approached the author and extended his hand, saying, "Hey, no hard feelings. It was your general against our general, and your general won." He didn't understand how his team lost. You will. I hope you enjoy the blow-by-blow account.
About the Author: Richard J. (Dick) Reilly grew up in a small, Southern Minnesota, rural town named after a Sioux Indian Chief, 'Hokah.' After primary and secondary education in local schools, he enrolled in the Aeronautical Engineering program at the University Minnesota, receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in 1951. After two years of post-graduate work, he began a professional career, which spanned the aeronautical sciences, including basic research in boundary layer flow, high altitude research using free-flying balloons and engineering flight test work on general aviation airplanes, supersonic military aircraft and instrumentation for the US's first manned space flight. After 18 years working within corporate structures, he began a consulting career based largely on the aeronautical sciences and reaching across five continents. Clients included a variety of corporate, international and government organizations, including the Advisory Group for Aerospace Research and Development (NATO), NASA and as guest lecturer at MIT, Penn State University and at universities of most of the NATO countries. Reilly holds 16 patents in the general areas of aerodynamics, fluid power, control systems and computing devices.