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Why Does DARPA Work?

benjaminreinhardt.com

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Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#71

Post by koheripbal »

shoguning wrote: post #65
zitterbewegung wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are they becoming less relevant? The DARPA grand challenges have bootstrapped: 1. Self driving cars and got them working as a prototype. [1] 2. A rapid Orbital Launch Program (Still in progress after only one competitor left)[2] 3. A subterranean challenge to map and search underground environments [1] 4. A way to use social networking to find something that is time critical [2] 5. Onion routing which is used in…

> The DARPA grand challenges have bootstrapped: I have a contrarian opinion about the impact of DARPA and related programs (ARPA-e especially). To some extent, there is a confusion of cause and effect. DARPA is good at identifying possible nascent technologies and funding them. They then have a flag planted, and can claim "we helped invent X", which is hard to disprove. But was it because of DARPA involvement, or was…

There is a feedback loop here. They help fund existing ideas, get more people/companies involved, raise awareness on certain problems, and motivate more participants to do relevant research.

So do they "invent"? ...well that's a semantic argument. The point is they absolutely help make things happen.

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#72

Post by koheripbal »

p1esk wrote: post #66
Animats wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the early days of the Internet, I met some of the Bell Labs people working in that area. What they didn't like about an IP-based network was the jitter. That was totally unacceptable for voice. They wanted something with reliable clocking, and had come up with Datakit. That sends all packets for a given call over the same path, in order. You don't open a virtual circuit unless all the nodes have enough bandwi…

1 second of delay jitter with random dropouts and echoes are typically caused by problems at the ends (poor wifi/cellular signal, too much load on cpu during a high res video call, laptop overheating, etc). UDP protocol allows to make a call even in the presence of such issues, whereas circuit switching with reliable clocking would simply not work at all.

These days, I suspect there's a lot of ISP last mile issues with everyone working at home.

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#73

Post by wyattpeak »

shoguning wrote: post #65
zitterbewegung wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are they becoming less relevant? The DARPA grand challenges have bootstrapped: 1. Self driving cars and got them working as a prototype. [1] 2. A rapid Orbital Launch Program (Still in progress after only one competitor left)[2] 3. A subterranean challenge to map and search underground environments [1] 4. A way to use social networking to find something that is time critical [2] 5. Onion routing which is used in…

> The DARPA grand challenges have bootstrapped: I have a contrarian opinion about the impact of DARPA and related programs (ARPA-e especially). To some extent, there is a confusion of cause and effect. DARPA is good at identifying possible nascent technologies and funding them. They then have a flag planted, and can claim "we helped invent X", which is hard to disprove. But was it because of DARPA involvement, or was…

What's the difference between "helping invent X" and "identifying possible nascent technologies and funding them"?

Nascent technologies aren't a fait accompli. Without funding, something expensive like a launch system isn't going to get anywhere no matter how clever an idea someone has on paper.

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#74

Post by jbay808 »

shoguning wrote: post #65
zitterbewegung wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are they becoming less relevant? The DARPA grand challenges have bootstrapped: 1. Self driving cars and got them working as a prototype. [1] 2. A rapid Orbital Launch Program (Still in progress after only one competitor left)[2] 3. A subterranean challenge to map and search underground environments [1] 4. A way to use social networking to find something that is time critical [2] 5. Onion routing which is used in…

> The DARPA grand challenges have bootstrapped: I have a contrarian opinion about the impact of DARPA and related programs (ARPA-e especially). To some extent, there is a confusion of cause and effect. DARPA is good at identifying possible nascent technologies and funding them. They then have a flag planted, and can claim "we helped invent X", which is hard to disprove. But was it because of DARPA involvement, or was…

At least in the self-driving car case, it's hard to say they didn't have a big impact. For universities to allow, fund, and support students to form engineering student teams, there usually needs to be some kind of official competition that the team can compete in. In this case, those university teams made major progress on what was at the time seen as an intractable problem. Google and its ilk then headhunted all of the students in the top performing teams to launch their self-driving car division, and now here we are.

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#75

Post by m-ee »

s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #25
m-ee wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebooks building 8 was run by a former darpa chief and went up in smoke. Also anecdata but it was enough to make me question how good their process really is

Keyword is "former". She probably left because of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regina_E._Dugan#Potential_conf... I don't think a single person that no longer works there can represent the entire process of an agency. If anything, Facebook's building 8, only reflects badly on her and Facebook.

That’s a fair point. For what it’s worth the complaints I heard about her management from PI at building 8 were strictly about her style of extreme micro management which seemed to be pretty different from the rest of Facebook, he never mentioned any of the corruption allegations. For example laying out years of research with what she called “inch stones”of weekly expected progress in the initial proposal. I’ve never worked with DARPA myself so I can’t say whether that was something unique to her.

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#77

Post by m-ee »

peterwoerner wrote: post #34
thoraway1010 wrote: post #20

Small anecdote, but good experience with DARPA and SBIR both. One thing I liked - they seemed pretty low overhead / low hassle and outcome / objective focused. That contrasts VERY strong with most govt contracting which is under allowable cost or cost reimbursement setups where the absolute most important criteria is to bill enough costs to draw contract in the right cost buckets (which can be super annoying if local…

I used to work for a company doing SBIR work. We finished a contract underbudget returned the surplus money and got audited because of it. I don't know all of the accounting details, but SBIR has some leeway (because its supposed to be research) but it's not perfect. However, you are allowed to use surplus money to fund development of things which are related to what you actually put in the proposal/contract. So if y…

I worked at company in SBIR phase 2 and one quirk I found strange was that the money could be used for R&D not things deemed “production”. Endless 3D prints were ok, random software features were ok, tooling for injection molding was not. It wasn’t a particularly onerous requirement, but I think reinforced the tendencies of our former academic founders to spend a lot of time on research and none on development.

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#78

Post by TheColorYellow »

riazrizvi wrote: post #46
siege_engineer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. Good point about DARPA serving a political-economic role. It's a different lens on the coordination role. Is the corporate-political landscape becoming more trust-based than the Military-Industrial Complex that Eisenhower warned about?

I don't understand the comparison in reference to the question of 'Why Does DARPA Work?' or my comment. Military-Industrial Complex is where defense industry profit motives drive unwarranted political influence that shapes defense policy, foreign policy. Military-Industrial Complex drives defense spending up. Trust is about the erosion of market competition, which results in decrease product value-price ratio. In the…

To a certain extent the MIC as you define it would explain the erosion of the market wouldn't it?

Also I've read your comments a few times now and I'm not sure if I'm completely understanding your view of what is becoming more "trust-based". Are you saying that DARPA is more trusted by the consumer (the federal government) than the market entities (the contractors)? If so, isn't that exactly what government entities of all types are created for? These agencies exist as part of the government working for the government because it's difficult to have an effective private market created for these similar purposes.

I think it makes the question about "what makes DARPA successful" so much more interesting from if we acknowledge the limitations of the sector. Many agencies, entities, or initiatives of various types have failed when given similar mandates and similar market conditions. That's even if you believe DARPA is truly as effective as is claimed at achieving it's mandate of innovation in the Defense and National Security sector...

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#79

Post by ilaksh »

I think it comes down to the fact that the military has a lot of money and the projects have goals that are somewhat directed but also long term. Don't think it's more complex than that really.

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#80

Post by jeffreyrogers »

koheripbal wrote: post #70
maxander wrote: post #59

A big part of the "DARPA formula" that doesn't seem to get much treatment here is consistency . DARPA is going to spend a few billion this year, and it spent a few billion last year, and it spent a few billion twenty years ago, and you can feel confident they'll spend a few billion next year. That means that if an academic researcher or similar can position their lab in an area that DARPA likes, they have a good shot…

My favorite project was the MIT silicon wafer etched jet engine. Like full jet engines the size of a pencil eraser. They also made solid rocket engines etched out of silicon. Super interesting stuff.

That sounds cool. I found this article[0] that I think is about the research you're describing. It must work a little differently than a conventional jet engine since I don't see how they could have bearings on the shaft for something that small. Any idea how they solved that problem?

[0]: https://news.mit.edu/2006/microengines

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