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DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

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Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#21

Post by qaq »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #17
Atlantium wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many humans are quite aggressive. Pacifists are easily defeated by force. How can you have progress without security?

That's a straw man. The problem is tons of research and development won't happen without the state, but the main avenue the state funds development (as opposed to research) is the military. There are many possible futures, and the world is highly non-ergodic, so there is a real cost here to biasing the development of technology in this matter. "Opportunity cost" doesn't do the concept justice. We don't have to stop m…

Well could you point to the downside of this? From teflon to internet and countless other things you use every day that came out of DARPA and other def. research, what would have changed if it was funded via different model?

Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#22

Post by vmception »

jackschultz wrote: post #2

DARPA has such a list of impressive, world wide useful technologies that wouldn't have been able to be created without funding from the government at the time given the time and money and at time, unlikeliness to be successful [0]. It really sucks that there's a 'D' for 'Defense' at the front of the acronym. Their website says they're "creating breakthrough technologies and capabilities for national security". Horrib…

Just assume its technologists that wanted to trick Congress into giving them free money

You know you can get entire new agencies created for yourself by the same lobbying process that private sector uses for laws that benefit them

Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#23

Post by whatshisface »

eganist wrote: post #19
Ericson2314 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a straw man. The problem is tons of research and development won't happen without the state, but the main avenue the state funds development (as opposed to research) is the military. There are many possible futures, and the world is highly non-ergodic, so there is a real cost here to biasing the development of technology in this matter. "Opportunity cost" doesn't do the concept justice. We don't have to stop m…

> That's a straw man. The problem is tons of research and development won't happen without the state, but the main avenue the state funds development (as opposed to research) is the military. The reason the op's comment is not actually a straw man ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man ) is because the first governments were developed out of a necessity to ensure a unity of peoples, the functioning of essential sy…

Come on, nobody knows how the first governments were developed. No written records exist.

Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#24

Post by throwaway210222 »

echelon wrote: post #20
Ericson2314 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a straw man. The problem is tons of research and development won't happen without the state, but the main avenue the state funds development (as opposed to research) is the military. There are many possible futures, and the world is highly non-ergodic, so there is a real cost here to biasing the development of technology in this matter. "Opportunity cost" doesn't do the concept justice. We don't have to stop m…

America is preventing Russia from antagonizing Europe, all the while we foot the bill for maintaining a capable military. China is a looming threat. If you don't see that, I don't know what I can say. Take away America's military and see what happens. Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Spratleys, 9-dash, water rights, Belt+Road indebtedness, Crimea, Ukraine... The US has to be strong out of necessity, and we get treated like…

> America is preventing Russia from antagonizing Europe?

Er, Ukraine is in Europe. Out of 10, how would you rate the USA's efforts at stopping Russia there so far?

Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#25

Post by qaq »

echelon wrote: post #20
Ericson2314 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a straw man. The problem is tons of research and development won't happen without the state, but the main avenue the state funds development (as opposed to research) is the military. There are many possible futures, and the world is highly non-ergodic, so there is a real cost here to biasing the development of technology in this matter. "Opportunity cost" doesn't do the concept justice. We don't have to stop m…

America is preventing Russia from antagonizing Europe, all the while we foot the bill for maintaining a capable military. China is a looming threat. If you don't see that, I don't know what I can say. Take away America's military and see what happens. Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Spratleys, 9-dash, water rights, Belt+Road indebtedness, Crimea, Ukraine... The US has to be strong out of necessity, and we get treated like…

The cat is out of the bag, Ukraine gave up 3d largest Nuclear arsenal on the promise that other nuclear powers mainly US would provide security. Everyone saw how that played out so a country would need to be suicidal not to start a nuclear program.

Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#26

Post by jack_riminton »

qaq wrote: post #21
Ericson2314 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a straw man. The problem is tons of research and development won't happen without the state, but the main avenue the state funds development (as opposed to research) is the military. There are many possible futures, and the world is highly non-ergodic, so there is a real cost here to biasing the development of technology in this matter. "Opportunity cost" doesn't do the concept justice. We don't have to stop m…

Well could you point to the downside of this? From teflon to internet and countless other things you use every day that came out of DARPA and other def. research, what would have changed if it was funded via different model?

History shows that conflict has actually been rather useful for our development

Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#27

Post by 5faulker »

jackschultz wrote: post #2

DARPA has such a list of impressive, world wide useful technologies that wouldn't have been able to be created without funding from the government at the time given the time and money and at time, unlikeliness to be successful [0]. It really sucks that there's a 'D' for 'Defense' at the front of the acronym. Their website says they're "creating breakthrough technologies and capabilities for national security". Horrib…

Human progress can be itself a trap too, but often we can only tell how history rolls out in retrospect.

Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#28

Post by sonofhans »

pengaru wrote: post #16
allenrb wrote: post #12

For a moment, reading only the first paragraph, I was hopeful that the problem of accelerating from subsonic to hypersonic had been solved. Alas, further down it makes clear that a booster was involved. Presumably a small solid rocket that accelerates to Mach 3-5(?) prior to scramjet ignition. Fine for a weapons system but will never be useful as transportation. Is anyone aware of progress toward being able to reach…

> The SR-71 could make Mach 3 on its own but at incredible cost in fuel and complexity. the SR-71 never struck me as "incredibly complex", the space shuttle however...

The J58 powering the SR-71 is still one of the most complex engines ever built. The space shuttle is a simple rocket by comparison.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_J58

Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#29

Post by Ericson2314 »

whatshisface wrote: post #23
eganist wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's a straw man. The problem is tons of research and development won't happen without the state, but the main avenue the state funds development (as opposed to research) is the military. The reason the op's comment is not actually a straw man ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man ) is because the first governments were developed out of a necessity to ensure a unity of peoples, the functioning of essential sy…

Come on, nobody knows how the first governments were developed. No written records exist.

Yeah, and as far as we can tell those first states massively sucked for almost everyone, too.

Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#30

Post by dragonelite »

amelius wrote: post #6

US's answer to Russia's Zircon missile? https://www.military.com/equipment/weapons/why-russias-hyper... > U.S. Aegis missile interceptor systems require 8-10 seconds of reaction time to intercept incoming attacks. In those 8-10 seconds, the Russian Zircon missiles will already have traveled 20 kilometers, and the interceptor missiles do not fly fast enough to catch up.

Pretty much and a counter against Chinese Hypersonic glide vehicles.
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