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DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

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Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#31

Post by qaq »

doovd wrote: post #5
imglorp wrote: post #4

I'm curious about the PR strategies at play when governments either saber-rattle or keep secrets. Announcing breakthrough, surprising even, HAWC tech seems to clue in opponents about what sorts of countermeasures they'd want to start developing. By contrast, the US has held the high-altitude Aurora/SR-72/whatever tech very close to the vest for decades, when it's pretty much obvious that a new generation of high alti…

> contributed to the USSR bankrupting itself trying to keep up with cold war tech? Source?

USSR was spending majority of it's GDP on mil., hard to imagine it was not a major factor.

Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#32

Post by hef19898 »

qaq wrote: post #25
echelon wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just ask Gadhafi, Saddam and Kim Jung Un. Oh, right, only one can answer!

Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#33

Post by throwaway803453 »

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…

I suspect you know this but it was ARPA until 1972: https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/timeline/arpa-name-change

Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#34

Post by AQuantized »

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?

The problem is privileging technologies that have defence capabilities. There are likely countless ideas that could have similar success to DARPA projects if they had similar access to capital and state support.

However, unless it can show off some military capability its funding can't be justified using the current model, leaving a gigantic subsections of technologies that could have similar innovative impact underserved by this level of support.

Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#35

Post by BenAufero »

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?

I think the complaint is not that the government funds research for defense, it's that it could be funding energy, medical, etc research.

I honestly don't know if I fully agree with his complaint, because I'm fairly sure the government does fund a lot of other research that isn't defense focused (see a lot of universities).

Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#36

Post by sudosysgen »

qaq wrote: post #25
echelon wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ukraine did not have as much of a choice as one would think. All the nukes were set up to be controlled by Moscow and it would have taken enough time to bypass the controls that the Russian army could feasibly have invaded or destroyed them.

Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#37

Post by Iv »

doovd wrote: post #5
imglorp wrote: post #4

I'm curious about the PR strategies at play when governments either saber-rattle or keep secrets. Announcing breakthrough, surprising even, HAWC tech seems to clue in opponents about what sorts of countermeasures they'd want to start developing. By contrast, the US has held the high-altitude Aurora/SR-72/whatever tech very close to the vest for decades, when it's pretty much obvious that a new generation of high alti…

> contributed to the USSR bankrupting itself trying to keep up with cold war tech? Source?

It is probably a reference to the SDI program, also called the Starwars program. Note that the economic impact on USSR is just speculation.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative...

Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#38

Post by xvilka »

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…

There are also IARPA[1] and ARPA-E[2] (and few others as well). ARPA-E is more "peaceful" agency.

[1] https://www.iarpa.gov/index.php/research-programs

[2] https://arpa-e.energy.gov/

Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#39

Post by bobthechef »

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…

> Horrible that national security is the reason for this, when it should be human progress.

I don't understand the point of comments like this.

Are you lamenting that human beings are such that such defense programs are necessary? Okay, I can sympathize with the general sentiment, but it's weird bringing that up in this specific context, especially since the tech in question is defensive. Yes, the need for defense is an unfortunate necessity given the reality of the world. No sense in pretending we can achieve some world where defense is not needed (we can of course try to cultivate cooperation and peace, but these are delicate arrangements that are constantly in flux). The most dangerous belief is believing you can achieve this utopian peace on earth because it makes you defenseless.

Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#40

Post by numpad0 »

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…

Blackbird does 3.75 designed maximum on turbo-ramjet I think?
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