DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight • Hacker News Board

Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#41

Post by Ericson2314 » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 6:22 PM UTC

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?

DARPA does lots of good things — I have in fact worked on a DARPA project and enjoyed it. It's well run.

But each of those things has to be contorted to have a military purpose, even if the main benefit we get in the end is not military-related.

We should be able to research those things just because they are good, without laundering their best purpose. And we should open the door to other things that seem just as promising, but are harder to so launder.

The fact I can't tell you the counterfactual is kind of the point — most of us have no idea about the world-changing effects of the development not persued might be, just as the average person on the 1970s did not envision today's internet. The world of possible futures is simply too open ended.

Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#42

Post by nradov » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 6:22 PM UTC

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 never really possessed nuclear arsenal. There were nuclear weapons on their territory but they lacked full operational capability to employ them, and didn't have the technical infrastructure to maintain them without Russian support. Those capabilities could have been built out in time but it would have required significant resources.

Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#43

Post by bobthechef » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 6:23 PM UTC

AQuantized wrote: post #34

qaq wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 unders…

Without defense, the others cannot exist. Without defense, you cannot have a space within which you can securely do other work. So it cannot be a matter of competition but prioritization.

Of course, we can criticize the massive amount of funding that goes to military contractors and the like (Eisenhower did). That's where the devil is: the military-industrial complex.

Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#44

Post by Ericson2314 » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 6:23 PM UTC

BenAufero wrote: post #35

qaq wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

It funds many sorts of research but much less development. Research ideas do not develop themselves and so the story of modern academia is zillions of abandoned ideas.

Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#45

Post by qaq » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 6:25 PM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #36

qaq wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They were not a major portion of Nuclear Weapons R&D and manufacturing were done in Ukraine including design and manufacture of majority of electronics including guidance systems, comms etc. as well as most top tear weapons were designed by Yuzhnoye Design Office (Dnepr Ukraine) and manufactured by Yuzhny Machine-Building Plant (Dnepr Ukraine)

Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#46

Post by Ericson2314 » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 6:26 PM UTC

jack_riminton wrote: post #26

qaq wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's circular — it's important precisely because nothing else created the political will for that much state-run development.

We should at least try to do non-military development, even if military dev will continue to have an edge.

Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#47

Post by qaq » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 6:26 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #42

qaq wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 never really possessed nuclear arsenal. There were nuclear weapons on their territory but they lacked full operational capability to employ them, and didn't have the technical infrastructure to maintain them without Russian support. Those capabilities could have been built out in time but it would have required significant resources.

Right casuse Yuzhny Machine-Building Plant and Yuzhnoye Design Office are not in Dnepr Ukraine.

Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#48

Post by nradov » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

throwaway210222 wrote: post #24

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…

> 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?

"Europe" is probably the wrong term here. The USA's efforts to stop Russia from antagonizing NATO members probably rates 8/10.

Part of Russia is also in Europe.

Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#49

Post by bobthechef » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 6:35 PM UTC

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.

We know what government is per se, regardless of the motives of the earliest state governments.

But here we miss an important point which is that government is natural to human societies. The mistake is to think that government is some artificial construct at odds with human nature. Tribes are governed. Families, the smallest society, are governed. What we call "government" is just a modification of the most basic form of government of the family (kings, for example, were analogically fathers of the kingdom). The authority of the state is derived from the authority of parents through the principle of subsidiary.

Re: DARPA's hypersonic scramjet achieves successful flight

#50

Post by throwaway210222 » Sun, Oct 03, 2021, 6:41 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #48

throwaway210222 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

"Europe" is probably the wrong term here. The USA's efforts to stop Russia from antagonizing NATO members probably rates 8/10. Part of Russia is also in Europe.

No, no.

Ukraine paid the 'entry price' that was asked of them to be protected by USA, (and France, UK, Russia, China) by surrendering their nuclear weapons.

This was a level of vulnerability and trust in third parties the good citizens of USA (and the others above) would never for a second countenance.

The USA (and the others) willingly signed up to the deal [1]. And then failed to do any deterring when it was time to walk the talk.

[1] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...