proof the US Govt has been taken over by Communists: DARPA's "flying sub"

http://www.ineffableisland.com/2010/10/submersible-aircraft-submersible.html

This what happens when incestuously appointed political hacks with no knack for tech, design or engineering(besides 'engineering' seat arrangements at Moscow or WashDC dinner parties) gain control of massive budgets.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxyf3O_SyYQ


Anyways, on the DARPA FS I'm not really seeing the benefit of the folding wings. I'd guess doubling up the airfoils would only create more drag. How about a 'swing wing' like B-2, which also reduces the area when swept? Maybe they want to 'spoil' the lift when underwater.

I always thought the B-2 looked like it was designed to travel through water (compared to other aircraft).

 

Well, it would help if you actually understood what DARPA actual is and does, which clearly you don't. Is this a viable delivery system, probably not, but it's not really supposed to be.

I remember locking onto Transit satellites in the late 70's, decades before GPS, while playing with ways to beat the cable company. Who do you think has made the huge armor and stealth technology advances in the last few decades?

The whole point of DARPA is to be out of the box - way out of the box, so yeah, they come up with some weird stuff, some significant ratcheting white elephants (and if you know about DARPA, you understand this reference) have also been born, but all in all a necessary and clever way of brain storming new ideas and concepts.

Maybe nothing will come of the submersible aircraft, but elements of it's research will likely get employed elsewhere, which is often the case for these types of things. One avenue turns out to be a dead end, but along the way an undiscovered side street is found, to offer an entirely different route to a different end.

The bottom line is this is precisely what has made the USA great, the ability to innovate, create, explore, etc. We don't have better or brighter or more numerous engineers than other large countries. What we do have and these other counties often lack is a creative spirit, that's nurtured and often gainfully employed too. The former Soviet Union had more engineers than us and China has more now, but they didn't/don't foster creativity, but rather conformity. This is common in many cultures and self defeating, if you want new and innovative thinking. No one is as creative as a American dreamer, fostering a dream in a suburban garage some place in Anytown, USA, just because his parents said he could be anything he wanted to be, if he worked at it. Do a quick search and see how many Fortune 500 "startups" happened in a American garage or basement. This doesn't happen in many places and having something as unique as DARPA, as a possible avenue of pursuit is a good reason for it.

 

Well said, Par. Bravo!
Except forced conformity is currently in vogue in the USA.
Political correctness (originated by Stalin).
The 'consensus" says.
The science is "complete'.
Need I go on?
But you are correct, our past greatness was mainly due to our freedom of thought and individualism.
It's our future that worries me, though.

 

I second what Yobarnacle said, Paul

Some visionary, in the mid seventies, had the audacity to propose an ultra long distance space probe. One of the Voyager spacecrafts has now reached what we believe is the edge of our universe.

 

Even if DARPA had never had any other successes, the internet has probably made the entire program worth it's budget since the agency's founding.

 

Have they ??? That would be a real problem for astronomers if that happened !

You might have meant the edge of our Galaxy, but even that isnt true.

According to NASA, they haven't even got beyond the shelter of our suns Heliosphere, which is just one small star in about 300 Billion stars.

"Location: Voyager 1 and 2 are currently in the "Heliosheath" -- the outermost layer of the heliosphere where the solar wind (from our Sun) is slowed by the pressure of interstellar gas. "


http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/where/

 

Oh, please, Al Gore invented the internet !

 

He was being "ALLEGORICAL" when he made that claim.

 

RWatson you are correct. I was thinking Solar system and my fingers were typing galaxy...universe, whatever.

Voyager: Wherever it is, it is way out there and has managed to survive for a lot of years. Surely that is a testament to mans capacity to contrive and develop wondrous machinery. Come to think of it, high school kids have wondrous devices that make the Voyager technology look primitive. They are I-Phones.

 

Ho-Humm, just old WWII Vril technology, nothing new here.

 

But built by the LOWEST bidder?

How many parts in it?

 

Actually a submersible plane has been featured in comics and science fiction for decades. Nothing new here.

The Voyager is remarkable but even more remarkable is the ISEE-3 http://www.universetoday.com/111867...t-returning-to-earth-after-a-36-year-journey/ 36 years in space.

Anyway, DARPA has come up with a lot of what were considered weird ideas when they were proposed. A few examples

Google Maps and Google Earth? DARPA in 1979 funded a project at MIT to develop interactive maps that could even enter buildings. Sound familiar?

UNIX: first proposed by DARPA as Multics, The Multiplexed Information and Computing Service. A modular computer system based on an open, expandable operating system, that could be built of discreet modules into anything from a desktop to huge powerful systems to do extremely complex simulations. Heard the term supercomputer?

GPS: Quote from PCPro: The Global Positioning System project dates back to 1973 and was originally very much a military system, funded and created by the US Department of Defense. However, the concept dates back even further to the very early days of DARPA itself. Following the launch of Sputnik in October 1957, two US physicists at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab (APL) discovered that by using radio transmissions and the Doppler effect (the change in frequency of a wave for an observer moving relative to the source of the wave) they could pinpoint the precise location of the Sputnik satellite.
DARPA wanted to use this to help the US Navy with Polaris missile research, which required it to know the precise location of the submarine launching the nukes.
The TRANSIT system, later known as NAVSAT, was the first operational satellite navigation system and went live in 1964, continuing until eventually being decommissioned two years after GPS went fully operational in 1994.

Stealth aircraft and ships: Most of the early research into stealth technology, and the aircraft, was funded by DARPA.

So think what you like about the government, but a lot of the stuff we take for granted today, like the Internet, was originally bizarre ideas funded by DARPA

 

I'll name my next child "Darpa' in honor of their contributions.

Of course I'm ancient and not planning any more kids. Just more grand kids.