Depending on who you are talking to there were several very different reasons why the Internet was created, whether it was military command and control (Curtis LeMay told me that), to create a new communication and commerce infrastructure (Al Gore), or simply to advance the science of digital communications (lots of people). But Bob Taylor says the Internet was created to save money. And since Bob Taylor was, more than anyone, the guy who caused the Internet to be created, well I’ll believe him.
Bob Taylor, probably best known for building and managing the Computer Systems Laboratory at XEROX PARC from which emerged advances including Ethernet, laser printing, and SmallTalk, was before that the DARPA program manager who commissioned the ARPANet, predecessor to the Internet. Taylor was followed in that DARPA position by Larry Roberts, Bob Kahn, and Vint Cerf — all huge names in Internet lore — but someone had to pull the trigger and that someone was Bob Taylor, who was tired of buying mainframes for universities.
This was all covered in my PBS series Nerds 2.01: A Brief History of the Internet, by the way, which appears to be illegally available on YouTube if you bother to look a bit.
As DARPA’s point man for digital technology, Bob Taylor supported research at many universities, all of which asked for expensive mainframe computers as part of the deal. With money running short one budget cycle Taylor wondered why universities couldn’t share computing resources? And so the ARPANet was born as a digital network to support remote login. And that was it — no command and control, no eCommerce, no advancing science, just sharing expensive resources.
The people who built the ARPANet, including the boys and girls of BB&N in Boston and Len Kleinrock at UCLA, loved the experience and turned it into a great technical adventure. But the people who mainly used the ARPANet, which is to say all those universities that didn’t get shiny new mainframes, hated it for exactly that reason.
In fact I’d hazard a guess that thwarting the remote login intent of DARPA may have been the inspiration for many of the non-rlogin uses we have for the Internet today.
But this column is not about the ARPANet, it is about DARPA itself, because I have a bone to pick with those people, who could learn a thing or two still from Bob Taylor.
Last fall DARPA issued an RFP for a program called Airborne Launch Assist Space Access (ALASA) which was literally launching small satellites into orbit from aircraft. Some readers will remember I have a keen interest in space and have been quietly working on a Moon shot of my own since 2007 — a project that features airborne launches. For adult supervision I’ve been working all that time with Tomas Svitek, a well known and perfectly legitimate rocket scientist who tolerates my wackiness.
Since DARPA seemed to be aiming right for what we considered to be our technical sweet spot (airborne satellite launches) Tomas and I decided to bid for one of the three ALASA Phase One contracts to be awarded.
We didn’t win the contract. And this column is about why we didn’t win it, which we just learned, months after the fact, in a DARPA briefing.
We didn’t get one of the three contracts because — silly us — our proposal would have actually accomplished the stated objective of the program, which was launching a 100 lb satellite into Low Earth Orbit from an aircraft on 24 hours notice from a launch base anywhere on Earth (location to be specified by DARPA when the clock starts ticking) for a launch cost of under $1 million.
Here is the tactical scenario as explained to all the bidders by DARPA. An incident happens somewhere in the world potentially requiring a U.S. military response. Viewers of The West Wing can imagine a spy satellite operated by the National Reconnaissance Office moving into position over the hotspot so people in the Situation Room can watch what’s happening. This satellite move may or may not happen in reality, but even if it does happen the intel isn’t shared with troops on the ground in any usable form. That’s what ALASA is supposed to be all about — providing satellite surveillance to commanders on the ground. At present such a launch costs $6 million and takes weeks to prepare, so $1 million on 24 hours notice would be quite an advance.
DARPA projected the DoD would need as many as 30 such launches per year.
The Phase One winners were Boeing with a proposal to launch from an F-15, Lockheed-Martin with a proposal to launch from an F-22, and Virgin Galactic with a proposal to launch from White Knight 2.
None of these solutions will work. The F-15 and F-22 are both constrained by the size of payload that can be carried. The F-15 is too low to the ground (I’ve measured this myself during a scouting mission to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) and the F-22, being a stealth fighter, carries its ordinance internally in bomb bays. Both are limited to carrying under 5,000 lbs.
White Knight 2 could probably carry enough weight, but couldn’t get it halfway around the world on 24 hours notice.
Our solution, based on five years of work including scrounging in Ukrainian corn fields, was entirely practical. The only aircraft capable of fulfilling this mission with anything less than heroic measures is the reconnaissance version of the MiG-25, which is 50 percent larger than an F-15 and carries a 5300-liter external fuel tank weighing 10,450 lbs. Using the same perchlorate solid rocket fuel used to launch the Space Shuttle (raw material cost $2 per pound) we could do the job safely and reliably for a launch price easily under $600K. Capable of Mach 2.83 the MiG could meet the 24 hour global deployment deadline, too.
So why didn’t we at least get the safety position among the three winners?
That, my friends, comes back to the question why was the Internet invented? The DARPA of today, which by the way trumpets at every opportunity their singular involvement in starting the Internet, has evidently forgotten that Internet was invented to save money, because DARPA in the case of ALASA doesn’t really want a practical solution. They want heroic measures.
We’re told we were rejected because our proposal used solid fuel rockets. Our solution wasn’t (and this is a direct quote) “the DARPA way.”
Yes, our proposal was practical and yes, it would probably work, but DARPA wants to push the technical envelope toward higher-impulse liquid-fueled rockets that can be small enough to fit under an F-15 or inside an F-22. White Knight 2, it turns out, won the safety position even though it can’t fulfill the entire mission.
There’s nothing wrong with DARPA wanting to advance the science of space propulsion. But if that was their intent, why didn’t they say so?
It is very doubtful that ALASA will result in any tactical satellites actually being deployed to support commanders in the field. Not even a liquid-fueled rocket under 5,000 lbs can put 100 lbs into orbit. Dilithium crystals are required.
Fortunately by the time DARPA figures this out Tomas and I will have made the entire program unnecessary. You see we have this great new idea….
Everyone I’ve ever worked with who used to work at DARPA (or who still does) talks about DARPA as if it’s the saviour of the free world, and they act & speak as though they’re what stands between us and a Soviet / Chinese invasion (the terms they use).
Talk about being out of touch! Such self-aggrandizement is rare, possibly even outdoing NASA’s chest-beating. If you only knew how many times I’ve walked past a NASA middle-manager’s office — feet up on the desk reading a newspaper, playing around on Facebook, etc..
Bottom line: private industry is where it’s at. Look at Space-X. Government is just not set up for the best & brightest (sorry, NASA). Sorry that in this case it worked against you Bob. Please don’t consider a government job – if they realize you’re overqualified, you won’t get the job, and if they can’t determine this, you’ll go crazy once you’re in the job.
Hello C,
What were you doing walking around when you were supposed to be working? Geez. And, if you were walking around, say, while at lunch, well, the supervisor can have his legs up during lunch.
Speaking as someone who worked at a company that did DARPA work in our research and design and also our engineering labs, Bob, you were lucky to escape.
Working with the government is an exercise in red-tape-aided frustration, with an added helping of bad communication ladled over the top.
Poorly written RFPs, incorrect specs, implausible qualification requirements, you name it, you get it in the world of DARPA.
One of our labs had a fifty-fifty split in the floor space. Fifty percent of the lab was devoted to actually achieving the scientific and research goals. The rest of the lab was a mass of filing cabinets and database computers used to track the correspondence with the government, the many engineering change notices, and the frequent requirement shifts as well as the evidence of our compliance with government and DARPA regulations.
Big government is not here is help you, or to find solutions to problems, but to support big government’s big military-industrial complex partners.
Perversely if the cost of putting up quick satellites came down that quickly, how could you assure the technology would be constrained to the United States?
Maybe DARPA was worried that if Bob’s proposal worked, countries like Syria could use it to spy on our friends, or even us. Imagine if North Korea put up such a satellite over our navy when they are conducting maneuvers in the Sea of Japan. There’s an implicit threat in just tracking us.
So it might not be about pushing the technology in a particular technical direction, just an expensive friendly direction.
If another country wanted the capability, why wouldn’t they go with a variant of the preexisting Orbital Sciences Pegasus System?
It’s a lot simpler than launching from a high performance fighter and good enough for most recon.
Orbital IS the $6 million solution, that’s why. It’s too expensive.
Um, as a long term veteran of writing federal proposals and DARPA proposals, I can see why they shot down your proposal.
First off it was an ITAR contract, that effectively means no foreign nationals or subcontractors. If somebody doesn’t have a US passport on the program you had better have a really good reason to have them on-board. Subcontracting a source of MiG-25s would pretty much blow ITAR compliance out of the water. Subcontracting a UK or other NATO source would blow ITAR.
Second did you have an American Prime Contractor on-board? One of the big boys has to be on board to provide US manufacturing for the system and provide spare parts, service and support for the final system.
Third, how did you plan on deploying and maintaining the MiG-25 on the airbases (I figure Diego Garcia and Ascension Island at a minimum) including spare parts and maintenance? On the other hand the F22 and F15 have full logistics in place at any airbase under consideration. I figure Virgin has pre-existent agreements for several airports around the world. The contract was very adamant about using preexisting unmodified aircraft.
Finally, given the explicit reference in the RFP for “increased specific impulse propellants, potential “infrastructure-free” cryogen production, and new throttling approaches.” screams liquid or hybrid rockets.
I figure the big boys dusted off existing ASAT paper studies for followups to the ASM-135 ASAT.
Your proposal was pretty much like showing up at an airport without a ticket or a driver’s licence but with a starters pistol, and complaining that you can’t catch a flight!
By all means, show up DARPA, I’ll be holding my breath, not!
The content in this reply is very informative and a great rebuttal to the original authors dismay at being rejected – it’s a pity the reply’s author sounds like a douche.
Hmm, it seems that our “a long term veteran of writing federal proposals and DARPA proposals” has no clue about what ITAR is.
He believes that “First off it was an ITAR contract….” What is an ITAR contract? Is that a contract to provide ITAR services? That phrase makes no sense.
Then “that effectively means no foreign nationals or subcontractors.” Imposing the ITAR requirements does not mean that you cannot have any foreign subcontractors — that is completely silly. Name me a single US large defense contract that does not have foreign parts. There are plenty of foreign-sourced parts in every F-15 and F-22! And WK-2 is provided by a foreign-controlled entity!
ITAR means that you have to follow certain process, put in place some rules, and obtain permissions and licenses from the US government, as required.
There are plenty of foreign-built aircraft operating in US defense service. ITAR would not be a reason to eliminate a foreign-built aircraft — though, ITAR could become cost and schedule driver, if improperly managed.
Also, monopulse says “The contract was very adamant about using preexisting unmodified aircraft.” — You mean like WK2? By the way, RFP was adamant, not contract — I would assume that the proposal writing veteran would know the difference….
ITAR, which is intended to keep strategic U.S. technology from going abroad to the wrong places, does not apply here, since the technology transfer is all in the other direction. The technology being transferred is all late-1960s, too, and available from multiple sources INCLUDING SOME IN THE U.S. There were more than 1100 MiG-25s produced and most survive since they are made of welded boron steel just like my Volvo XC90 (no titanium nor even much aluminum worth scrapping. Had we needed a major contractor (DARPA did not require it and Virgin Galactic won without one) we could have used Raytheon for whom Tomas has subbed before. Yes, the RFP mentioned high-impulse propellants and 2.5 percent mass ratios but it also REQUIRED 24 hour global deployment which Virgin Galactic can’t do yet still won. Every bidder tries to leverage a strength or two and ours were practicality and low cost. Now we learn that DARPA did not care about either. Were we naive? Maybe. Were we stupid? No.
This shows everything wrong with government contracting. The contracting geeks like monopole talk about compliance with rules and regulations, not coming up with the right technical solution. The biggest thing a contracting officer worries about is not going to prison, so that’s why they spend oodles of time checking a proposal’s compliance with the RFP. They don’t care about solving the problem, which, incidentally, the government suits think they have solved anyway before the RFP ever hits. That’s why they think they can tell you what type of fuel to use, and whatever else. The system requirements are already in the RFP, you as the bidder just have to comply and do so using a low cost and technically acceptable approach.
Secondly, the ITAR compliance thing is nonsense. Lockheed Martin won a surveillance aircraft contract over Boeing about 10 years ago proposing to use an Embraer (Brazilian) aircraft. Boeing screamed bloody murder about ITAR, but in the end it was about cost.
And yes, ITAR only governs one way transfer, from US to international. That’s why the argument makes no sense.
Reminds me of that line from the movie Contact – “First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?”
I think there is a lot of truth to this guy’s criticism, based on my experiences pitching SBIR type things, as well as those of my friends. I know nothing about ITAR issues, but they definitely want you to have infrastructure, or a partnership with infrastructure. It also helps if you know them already. Finally, you have to have exactly what they have in mind. Even if your idea is better: it doesn’t matter -they want what they want. My proposals were technologically superior to what ended up getting funded, but, well, they wanted something dumb.
That said, this is a marvelous idea, and I hope you get it funded somehow.The DARPA spooks are going to be sad when some wacky dictator realizes he can do this with his leftover Mig-25’s.
From a “launch base anywhere on Earth”?? It’s a *satellite*. You can launch it from anywhere on Earth and it will go over every point on its orbit in 90 minutes. Somebody’s missing something here.
This also shows the advantage of separating R&D (DARPA, NASA) from operations. If you want something that works (like a quick-response satellite launcher) you let a commercial contract for that. If you want R&D, you go through the R&D agencies.
See the X-33 project for another example of an R&D group trying to build a working system.
Yes, you don’t have to go far to launch a satellite. That seemed like an odd requirement to me, too. But then I did some thinking and realized there’s an element of surprise aspect to this. At present there are enough nations and even private institutions keeping track of what’s flying overhead that a terrorist with a big enough budget can know which 53 minutes per hour are okay for washing his car in the driveway. Launching a new satellite from a remote location might circumvent that smugness for a short time. That’s the only reason I could think to require it, so we complied.
I read the requirement as showing up at the right latitude in the first orbit. Sure, the satellite will cover all longitudes in 90 minutes, but only a small band of latitudes. So your launcher aircraft would need to fly to the correct launch latitude, requiring up to 8000 km range when taking off at the equator. No single MiG-25 could do that.
Within 24 hours, not in a single hop, though with mid-air refueling 8000km is nothing in a MiG-25.
Our solid rockets can sit on the shelf for years so deployment would be fuel and load the MiG then fly and launch. Compare that to a liquid fueled rocket that would most likely have to be flown to the launch location, land, THEN fuel the rocket, takeoff and launch.
the whole “anywhere from T-24” launch concept sort of suggests the distributed resource model… you know, as in “you can’t hit all our sites in 10 minutes.” I’m surprised they didn’t have a submarine component of the bid.
This is pure a case of Not Invented Here as I’ve ever seen. Although if you were under any delusion that the US military would accept a proposal that required the use of a MiG 25, you really were drinking your own Koolaid.
DARPA knew well in advance that our bid was coming and was based on a MiG-25. Tomas has a long history with DARPA and even with this particular program manager. To say that many bidders were appalled by the winners would be an understatement.
Perhaps it was rejected because you didn’t propose anything they couldn’t do themselves, whereas the other proposals were pushing the envelope on what was possible.
If a Mig-25 goes full speed, it burns out its engine. And it has truly terrible fuel efficiency (because the engine was designed for target drones, and the body is made from stainless steel), so it would need to be refueled many times to get half-way around the world.
Mach 2.83 is NOT top speed. Top speed is Mach 3.2, which DOES burn up engines. Time Between Overhauls is over 1000 hours. The MiG-25 had a dispatch reliability of 97 percent in 20+ years of use by the Soviet and Russian Air Forces. The later reconnaissance versions had in-flight refueling capability. And what’s wrong with stainless steel?
The MiG-25 was designed to intercept SR-71s, and worked brilliantly in that role. No single SR-71 mission went into Soviet airspace, ever. Mission accomplished.
Seriously… you wanted to use a Russian aircraft to launch US military satellites?
Whatever reason they gave you for rejecting the bid, there was absolutely no way that idea was going to fly. The US military would never, ever accept using an old Russian aircraft. It would imply (to dumb people) that old Russian technology is better than modern American technology. Any other reason they gave you for rejecting the bid was just an excuse.
The problem is that you’re far too smart to understand dumb people, Bob.
You understand that essentially all US spy satellites are launched on Atlas 5 that use the Russian-built first-stage engine?
As I said, this is a matter of dealing with DUMB people. Obviously Bob has never served in the military or been around senior military officers much.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with cost or effectiveness. It’s all about some misguided idea of prestige.
It’s the perception that matters. A Russian first stage engine on the Atlas 5 – nobody knows or cares. But a MIG – that’s a big deal. A MIG is not a component. It’s a Russian fighter plane. It instantly registers as such with the general public and non-technical people.
The generals are afraid that people will laugh at them – and they are right.
Can you imagine the headlines? “US uses old Russian MIG to launch hi-tech military satellite. DARPA says it was the best option.” + innumerable photos and videos. And a MIG-25 looks really great in photos and videos. They can replay them all day on TV.
There will be a publicity storm, and hundreds of jokes. Questions will be asked in Congress. ‘Why are we using a MIG? Don’t we have better fighter planes than the Russians? If we don’t, then why are we paying x trillion dollars to the military? Is a vintage Russian MIG better than anything we have? If so why?’
‘When Vladimir Putin was asked to comment, he was unable to reply, as he was too busy rolling on the floor laughing. 10 US generals are said to have had heart attacks when they heard the news. Mitt Romney says that this is what you get when you put Democrats in charge of defense.’
Bob, DARPA came up with some half-assed reason to turn down your bid because they were too embarrassed to give you the real reason. Some senior officers don’t want to use a Russian MIG, regardless of effectiveness and cost. End of story.
That’s the problem with America. They always have to “be the best”. In Europe we would have just used the best solution to the problem. Job done.
And there’s the problem with Europe: false modesty.
The generals all thought it was cool. There’s no competition here, An SR-71 can wax a MiG-25 any day so top dog honors are preserved. Everyone I spoke with at the USAF understood the MiG is functioning as that big Ford F-450 diesel pickup with the dual rear wheels. And as far as military experience is concerned I am approved to fly everything from a Spitfire Mk Vc up to my own L-29 Viper. Next comes a MiG-21 followed by the MiG-25.
And the USAF owns an entire squadron of MiG-29s for what reason, then? The MiG-25 we measured for our bid, by the way, was also owned by the USAF.
You failed to notice that the ‘R’ in DARPA stands for Research. Very, very few DARPA projects look for a practical & cheaply implementable solution to a real need. They want big contractors to make some money to hire talent and try crazy new things, and gain experience with new technologies. The experience may sit on a shelf or in a filing cabinet gathering dust, but it also can be used in an RFP for a real contract to do real work for a real customer sometime in the future.
DARPA doesn’t fund you to complete the RFP task logically and cheaply. They fund you to do Research.
The bid requires actually putting something in orbit and doing so below a specific price. Our bid met both which none of the others did. An F-22 costs $100K/hour just to operate, making it instantly impossible for Lockheed-Martin to meet the cost part of the bid with global deployment. Yes, the R stands for “Research,” but it doesn’t stand for “Rejecting Reality.” Or maybe it does….
Bummer dude!
Many years ago I worked on a similar type of gig, but for the FAA. Their ATC’s were having constant problems due to computer problems. We made a proposal. It was a lot less than those from the “big computer companies.” It was visionary and could help them evolve gracefully from the old technology to the new. It would definitely work.
We started by looking at their existing hardware and software. Even by standards 15 years ago, their hardware was ancient. We found it would be easy to write an emulator and run all their old stuff on contemporary equipment. Emulators are slow, but when running them on computers that are 1000x faster it was a perfect fit. We could introduce a lot more processing power, redundancy, and reliability.
We then looked at their software. There were amazing opportunities for improvement. We found we could significantly reduce a controllers workload and stress level. We worked with several controllers and learned much from them. We had a number of innovations they really, really liked. Once we replaced the hardware in the ATC’s, upgrading the software later would be much easier.
We were too small and our price was too low to be taken seriously. Or maybe we didn’t have the political connections.
I vote Option B. if you’re in The Club, they buy your lunch. if you’re not in The Club, there is a vast and byzantine network of “assistance” offices that let you down easy, and then dump you.
Bob, to heck with DARPA. I would think lots of private companies would love a 600K low earth launch capability.
Tomas and I haven’t given up by any means. We’re trying to build an enduring launch capability based in Kona which sits in all that Pacific Ocean and is 200 miles closer to the equator than the other 11,000-foot runway in Honolulu. Fly south, turn left. With weekly operations our launch cost would drop substantially below $600K. There appears to be a market. Care to invest?
Bob,
This is why I’m so going to miss the stuff you write. I always learn something, and frankly, this journey you’re on is very fascinating. I hope there’s some way to keep up with things like this after you stop writing the blog!
“This was all covered in my PBS series Nerds 2.01: A Brief History of the Internet, by the way, which appears to be illegally available on YouTube if you bother to look a bit.”
Yeah, it’s not right.
I’m going to go buy a copy on DVD right now to make up for those who might watch it illegally.
Oh.
It’s funny that the first commenter mentioned NASA, because while I was reading this, I kept thinking of Robert Zubrin’s experiences with the Mars Project, when NASA rejected a $50B proposal in favor of one ten times as expensive that was more risky (Zubrin’s plan sent the return vehicle ahead of the crew, and offered far less time actually spent exploring the planet.
It’s not just government, either, although they’re probably the worst. I’ve gone into companies to do IT consulting, and had them reject my much cheaper solution in favor of one that was more expensive to start, more expensive to maintain, and would require regular attention from out-of-state consultants (according to their own bids, not my opinion). Bureaucrats, be they public or private sector, don’t want to save money; they want to grow their budgets and work with the coolest people and products. My cheap and simple solutions weren’t cool or budget-enhancing, just like your MIG-25s and solid fuel rockets.
You forgot that the role of these agencies is not accomplish a task but rather funnel monies to concerned interests and congressional districts.
Hey Bob,
DARPA and most of the government cannot figure out space simply because they don’t want to. They want heros like Apollo 11 or Apollo 13. The shuttle wasn’t it and commercial space isn’t it either. Heros get the government money. Saving dollars doesn’t.
Sounds like a great idea you are working on. If you start taking commercial payloads let me know as I am buying.
See my comment above about deployment from Kona. Come for the satellite launch, stay for the coffee.
I am sorry for your disappointment. Perhaps if your proposal included R&D work to build a plane like the MiG and more R&D to develop an ion engine, DARPA would have been more interested. If course you could have used a real MiG and perchlorate rockets for the proof of concept. Sometime government RFP are for things that will really work, sometimes they are not. Oh well. It is good to see our tax money continue to be wasted.
Your history of the Internet brought back memories. I was in college during the ARPANET days. Yes, by then computers and programming had evolved to a point where serious research could be done. It took a pretty big and expensive computer to do serious processing. I figured my new workstation I built this year is a good 200x more powerful than the CDC system I used in college. It could be closer to 1000x, it is hard to compare them. My processor and motherboard cost me $149.
Back then operating systems were as primitive as the computers themselves. It was common for Universities to write and maintain their own operating systems. Schools like Waterloo produced very good compilers that were widely used in academia. As I was graduating mini-computers were hitting the scene. Schools found they could buy a lot of computing power for a fraction of the cost of the mainframe. Again the minicomputer operating systems were limited and something new, Unix became available. It didn’t take academia long to realize the fewer people they had writing and supporting operating systems, the more experts they’d have to help with research. Unix was a hit.
It was only a few years later when the microcomputer and PC emerged. Most of us know much about its evolution. A key game changer with the PC was the advent of the 386 and the 387 coprocessor. Even though we were in the world of DOS, someone figured out how to run 32-bit protected mode applications under 16-bit real mode DOS. Others figured out how to write Fortran and C compilers to produce 32 bit protected mode applications. On a PC with a 387 coprocessor, one could get computation performance as good as or better than everything DEC made, and everything except IBM’s biggest systems. Those IBM systems cost 1000’s of time more than a PC with a coprocessor. It wasn’t long until research computing moved away from big computers in data centers.
Now we have cloud computing which continues the trend.
While the ARPANET prevent the sale of several big computers, the disappointment was short lived. Much better, more cost effective options became available in only a few short years. Those three big CDC systems at my college were quickly eclipsed by better technology. When it came time to remove them from the computer room, they went straight to a metal recycler and were melted down. There was no value from an investment of millions a few years earlier.
Back to your DARPA proposal, this was a perfect application for the reuse of existing technology and you did a great job with it. To reinvent new technology will cost, what 100x more and will that be an investment that will bring value for decades? I don’t think so. This DARPA project will probably be like my college’s CDC systems. In a few years it won’t be worth the cost and effort, and will end up in a junk yard.
It’s not the least bit surprising that Darpa wanted more expensive shiny new machines instead of making efficient use of simple old machines. That’s what you would expect from the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned about more than fifty years ago. The more complex and expensive the equipment, the more money it gets.
That DARPA rfp process sounds eerily familiar. I’ve seen plenty of corporate IT initiatives that make no sense until you learn that they sprung from golf course/country club/dinner party handshake deals by upper echelon executives. That tendency to do things for reasons other than the stated purpose is rampant in organizations…
Go Bob! Go!! Share share share your new great idea! : )
Not until it’s fully funded, but that could be soon.
how big does the contribution need to be in order to participate?
Is that related to crowdfunding, Part 3 The Right Way?
Gotta say the idea of Foxbats with US insignia (and Cringely flying one) is outrageously cool. Clint Eastwood would approve.
As a matter of fact, this is kind of what the Mig-25 was originally designed for. The Soviets didn’t like having U-2s violating their airspace but the only thing they had in the early ’60s that could kill a U-2 was the SA-2 surface-to-air missile. Mig-15s, 17s, and 19s couldn’t get up to the ~80,000′ cruising altitude of the U-2. This was the original requirement of the Soviet interceptor (it’s really not a “fighter”) that came to be the Mig-25 Foxbat. It was designed to scramble and in one hell of a hurry climb to 60,000′, whence it would launch its own, externally-carried air-to-air missiles that could climb another 20,000+ feet to engage a U-2.
When the Foxbat first appeared, USAF had a conniption because its climbing ability and speed seemed to eclipse anything the US had. This in turn was the driver for development of the F-15–but that’s another story…
Sorry to hear your plan got shot down, Bob. It often seems that the goverment would rather spend more money than required. Maybe the folks in charge just get a kick out of really overcomplicating things.
The only reason I could see for not wanting solid fueled boosters would be the ability to easily shut them down if something went wrong or plans changed.
your options would include turning the solid fuel machine up to a decay orbit, or down and sideways to kill some fish someplace where nobody will notice. perhaps with a “awshit” transponder signal everybody can agree on.
there’s always a long period between bad idea and explosion where a good exit can be engineered.
you just have to understand going in that someday you will need one.
With entire countries dropping the MiG-25 due to lack of spare parts, how are you able to obtain spares? And can any part of the critical supply chain be cut off by unfriendly countries?
Ahhh…the glory days of the PDP-10’s IPL’ed with mylar tape because no one trusted the oily paper tape…..it was a world better than starting up an IBM 1800 with 80 column cards!
If I recall correctly, Bob and Curtis LeMay are both right. The colleges wanted to be free of the mainframes and reduce their costs by avoiding side suckers like the emerging IBM SNA and Honeywell’s BNP. The military wanted a type of data network that could survive a nuclear war. So the colleges got their technology paid for by a military project justified through a new type of worldwide military communications control system using a nuclear war resistant set of protocols.
So a few universities banded together and gave DARPA the proposal for the network infrastructure using TCP/IP for the future WWMCCS (Worldwide Military Communications and Control System) and they got their solutions to free themselves from IBM, CDC and Honeywell-GE mainframes. Then came the DEC-10xx and 20xx’s and BBN and the fun started……
Bob, if you’re going to revive a deceased aircraft, pick the F-111. External centerline hardpoints, common engine with plenty of spares, incredible payload. Lots of them in AZ.
Yup, solids on a MiG-25 would work pretty good, just like the PDP-8 in my basement works pretty good for maintaining a database of my coin collection.
P.S. just to clarify: the ‘A’ in DARPA stands for “advanced.” Why didn’t they say that? It’s in the name, dummy! “Not the DARPA way” means “don’t try meeting the criteria with ancient tech and duct tape, even if that old shit actually does the job.”