Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed

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Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed

Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed

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The first was how the Skunk Works defined its mission: "to develop low cost and rapid prototypes to achieve extremely difficult but specific objectives." The combination of extreme difficulty and extreme specificity is the recipe for innovation.

And there’s more to the book than the story of technical achievements. For one thing, it includes some of the more interesting failures. We also get to hear the dramatic stories of men who flew these planes, like the U-2 pilot who accidentally flew into the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis, nearly sparking WW3, to the stealth bomber pilot whose bomb bay doors didn’t close after he dropped his payload in Iraq. With the doors open he was uncomfortably exposed to enemy radar, and he had to crank the doors shut by hand as a missile streaked towards him (once the doors were shut he became invisible again and the missile missed). After their first success, they applied the Skunk Works method again to create the world’s first spy plane in 1954 that could take crystal clear pictures at 70,000 feet. But a growing amount of scientific research is showing the shortcomings of this behavior. It can actually crush the high-level, creative concepts that are essential to progress. Workers become more concerned with their own survival than advancing the company.

Rich’s concluding chapter, “Drawing the Right Conclusions” outlines his own ideas for more sensible procurement policies throughout the defense industry. He anticipates the widespread use of drones. I don’t know enough to determine whether any of his idea have been adopted, but they make sense if one wants both to control costs, and maintain a technological edge in weaponry. My brother, who is an engineer, has been recommending this book to me for years, but I’ve always thought “Sure, YOU like it, because you’re exactly the kind of nerd it would appeal to. I’m a different kind of nerd entirely.” But it was very accessible from beginning to end, and written in a very conversational and easy to digest style. I enjoyed every minute of it.

Get an inside look at the creation of Darkstar, a conceptual hypersonic aircraft designed for the big screen. #TopGun We are not defined by the technologies that we create, but by the process in which we create them.” During his time as President, Eisenhower was scoffed and resented by management in the aerospace industry because he moved slowly, cautiously, and was conservative on military spending; Despite the Tom Clancy recommendation glaring on the cover of this edition, Skunk Works isn't a bad read. Whatever the writing skills of engineer Rich, cowriter Janos's collaboration with him resulted in an engrossing text. Of course I've long had a special interest in the history of espionage, so the subject-matter went far towards keeping me involved.Military aircraft were so expensive and complex and represented such a sizable investment of taxpayers’ money that no manufacturer expected to win a contract without first jumping through an endless series of procurement hoops, culminating in the flight-testing phase, that under normal circumstances stretched nearly ten or more years. From start to finish, a new airplane could take as long as twelve years before taking its place in the inventory and become operational on a flight line long after it was already obsolete. But that was how the bureaucracy did business."

IT teams can connect their Managed Google Play accounts to Intune to get the best of both management tools. Integrate the two for... Isolated, a Skunk Works team is protected from the corporate bureaucracy that often freezes innovation.Walking through an underground tunnel to one of the dozens of buildings on campus, guests surface in another facility. This is where NASA’s X-59 supersonic flight demonstrator is being assembled. It’s one of the few unclassified programs at Skunk Works. Pointedly, the book ends with a lengthy section about how to do R&D, especially for defense and intelligence, with optimal accomplishment at minimal cost, using the Skunk Works' history as an example of success contrasted with normal corporate-government contracts as examples of inefficiency and waste. Google’s skunk works division brought to life the space elevators, the robotics projects, and the self-driving car;



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