DARPA Celebrates 50 Years of Pushing the Envelope

holy_calamity writes "The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency was founded in 1958 after the Soviets shocked the world by launching Sputnik. New Scientist recounts the history of the agency charged with protecting the US from 'technological surprise' and lists some of its most spectacular successes and failures."

Comments

I wish this one wasn't killed....

[Hankapobe]

FutureMap: This program hoped to use a kind of terrorism futures market to predict key developments and even attacks. It was thought market valuations of possible future events could reflect the probability of their occurring. However, FutureMap was scrapped in 2003 after the notion of betting on terrorist atrocities was called "ridiculous and grotesque" by US politicians.

I really wanted to see if it would work - grotesque or not. It intrigued me that a "market" could be formed for things that aren't being bought and sold. And I wanted to see if the market could predict things.

Re:I wish this one wasn't killed....

[TheRedSeven]

Mod parent up.

This is another example of how politicians screw up what could otherwise be a good idea.

One could introduce an idea of how a terrorist might attack the country. If others think it's viable/vulnerable/highly possible, they buy the 'share'. As the share price goes up, it gets more attention (and hopefully response). When the response negates the risk, the viability/vulnerability/etc. goes down and people start to want to sell.

Seems a good way to use market forces to address real issues. Politicians saying, "Gosh! You're going to be proactive and creative in addressing terrorism rather than using the politically expedient FUD?! We can't have that!"

Freakin' politicians!

Re:I wish this one wasn't killed....

[explosivejared]

I don't know if I would mod this up or not. Here is a little more info on the program. There are a lot of obvious holes. For one, gaming national security is always a downside, and markets can be gamed. Another is the fact that government intelligence agencies would have great sway over which way the market went. With that in mind, think about how often cronyism and nepotism crop up in government. There would be huge risks in such an investment. In the end, it may be a unique idea, but I don't think it would have worked.

The important point in all of this though is that, for all the pork and excess, DARPA does foster innovation. Bringing new ideas to important problems is a good thing. If only we could create a DARPA project to lead to a solution for cutting government wastefulness.

Re:I wish this one wasn't killed....

[Hankapobe]

Some stuff is just unspeakably evil, or unspeakably dumb. A market for medical knowledge gained unethically, for example. This is one of those can/should discussions: the fact that an action is possible doesn't make it a bright idea:...

Who would get hurt if there was a market of this type? If anything, it would save lives. I don't see anything unethical about it. If there was anything that was unethical it was the politicians killing this for political points.

There's a huge industry that bets on when people will die. Is it unethical? It's kept many families from becoming destitute after the death of the bread winner. I'm talking about life insurance.

Summary for those who don't RTFA

[davidwr]

Successful projects: The internet, GPS, speech translation, stealth planes, gallium arsenide
Failed projects: Hafnium bombs, the mechanical elephant, telepathic spies, FutureMap futures market for terrorism, Orion nuclear-bomb-propelled spacecraft

Conspicuously missing:
Successful Projects: Slashdot
Failed Projects: CowboyNeal Dating Service

DARPA's continued importance

[DesScorp]

When I hear arguments for cutting DARPA's budget, or for eliminating it completely because "the Cold War's over, and China won't be a threat for 30 years", I think of how long the agencies successes took to come to fruition... GPS, the Internet, etc. It took decades of work. Its not like we could shut DARPA down, re-open it in 20 years, and then just magically start churning out big results again.

Interesting "Failures"

[R2.0]

"The mechanical elephant: Frustrated by a lack of decent tarmac in the jungle, DARPA sought to create a "mechanical elephant" during the Vietnam war. Its vision of high-tech Hannibal's piloting them through the forest never came true. It is alleged that when the director heard of the plan he scrapped the "damn fool" project immediately in the hope no one would hear about it." So we could be 30 years ahead in robotics instead of 10 years behind. Thanks, asshole.

"FutureMap: This program hoped to use a kind of terrorism futures market to predict key developments and even attacks. It was thought market valuations of possible future events could reflect the probability of their occurring. However, FutureMap was scrapped in 2003 after the notion of betting on terrorist atrocities was called "ridiculous and grotesque" by US politicians." Politicians. No further comment required.

"Orion: Set in motion shortly after DARPA was created, Project Orion aimed to drive an interplanetary spacecraft by periodically dropping nuclear bombs out of its rear end. The entire craft was designed like a giant shock absorber with the back covered in thick shielding to protect human passengers. Concerns about nuclear fallout and the signing of the Partial Test Ban Treaty ended the project in the early 1960s." Fallout - OK. Test ban treaty? More like political cover for killing a program disliked by the No Nukes folks.

3 of 5 were not technical failures, but political ones. Another, the "telepathic spies" project, is listed as a failure even though it did produce something important - evidence that telepathy is bullshit. The Halfnium bomb is another one. So it didn't work - BFD. are they saying that NO important research data was gained?

hear hear

[WinPimp2K]

Really, just calling them failures shows a considerable failure on the part of the folks compiling the list. Lack of political will is not the same as lack of technical ability. And demonstration of negative results is also good for when the matter comes up again. The telepathic spies WILL come up again within 20 years as we get more and more unthinking morons in positions of budgetary power.(and the current crop of "consensus scientists" will need to find another scam when they hit middle age)

And calling the exoskeleton a "current" project? There has been ongoing research into this before RAH ever dreamed of the Mobile Infantry.

Failure =/= Mistake

[porcupine8]

I don't like the fact that they call several of the failed projects "mistakes" or "blunders." Their entire mission is to push the envelope farther than what they can imagine other people going. They're not going to come up with crazy-ass successes like the internet and stealth planes without also coming up with some crazy-ass ideas that wind up not working, like a spaceship that uses nuclear bombs for propulsion and psychic spies. Those things did fail, but that doesn't make those things mistakes - they're a natural byproduct of a process aiming for both high creativity and high productivity.