| | | A "digital transformation" arising from recent computing capabilities and design tools...
Heh, heh, heh...
"Without the digital transformation the aircraft you see there could not have been made," O'Banion said, standing by an artist's rendering of the hypersonic aircraft. "In fact, five years ago, it could not have been made."
"We couldn't have made the engine itself — it would have melted down into slag if we had tried to produce it five years ago," O'Banion said. "But now we can digitally print that engine with an incredibly sophisticated cooling system integral into the material of the engine itself, and have that engine survive for multiple firings for routine operation." The aircraft is also agile at hypersonic speeds, with reliable engine starts, he said. A half-decade before, he added, developers "could not have even built it even if we conceived of it."
A fascinating bit of study to consider... to note that progress in science is often not closely matched by parallel awareness driving advances in engineering... so you will occasionally see sudden leaps occur as some bit of new technology that's been percolating for years... is suddenly enabled in becoming relevant... made useful in some new application because of someone figuring out ... "hey, we could use this that way"...
A lot of effort in development is "directed"... we know if we could do "this", then we could build "that"... so we slave for 20 or 30 years bogged down in the minutia of trying to do "this"... without ever quite figuring it out well enough to be able to transfer the incremental advances being made into engineering development... of the thing that drove the process in the first place.
When it does happen... that a leap is made from concept exploration and basic science work to engineering development... it is pretty often something that occurs as a leap... but a leap off on a tangent...
The role of innovation in application... in the transfers that succeed by pairing new understanding of fundamental things and new capabilities developed in exploring them... into engineering of solutions... is often the source of advancements that appear to occur in an almost discontinuous fashion... A bit of out-of-the-box thinking occurs when someone working on a problem discovers something someone else came up with in another context.... and that work suddenly finds itself being made relevant in the transfer of the new ideas and abilities into the same old boxes that we've banged our heads against for years... only with that very often happening in an entirely different box than the one where the interest originated...
Massive disconnects exist between the basic level drivers... and the thin threads that enable capture of the value and its transfer as a utility that in application is transformational... outside the original box.
That "thin thread" exists... in thought... which enables the study focused on that which enables success in "difference making" when others can't see it. That's where I've spent a fair part of my life... some of it in "digital transformation", some of it in basic science, some in materials, and more of it in the human element... where minor adjustments in the way people see the world can make all the difference... between success and failure... but not only that... The beauty in fiction shielding us from ugly reality... often easier to accept.
It's often very hard to get people to see things just a little bit differently... no matter the advantages that might enable. They'll fight you, the idea, and your changes tooth and nail... desperate to prevent change. But, prove how much it matters first... and suddenly it was their idea all along...
Which is why I continue to find it so problematic that we still have massive problems with people... politicians, corporations... people involved only on the periphery... surrendering those advantages... which some have spent or even sacrificed their lives to generate... and which the nation has sacrificed much to to enable, with our having spent massive portions of the national treasure to enable them...
We create advantages at enormous cost... and then you see some idiot hand the idea and the blue-prints over to the opposition... because... a few pennies... or simply "see how cool (I am) we are" ?
Show the world we have this thing... and its been flying since... whenever ? Fine. Whatever. Sometimes there's more advantage in the other guy knowing about a capability you have than not knowing about it...
But, knowing about it... not the same as telling them how we did it... so now they can try to do it too ?
They used to say "loose lips sink ships"... which is as true today as it was then... or far more true in a world where so much is dependent on our uses of computers...
But, today, its also true that loose lips might well result in your hometown suddenly being immolated in a surprise nuclear explosion... even given transfers of technologies we have that we now accept as more or less routine... as might occur when Lockheed Martin allows itself to be hacked... or when you enable social engineering or a hack of operations that enables our high end drones to be captured and copied by Iranians... and then suddenly you wonder why they're shooting them down... and why Saudi oil fields are blowing up without anyone knowing how, who, or why ?
Just sayin...
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