From mach20 glider to humming bird drone Regina Dugan
you should be nice to nerds in fact I’d
go so far as to say if you don’t already
have a nerd in your life you should get
one I’m just saying
scientists and engineers change the
world
I’d like to tell you about a magical
place called DARPA where scientists and
engineers defy the impossible and refuse
to fear failure now these two ideas are
connected more than you may realize
because when you remove the fear of
failure impossible things suddenly
become possible if you want to know how
ask yourself this question what would
you attempt to do if you knew you could
not fail if you really ask yourself this
question you can’t help but feel
uncomfortable I feel a little
uncomfortable because when you ask it
you begin to understand how the fear of
failure constrains you how it keeps us
from attempting great things and life
gets dull amazing things stop happening
sure good things happen but amazing
things stop happening now I should be
clear I’m not encouraging failure
I’m discouraging fear of failure because
it’s not failure itself that constrains
us the path to truly new never been done
before things always has failure along
the way we’re tested and in part that
testing feels an appropriate part of
achieving something great
Clemenceau said life gets interesting
when we fail because it’s a sign that
we’ve surpassed ourselves in 1895 Lord
Kelvin declared that heavier-than-air
flying machines were impossible in
October of 1903 the prevailing opinion
of expert aerodynamicists was that maybe
in 10 million years we could build an
aircraft that would fly and two months
later on December 17th Orville Wright
powered the first airplane across a
beach in North Carolina the flight
lasted 12 seconds and covered 120 feet
that was 1903 one year later the next
declarations of impossibilities began
Ferdinand Fache a French army general
credited with having one of the most
original and subtle minds in the French
army said airplanes are interesting toys
but of no military value 40 years later
Aero experts coined the term transonic
they debated should it have 1 s or 2 you
see they were having trouble in this
flight regime and it wasn’t at all clear
that we could fly faster than the speed
of sound in 1947 there was no wind
tunnel data beyond Mach 0.85 and yet on
Tuesday October 14th 1947 Chuck Yeager
climbed into the cockpit of his bell x-1
and he flew towards an unknown
possibility and in so doing he became
the first pilot to fly faster the
speed of sound six of eight Atlas
Rockets blew up on the pad after 11
complete mission failures we got our
first images from space and on that
first flight we got more data than in
all YouTube missions combined it took a
lot of failures to get there since we
took to the sky we have wanted to fly
faster and farther and to do so we’ve
had to believe in impossible things and
we’ve had to refuse to fear failure
that’s still true today today we don’t
talk about flying transonic Li or even
supersonic Li we talk about flying
hypersonically not Mach 2 or Mach 3 Mach
20 at Mach 20 we can fly from New York
to Long Beach in 11 minutes and 20
seconds at that speed the surface of the
airfoil is the temperature of molten
steel 3500 degrees Fahrenheit like a
blast furnace we are essentially burning
the airfoil as we fly it and we are
flying it or trying to
darkus hypersonic test vehicle is the
fastest maneuvering aircraft ever built
it’s boosted to near space atop a
Minotaur 4 rocket now the Minotaur 4 has
too much impulse so we have to bleed it
off by flying the rocket at an 89 degree
angle of attack for portions of the
trajectory that’s an unnatural act for a
rocket the third stage has a camera we
call it rocket cam and it’s pointed at
the hypersonic glider this is the actual
rocket cam footage from flight 1 now to
conceal the shape we change the aspect
ratio a little bit but this is what it
looks like from the third stage of the
rocket looking at the unmanned glider as
it heads into the atmosphere back
towards Earth we’ve flown twice in the
first flight no aerodynamic control of
the vehicle but we collected more
hypersonic flight data than in 30 years
of ground-based testing combined and in
the second flight three minutes of fully
controlled aerodynamic flight at Mach 20
we must fly again because amazing never
been done before things require that you
fly you can’t learn to fly at Mach 20
unless you fly and while there’s no
substitute for speed manoeuvrability is
a very close second if a Mach 20 glider
takes 11 minutes and 20 seconds to get
from New York to Long Beach
a hummingbird would take well days you
see hummingbirds are not hypersonic but
they are maneuverable in fact the
hummingbird is the only bird that can
fly backwards it can fly up down
forwards backwards even upside down and
so if we wanted to fly in this room or
places where humans can’t go we’d need
an aircraft small enough and
maneuverable enough to do so this is a
hummingbird drone it can fly in all
directions even backwards it can hover
and rotate this prototype aircraft is
equipped with a video camera it weighs
less than one double a battery it does
not eat nectar in 2008 it flew for a
whopping 20 seconds a year later two
minutes then six eventually 11
many prototypes crashed many but there’s
no way to learn to fly like a
hummingbird unless you fly
it’s beautiful isn’t it Wow Matt is the
first-ever hummingbird pilot
failure is part of creating new and
amazing things we cannot both fear
failure and make amazing new things like
a robot with the stability of a dog on
rough terrain or maybe even ice a robot
that can run like a cheetah or climb
stairs like a human with the occasional
clumsiness of a human or perhaps
spider-man will one day be deco man a
gecko can support its entire body weight
with one toe one square millimeter of a
geckos foot pad has 14,000 hair like
structures called setae they are used to
help it grip to surfaces using
intermolecular forces today we can
manufacture structures that mimic the
hairs of a geckos foot the result a four
by four inch artificial nano gecko
adhesive can support a static load of
660 pounds that’s enough to stick six 42
inch plasma TVs to your wall no nails so
much for velcro right and it’s not just
passive structures its entire machines
this is a spider mite it’s one
millimetre long but it looks like
Godzilla next to these micro machines in
the world of Godzilla spider mites we
can make millions of mirrors each
one-fifth the diameter of a human hair
moving at hundreds of thousands of times
per second to make large screen displays
so that we can watch movies like
Godzilla in high-def and if we can build
machines at that scale
what about ISIL tower like trusses at
the micro scale today we are making
metal
that are lighter than styrofoam so light
they can sit atop a dandelion puffs and
be blown away with a wisp of air so
light that you can make a car that two
people can lift but so strong that it
has the crash worthiness of an SUV from
the smallest wisp of air to the powerful
forces of nature storms there are 44
lightning strikes per second around the
globe each lightning bolt heats the air
to 44 thousand degrees Fahrenheit hotter
than the surface of the Sun what if we
could use these electromagnetic pulses
as beacons beacons in a moving network
of powerful transmitters experiments
suggest that lightning could be the next
GPS electrical pulses form the thoughts
in our brains using a grid the size of
your thumb with 32 electrodes on the
surface of his brain Tim uses his
thoughts to control an advanced
prosthetic arm and his thoughts made him
reach for Katie this is the first time a
human has controlled a robot with
thought alone and it is the first time
that Tim has held Katie’s hand in seven
years that moment mattered to Tim and
Katie and this green goo may someday
matter to you this green goo is perhaps
the vaccine that could save your life
it was made in tobacco plants tobacco
plants can make millions of doses a
vaccine in weeks instead of months and
it might just be the first healthy use
of tobacco ever and if it seems
far-fetched that tobacco plants could
make people healthy what about game
that could solve problems that experts
can’t solve last September the gamers of
Foldit solve the three-dimensional
structure of the retro viral protease
that contributes to AIDS in rhesus
monkeys now understanding this structure
is very important for developing
treatments for 15 years
it was unsolved in the scientific
community the gamers have folded solved
it in 15 days now they were able to do
so by working together they were able to
work together because they’re connected
by the internet and others also
connected to the internet used it as an
instrument of democracy and together
they changed the fate of their nation
the Internet is home to two billion
people or 30% of the world’s population
it allows us to contribute and to be
heard as individuals it allows us to
amplify our voices and our power as a
group but it too had humble beginnings
in 1969 the internet was but a dream a
few sketches on a piece of paper and
then on October 29th the first
packet-switched message was sent from
UCLA to SR I the first two letters of
the word login that’s all that made it
through an L and an O and then a buffer
overflow crashed the system two letters
an L and an O now a worldwide force so
who are these scientists and engineers
at a magical place called DARPA they are
nerds and they are heroes among us they
challenge existing perspectives at the
edges of science and under the most
demanding of conditions they remind us
that we can change the world if we defy
the impossible and we refuse to fear
failure they remind us that we all have
nerd power sometimes we just forget you
see there was a time when you weren’t
afraid of failure when you were a great
artist or a great dancer and you could
sing you’re good at math you could build
things you were an astronaut an
adventurer Jacques Cousteau you could
jump higher run faster kick harder than
anyone you believed in impossible things
and you were fearless
you were totally and completely in touch
with your inner superhero scientists and
engineers can indeed change the world
so can you you were born - so go ahead
ask yourself what would you attempt to
do if you knew you could not fail now I
want to say this is not easy it’s hard
to hold on to this feeling really hard I
guess
in some way I sort of believe it’s
supposed to be hard
doubt and fear always creep in we think
someone else someone smarter than us
someone more capable someone with more
resources will solve that problem but
there isn’t anyone else there’s just you
and if we’re lucky in that moment
someone steps into that doubt and fear
takes a hand and says let me help you
believe Jason harley did that for me
Jason started at DARPA on March 18th
2010 he was with our transportation team
I saw Jason nearly every day
sometimes twice a day and more so than
most
he saw the highs and the lows the
celebrations and the
appointments and on one particularly
dark day for me
Jason sat down and he wrote an email he
was encouraging but firm and when he hit
Send he probably didn’t realize what a
difference it would make it mattered to
me in that moment and still today when I
doubt when I feel afraid when I need to
reconnect with that feeling I remember
his words they were so powerful
because that’s what being a superhero is
over there is only time enough to iron
your cape and back to the skies for you
and remember be nice to nerds
thank you
we’re gonna thank you I have a couple of
questions do ya
so that glider of yours the first one no
control it ended up in the Pacific I
think somewhere it what happened on that
second flight yeah it also went the
Pacific but this time under control yeah
no we didn’t fly it into the Pacific
right no there are multiple portions of
the trajectory that are demanding in
terms of really flying at that speed and
so in the second flight we were able to
get three minutes of fully aerodynamic
control of the vehicle before we lost it
I imagine you’re not planning to open up
to passenger service no it might be a
little warm do you picture what do you
picture that lighter being used for well
our responsibility is to develop the
technology for this how it’s ultimately
used will be determined by the military
now the purpose of the vehicle though
the purpose of the technology is to be
able to reach anywhere in the world
in less than 60 minutes and to carry a
payload of more than a few pounds yeah
like what’s the payload you carry
well I don’t think we ultimately know
what it will be right we got to fly it
first but not necessarily just a camera
yeah no not necessarily just a camera
it’s it’s amazing the bet that they’re
having better yeah I mean I’m curious
you know you started your beautiful
sequence on flight with with a wing kind
of trying to flap its wings and failing
horribly yeah they haven’t been that
many planes built since that flap away
yes yeah why why did we think that this
was the time to go via mimicry and
copier a hummingbird isn’t that a very
expensive solution for a small well
maneuverable flying object so I mean in
part we wondered if it was possible to
do it and you have to revisit these
questions over time the folks at
aerovironment tried 300 or more
different wing designs twelve different
forms of the avionics took them ten
full prototypes to get something that
would actually fly but there’s something
really interesting about a flying
machine that looks like something you’d
recognize so we often talk about stealth
as a means for avoiding any type of
sensing but when things look just
natural
you also don’t see them many stealth
it’s partly the the look it’s just
actually it’s sure
look at that cute hummingbird flying
into my headquarters that’s I think
that’s well as the or and looking at me
I’m sure some people here thinking you
know technology catches up so quick how
long is it before some crazed geek with
a little remote-control flies one
through a wouldn’t over the White House
I mean do you worry about the Pandora’s
Box issue here well look our singular
mission is the creation and prevention
of strategic surprise that’s what we do
it would be inconceivable for us to do
that work if we didn’t make people
excited and uncomfortable with the
things that we do at the same time it’s
just the nature of what we do now our
responsibility is to push that edge and
you know we have to be of course mindful
and responsible of how the technology is
developed and ultimately used but we
can’t simply close our eyes and pretend
that it isn’t advancing its advancing I
mean you’re clearly a really inspiring
leader and you persuade people to go to
these great feats of invention but at a
personal level in a way I can’t imagine
doing your job do you wake up in the
night sometimes just asking questions
about the possibly unintended
consequences of your team’s brilliance
sure I mean I think it would you
couldn’t be human if you didn’t ask
those questions you know how do you
answer well I don’t always have answers
for them right I think that we learn as
time goes on I mean my job is one of the
most exhilarating jobs you could have
I work with some of the most amazing
people and with that exhilaration comes
a really deep sense of responsibility
and so you have on the one hand this
tremendous lift of what’s possible right
and this tremendous seriousness of what
it means we’re gonna that was
jaw-dropping because they say thank you
so much