From: muratlanne@gmail.com
"Richard Smith" wrote in message news:m1h62owj0d.fsf@void.com...
"Jim Wilkins" writes:
> At Mitre the engineers would roughly specify the project and order
> critical components before asking me to complete the design details
> and handle construction. That worked out well, they knew the theory
> and I knew the practice.
They consulted you first to find-out if your instinct aligned with their
analysis and intention to progress?
-------------------------------------
They gave me increasingly challengingly design tasks and found I could
handle them. They were deeply but narrowly focused radar and radio
communications engineers, I have a wide and strong background in computer
and measurement hardware, both design and construction, so when they asked
for a high precision data acquisition board for the Mac, atomic clock to
computer interface and digital radio front end I was the right person.
Additionally I had learned how to package a project to look like a
professional product instead of the usual technicians' Bud Box chassis from
Radio Shack. A retiree taught me and several others the amateur radio course
to update us in that field. Digital radio takes over at the mixer output and
replaces complex demodulation hardware.
I see Mitre just lost a project.
https://thehackernews.com/2025/04/us-govt-funding-for-mitres-cve-ends.html
There is always debate over whether Universities, Government-run labs, an
independent non-profit research center like Mitre, or private contractors
could solve problems better. Each has different strengths and weaknesses and
all draw somewhat randomly from the same talent pool, and the left and right
are both invested in defending their positions. Some tasks bounced around
them until they reached the right person, for digital radio that was me. In
the US the ownership and management of utilities also passes back and forth
between public and private when one or the other stumbles.
I think a key difference is that being less secure, private industry
attracts the more self-confident risk takers. Mitre et al. attempt to
straddle the border, though the intrusion of politics and conflict of
interest is unavoidable. Clinton cut off my work in order to fund Midnight
Basketball. In his second term he realized how much power aerospace
electronics gave him and boosted funding.
Britain did similarly with the R100 / R101 airship project. Despite
socialist hopes and expectations the "Capitalist" version won, so the whole
idea was cancelled in disgust and embarrassment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R100
Britain refused to grant landing rights for transatlantic commercial
aviation in the 1930's until able to catch up to the flying boat advances of
Pan Am. The MacRobertson Race was a telling comparison of the relative UK
and US states of aviation, driven in your part by socialist control and then
disinterest instead of technical competence which you certainly don't lack.
The Merlin engine began as a privately funded venture, the PV-12.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacRobertson_Air_Race
One of the US-built DC2 airliners was flying its regular route with paying
passengers. A DC3 is a DC2 widened for sleeping berths,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federally_funded_research_and_development_centers
The arose after WW2, an attempt to better organize and control the advanced
technical work less formally done by ad-hoc groups, such as the acoustic
homing torpedo. Managing geniuses is like herding cats.
https://archive.navalsubleague.org/1987/the-passive-acoustic-cutie
Mitre was created to understand and coordinate the integration of radar and
computers of the 1950's DEW line after MIT proved unwilling to work closely
enough with private defense contractors, because no private firm understood
both. I heard the attitude that only pure theoretical research is ethical
from some leftist college professors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distant_Early_Warning_Line
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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