The challenge of (indoor) flight comes to UND
July 29, 2012 at 1:00 am in Grand Forks Herald
Nearly 100 university students in 15 teams from around the world will be competing next week at UND to see who has the best spy drone. The challenge: design an unmanned aircraft that can fly undetected into a simulated enemy compound, and find and retrieve a small flash drive within five minutes. Continue Reading
Watch Big Brother use Drones against US citizens.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/05/28/1094024/-Droney
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The best thing about competitions like this is it shows the power of American ingenuity. We are no longer a manufacturing/blue collar economy. That sector of our economy is on life support and I doubt it will live.
On the other hand there is not a country in the world that can keep up with us in the brain department. We are not wedded to the past so we do not know that we are not supposed to be able to do something. Every time I hear a physicist explain how Einstein said it is impossible to go faster than the speed of light I laugh. It won’t happen in my lifetime but warp speed will be a reality one day.
More importantly, these kids are doing something for almost nothing that would have cost several million dollars (at least) had this same assignment been put out for RFP (request for proposal).
In WWII we were the arsenal of democracy. Defense contractors were paid cost plus 10%. Now we the tax payers pay for the R&D and still pay for every cost overrun and failed plan; plus a predetermined profit margin.
For those who dismiss the money spent on education I would point to contests like this.
Instead of asking Lockheed Martin or Boeing to design the next generation stealth fighter capable of finding one single person and killing them without being detected, I would simply put the same problem before America’s universities and give them a $1 million prize.
I bet within five years you would have a prototype in the air
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