Day 1 Closing Keynote: Skunk Works
summary
Skunk Works delivers concrete wins: a P-80 prototype from metal to flight in 143 days, the U-2 reaching 70,000 feet with wafer-thin wings and bicycle landing gear, the A-12/A-12-derived SR-71 hitting Mach 3.25 and record altitudes, and stealth prototypes validated by radar tests down to a 1/8-inch ball bearing. Solutions include titanium airframes sourced via covert supply chains, Triethylborane ignition and a Buick V-8 start cart, small teams (dozens, not thousands), rapid prototyping, and prototypes that sometimes crash.
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chapters (24)
- 0:00Start
- 0:20How To Crash an Airplane
- 2:14Sr-71 Blackbird
- 3:56Clarence Kelly Johnson
- 4:27P-38 Lightning
- 8:44Winston Churchill Fdr and Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference
- 10:38F-104 Starfighter
- 12:53Internal Wing Structure of the U2
- 17:11Lockheed A-12
- 20:38Engine Nozzles
- 28:57Sr-71 Was Kelly Johnson's Crowning Achievement
- 29:54The Cold War
- 31:00The Method of Edged Waves in the Physical Theory of Diffraction
- 31:34Calculating the Radar Cross-Section of the Edge
- 33:22Design of a Theoretical Stealth Aircraft
- 36:29The Only Plane That They Had Deployed that Was Unstable in any Access of Access of Flight Was the F-16 and It Was Only Pitch Unstable It Didn't Have To Contend with all Three so They Set the Flight Computer Up To Determine What Inputs They Needed To Send to the Control Surfaces To Make this Thing Fly and They Would Take the Pilots Input and Summit with the Things That the Computer Knew that It Needed To Do and that Would Be What Went to the Control Surfaces
- 37:05Most Test Flights Were at Night To Avoid Prying Eyes so this Is One of the Few Pictures We Have of this Plane in the Air That's Why It's Such a Terrible Picture but Now that It Could Fly They Needed To See if It Could Live Up to the Promise of Stealthiness and So They Flew It against this the Target Acquisition Radar from a Hot Missile Battery the Most Advanced Radar Technology That the Us Had at the Time the Plane Literally over Flew this Radar Right over Top Radar Never Picked It Up the Missiles Never Swung into Alignment They Just Pointed Lazily at the Mountains Off in the Distance
- 39:05So that's Why this Thing Is Made Up of a Bunch of Angular Flat Surfaces It Had Nothing To Do with the Design of the Plane That Shouldn't Have the They Didn't Have the Computers To Design Stealthy Curved Surfaces so They Just Built a Plane That Was all Straight Surfaces Kelly Johnson Had a Long-Standing Saying that Beautiful Planes Fly Beautifully and Nobody at Skunk Works Thought this Was a Beautiful Plane but It Didn't Matter It Didn't Matter that It Wasn't a Beautiful Plane It Did Exactly What It Was Designed To Do
- 40:58The First One Is that the Number of People Having any Connection with the Project Must Be Restricted in an Almost Vicious Manner Use a Small Number of Good People 10 to 25 % Compared to the So Called Normal Systems at Its Peak There Were 75 Design Engineers Working on the Sr-71 To Give You some Context for that Boeing Used 10 , 000 Engineers To Build the Triple7 and Boeing Had the Advantage of Computer Assisted Design Software Lockheed Was Still Doing All Their Drawings by Hand at that Point Kelly Johnson Hired Smart People into His Organization and He Trusted Them To Do Good Work but Lots of Companies Run Their Software Engineering Organizations like Henry Ford Rayna's Assembly Lines They Measure all of the Work the Way That Henry Ford Measured
- 44:23It's Probably the Same Thing That We Did We Went Out and Spent a Thousand Bucks on Your License and Spent the Better Part of a Week Getting It Stood Up on a Vps so We Could Track Our Work Now Keep in Mind It Was Two of Us and We Had One Client at the Time We Didn't Last Very Long You Need Enough Process so that Everyone Has the Context They Need but Not So Much that People Turn Off Their Brains and Blindly Do What They'Re Told Your Process Is There To Serve
- 44:41You Need Enough Process so that Everyone Has the Context They Need but Not So Much that People Turn Off Their Brains and Blindly Do What They'Re Told Your Process Is There To Serve You Not the Other Way around this Is What Kelly Johnson Got So Right He Couldn't Have Delivered All this Innovation on His Own It Wasn't in His Brain but the Processes He Put in Place Allowed His Teams To Set the Right Priorities and Make the Right Compromises at the Right Point in Time When They Made Decisions His Most Important Rule Was that There Shall Be Only One Object To Get a Good Airplane Built on Time What Made a Good Airplane Delivered the Value the Customer Need Hit the Key Specs
- 45:10His Most Important Rule Was that There Shall Be Only One Object To Get a Good Airplane Built on Time What Made a Good Airplane Delivered the Value the Customer Need Hit the Key Specs and Compromise Wherever Necessary To Hit those Key Specs He Was a Pragmatist every Decision He and His Team Made Was around How To Deliver the Most Value in the Shortest Amount of Time for the Customer while Bringing Out the Best in His Team because of the Freedom and the Trust that He Gave His Team So because of How Clearly He Laid Out the Goals for each Project They Were Able To Deliver some of the Most Amazing Planes Ever Built the U2 Landed on Terrible Landing Gear Pilots
- 46:11The Team Spent Their Time Figuring Out How To Do the Important Things How To Build a Plane out of Titanium How To Make It Go Mach 3 25 and They Hacked Their Way around the Other Stuff the F-117 Violates every Law of Aerodynamic Design and They Worked around It To Make It Invisible on Radar It Bucks Conventional Wisdom in Almost every Way Possible because of the Trust That Ben Rich Put in Denis Overholser Kelly's and Laters Ben's Teams Had Unprecedented Input into What They Were Building They Had Incredible Freedom and Incredible Trust from Their Bosses You Should Push for that Freedom in Your Job if You Don't Already Have It the Process That You Follow Should Be the Right Size for Your Team
- 46:41They Had Incredible Freedom and Incredible Trust from Their Bosses You Should Push for that Freedom in Your Job if You Don't Already Have It the Process That You Follow Should Be the Right Size for Your Team and You Should Know the Most Important Things about What You'Re Building You Should Know the Goals so that You Can Contribute to Your Project Success beyond Just Writing Code That's Not the Case for You Push Back Hard Change It if You'Re in a Leadership Role You Have a Responsibility To Give that Freedom to Your Team
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