- NASA’s rocket prototype could help power the space economy
- A Chinese version of ChatGPT
- Cybercrime Inc.
Dear Reader,
They bet the company on it.
And they did it believing that the next generation commercial aircraft had a limited future. Ironically, things didn’t turn out how they expected.
The Boeing 747 was the world’s first widebody commercial aircraft. It revolutionized commercial air travel by reducing the cost per seat per mile for passengers. This was achieved through scale.
The first 747 entered service in January of 1970 with PanAm, Boeing’s largest customer at that time. In fact, Boeing was largely designing the 747 to meet PanAm’s requirements of carrying at least 350 passengers and reducing flight costs by 30%. For comparison, that kind of passenger capacity was about two and a half times more than a standard Boeing 707 configuration.
More seats meant lower flight costs per passenger, which meant cheaper flights for consumers. That opened up the market to even more consumers, especially for long-haul travel.
And yet, one of the most interesting things about the 747 was that Boeing’s board of directors at the time believed that the revolutionary new aircraft had a limited future. They felt that it would meet PanAm’s short-term needs for long-haul flights, and certainly that of other airlines, but eventually be relegated to cargo flights. Back then, there was a strong belief that the real future of commercial air travel was supersonic transport.
Boeing had already conceived the Boeing 2707, a 250 seat aircraft capable of flying at Mach 2.5. But there was one problem: it didn’t exist. This is what it would have looked like if it ever went into production:
Source: Wikipedia
Basically, it was designed to be a much faster competitor to the Concorde, with more than twice the passenger capacity. But while it looked good on paper, it was a very difficult engineering problem to solve. And arguably a more critical obstacle was making the Boeing 2707 economical for commercial travel, which was nearly impossible at the time.
So the Boeing 2707 supersonic transport project was scrapped. And the 747, which Boeing originally thought would end up being primarily used for cargo transport, became one of the most successfully commercial airplanes in history.
The 747 has been in service for more than 54 years. Boeing has shipped 1,574 of them around the world. But the very last commercial 747 rolled off the production line in Everett, WA, just a few weeks ago.
Below is a picture of the last 747.
When I graduated from Purdue with my B.S. in aeronautical and astronautical engineering, it was the worst possible time in the aerospace industry. The commercial, defense, and space sectors were all experiencing upheaval. Every company was making dramatic cuts to survive. There were very few new jobs, especially for those of us that had little experience.
But I was so determined to work in the industry, I packed up my car and drove to Seattle thinking that I’d figure out the rest when I got there. I found a place to live, and then I managed to find some work as a contractor supporting what was then the emerging 777 program.
And while the work itself wasn’t that interesting, working onsite at the Boeing Everett facility was. One of my very best days was when I got to tour the manufacturing facilities of the 747, which is one of the largest buildings in the world. It was simply awesome.
While it’s sad to see the last 747 come off the line, rest assured, 747s will be in service for many years to come. And at the same time, we’ll also start to enjoy the kind of supersonic transport that Boeing envisioned so long ago.
And while I doubt it will be Boeing, new and exciting companies like Boom Supersonic will lead the way to the next generation of transportation. After that, we’ll look to enjoy hypersonic travel taking us into the upper reaches of Earth’s atmosphere, enabling trips from New York to Tokyo in less than two hours.
We have so much to look forward to.
Another exciting new rocket engine design…
Last week we talked about how NASA is reviving thermal nuclear propulsion technology. This is rocket engine tech that was originally conceived back in the 1970’s. Now it’s making a comeback.
As a reminder, thermal nuclear propulsion has the potential to be far more efficient than current rocket engine tech. It could reduce the time it takes to get to Mars from months to weeks.
Well, just a few days ago, NASA revealed that it’s also experimenting with a new kind of rocket engine design. It’s called a rotating detonation rocket engine (RDRE).
This is interesting.
As the name implies, the engine rotates when it’s in use. And the word “detonation” refers to the fact that the propellant combustion happens at supersonic speeds.
Here’s a look at the engine in testing:
Source: NASA
See the red circles emanating from the engine? The circular shape indicates that the exhaust is moving at supersonic speeds as it’s ejected from the engine.
The engine shown above is rather small. It only creates about 4,000 pounds of thrust. That’s not much as far as rocket engines go. For comparison, each of SpaceX’s Raptor engines can produce 500,000 pounds of thrust.
But this is just an early prototype.
NASA’s next step is to get the engine up to 10,000 pounds of thrust. And if that testing goes well, they can keep scaling up as needed.
Just to be clear, this design uses traditional liquid propellant – just like existing rocket engines do. So it’s not as radical of a shift as thermal nuclear propulsion. But the benefit of this new design is that it can create more power using less fuel compared to current engine designs.
For that reason, RDRE tech would be great for smaller spacecraft. It would work well to send supply vessels to outposts on the Moon and Mars regularly. It would also be great for scouting trips out to major asteroids in our solar system.
Bigger picture, NASA’s aggressive focus on new rocket engine design is telling. Clearly the organization is stepping up its level of investment in space exploration.
The goal is first to enable regular interplanetary missions. And from there we’ll see the space economy start to take shape. We’re literally at the early stages of a modern space race. And this time it isn’t just between countries, but also between private industry and government agencies like NASA that want to ensure that they remain relevant in light of such radical innovation in the private markets.
Generative AI – the input affects the output…
Baidu, China’s version of Google, has joined the race in generative artificial intelligence (AI).
Baidu just announced that it’s working on its own version of the wildly popular ChatGPT.
But there’s a nuance here…
For the sake of new readers, ChatGPT is a generative AI that can create content and have intelligent conversations with users. And it’s so functional that it could even replace search engines entirely. That’s why Google just issued a “code red” internally. The company is desperate to catch up.
So it’s no surprise that Baidu would want to come up with its own version. But Baidu’s motivations are much different than we might expect…
The Chinese government strictly controls the internet throughout mainland China. This is no surprise for a communist country. They employ what’s referred to as “The Great Firewall” to censor and block any information that runs counter to the government’s desired narrative.
As such, Chinese tech companies like Baidu must work closely with the government if they want to stay in business. And I suspect that’s what’s happening here.
It’s important to understand that chatbots like ChatGPT are only capable of producing output based on the information they are trained on. In other words, the AI’s output depends on the input.
So Baidu will train its generative AI only on information that the CCP deems acceptable. The AI would not be trained on the entire open internet, as ChatGPT was.
And that means Baidu’s generative AI will simply be used to reinforce the Chinese government’s propaganda in the country. It’s not about gaining market share or competing with the West… It’s about retaining control of the information Chinese citizens receive.
We can imagine a scenario where search engines are banned in China. This artificial intelligence would take its place. Ask it a question, and it will deliver the only state-approved answer. So much for research and exploration of ideas…
When it comes to AI, the technology itself is neutral. It learns from the body of information that it’s fed. In China’s case, that information must be consistent with the body of knowledge deemed appropriate by the government. In the case of OpenAI, we’ve already seen strong levels of bias introduced to the data sets which clearly restricts the output of ChatGPT that is not fair, balanced, or non-discriminatory. This, of course, can become a major issue in a free and democratic society.
This is perhaps the greatest challenge we’ll face over the next decade or so. We need to ensure that powerful tech like this is used mostly for good… And ideally chatbots and other forms of artificial intelligence aren’t intentionally manipulated to push certain agendas or politics. The world would benefit so much more from AIs that provide a balanced and objective view on the world’s body of knowledge.
And we need to get started on this challenge immediately. As we discussed yesterday, the Singularity is likely just years away.
Time is short.
Cybercrime is booming with opportunities…
Anti-virus giant Kaspersky just put out a great report on cybercrime.
In it, the researchers did a deep dive on the job openings that popped up on the dark web between January 2020 and June 2022. And their findings are very disconcerting…
The dark web is a hidden part of the internet. It takes special software to access. Normal web browsers can’t access it.
For this reason, the dark web is a hub for illicit activity online. It’s full of web sites, marketplaces, and believe it or not, job opportunities. Many of them in the field of cybercrime.
Get this – cybercrime drives about $1 trillion a year in economic activity. And there are shadowy corporations out there whose entire business is cybercrime.
Like any other business, those corporations need employees. And they post their job openings on the dark web. That’s what this latest research report is all about.
It turns out that there were about 200,000 jobs posted on the dark web in the thirty-month window analyzed. Some of them offered to pay as much as $20,000 per month.
The most common job opening was for software developers. These are the people who create malware that infects computers and steals information.
The second most common opening was for attack specialists. These are the people who find holes in network infrastructure that can be compromised.
These two jobs made up 75% of the openings posted during the referenced time frame. But they are just two roles in a fully developed organizational structure.
Check this out:
Source: APT Group
Here we can see the entire org chart.
There’s a manager overseeing an entire team of people. And that team consists of analysts, developers, attackers, reverse engineers, designers, testers, and even IT administrators.
We’ve talked about the prevalence of “phishing” attacks before. This is where we receive malicious emails that look legitimate.
I get these emails every day. I’m sure many readers do also. Here’s one that I just got this week:
This just hit my inbox. FedEx says I have a package waiting for me. All I need to do is click the button to schedule the delivery.
At first glance this looks pretty legitimate, right? There’s the FedEx logo at the top. And the email design is clean and logical.
This was created by a designer. As we saw in the org chart above, it’s somebody’s job to produce these fake emails all day long.
As we’ve discussed before, the temptation might be to quickly click the link. Especially if we happen to be expecting a package at the time this email finds us.
However, the first thing we should always do is double check the sender’s email address. We do this by hovering our mouse over the “From” line in our email.
In this case, this email did not come from a FedEx email address. That’s how I knew for sure that it was a phishing attempt.
So I want all readers to be aware of this kind of phishing attack.
Cybercrime has become a massive industry. There are organized corporations perpetuating these cybercrimes. And there are people out there who spend their entire careers working in the industry.
So we need to be more diligent than ever.
We should always double check the senders email address when we receive an email we’re not sure about. And we should never click any links unless we are absolutely sure who they are from… and where they go.
Regards,
Jeff Brown
Editor, The Bleeding Edge