Thornton also walked away from Lincoln Lab with two significant hires: Erik Limpaecher, who was a senior technical staff at the lab’s energy systems group, and who had been with the center for nearly 12 years; and Mark Donahue, a former program manager for control and autonomous systems, who departed the lab after 15 years. Limpaecher is now Mach’s chief innovation officer, while Donahue was installed as VP of engineering.

This is like those stories of the newly minted commissioned officer given his first command.

Which is of course as it should be. The incumbent whig priesthood has never liked it though; wonders of techne need to come from their conclaves of bishops (peer review) or else it can’t come from anywhere at all; and every time it does puts the Story of Progress that they tell about themselves to justify themselves to lie; so they’ve always rode herd over every nascent upswelling of techpriests, even if their lives depend on it (like their upcoming defeat in Malorussia).

Yes. And it’s worse for him if he is honest, as he’ll discover.

Of course it would recommend itself for a whole host of logistical issues – not just in supply, but in the design of vehicles and weapon systems themselves – yet normality bias is like a force of nature, and so often radical departures like this simply don’t happen on a systemic level unless or until a man with kingly sentiments drags his vassals along and simply makes it happens.

The boy is getting with the program! No need to hurry. China will wait to attack until we are ready — and our investors have been well-paid.

This does seem like a smart guy taking advantage of VC investors with money to waste. Use a more difficult, less effective fuel like hydrogen, and convert from a highly-targeted system to a dumb low-accuracy bullet — but it will be ready in 12 years. Promise!