Chapter 156: He’s The Highest-flying Bird!
The experts and engineers present looked at each other in bewilderment, because Lin Ran hit their core problem right away.
Lin Ran thought to himself, piece of cake; if you could solve these problems, there wouldn’t be GPS later on.
However, Kshona’s embarrassed expression still surprised Lin Ran a bit: “Did I say something wrong?”
Kshona replied: “No no no, Professor, you’re absolutely right.
We haven’t progressed to that step yet.”
“Professor, you’re overestimating our progress.” Kshona swallowed.
Rui, standing nearby, added:
“Transit 5A-1 in 1962 failed to achieve navigation function due to power system failure.
Transit 5A-2 in 1963 launch failed and failed to achieve orbit insertion.
Transit 5A-3, launched this month, couldn’t be used for navigation due to memory failure during launch and decreased oscillator stability.
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Professor, what you mentioned are just theoretical problems; we haven’t succeeded even once.”
Hard to hold back laughter.
Top-tier hard to hold back laughter.
Lin Ran knew about this, but he really wasn’t clear on these details.
Lin Ran suddenly realized: so you only have failures, no success experience; no wonder you came to find me.
“Truly pitiful.” Lin Ran said flatly.
Originally thought the professor would go on mic and say you are all trash.
Before coming, the experts and engineers from Hopkins had already prepared themselves.
Not to mention them, even Jack Rui had prepared.
Jack Rui even comforted them: “No one at NASA hasn’t been scolded by the professor; you have to get used to the professor’s working style.
But the benefit is that the professor can bring you victory after victory.”
They believed the former, and they believed the latter too.
After all, these all had evidence.
In the past, they and NASA big brother, no second brother, failed together, advanced together in failure.
Now NASA has taken off, and their 5A-3 last month failed again.
They really couldn’t hold back anymore.
Before, they were all struggling together, difficult brothers who suffered together; as a result, not to mention NASA has taken off, even Georgetown’s translation machine project on the verge of death could turn decay into magic in the professor’s hands, transforming into a symbol of America technology.
And packaged as Technology Ark into the future world.
This made Johns Hopkins unable to tolerate it: you Georgetown, what stinking fish and rotten shrimp, isn’t it just because the professor is guiding you?
So everyone was truly convinced; before coming, they had prepared to be scolded.
Inner construction was already complete.
They also had very high expectations for Lin Ran.
Because essentially aerospace is Lin Ran’s old profession, and their project is highly dependent on progress in mathematics.
Head Kshona is a PhD in Mathematics Department, pure mathematics PhD, who switched midway to missile research and rocket technology research.
Fellow pure mathematics Brahmin, what’s wrong with asking the professor for help?
Besides, everyone gets scolded, which means I don’t get scolded.
All on mic is much better than being singled out and blasted.
As a result, Lin Ran’s faint “truly pitiful” really broke everyone’s defense.
Most of the experts present instantly flushed red in the face.
Kshona hurriedly explained: “Professor, what Director Rui said earlier wasn’t complete.
We do have successful projects.
Like Transit 5A-1, although there was a power failure, which prevented navigation function verification.
But we successfully verified solar sail deployment and rocket separation technology.
For 5A-3, we improved the power system, successfully entered polar orbit, and maintained attitude stabilization throughout via gravity gradient.”
Kshona was getting anxious.
Lin Ran lifted his eyelids coldly: “What about 5A-2? You skipped 2.”
Kshona muttered: “Launch failed.
But that wasn’t our fault; it was the rocket’s problem!”
Kshona’s voice gradually grew louder.
“I remember NASA doesn’t have such a launch project.” Lin Ran pondered.
Rui hurriedly stepped in to smooth things over: “That’s not important.
Anyway, its launch failure was the rocket’s problem.”
Lin Ran shook his head: “No, this is very important; if NASA had such a rocket failure, that would be my work mistake.
But as far as I recall, NASA hasn’t had a rocket launch failure this year.”
Rui signaled to Kshona; Kshona inwardly grumbled: yes, it’s the Air Force’s problem.
Then said: “Because Transit is a highly secretive project.
So its rocket launch was overall managed by the Air Force.
Transit 5A-2 satellite’s launch used the Thor-Ablestar rocket, manufactured by Douglas Airplane Company.
Coordinated by the Air Force’s ballistic missile division for rocket testing and development.
Navy Research Office is the final user of the Transit system.
It’s unrelated to NASA.”
Lin Ran tsked, “No wonder.”
Although he didn’t say the word, the engineers present all thought inwardly: trash.
The thought that immediately surged was: even if the rocket has problems, we’re trash, right?
“Anyway, Transit has indeed had many problems in the past, so we hope Professor you can provide us some help.” Jack Rui said mildly.
Anywhere else, ARPA is the boss, holding several billion US Dollars in budget, giving to whomever they want; can’t be arrogant here.
“I understand.
But I still find it funny.
Professor Kshona’s earlier rebuttal was like saying, we’re going to send people to the Moon.
First time, we sent the rocket to the sky, though it exploded in the air.
Second time, we did send it to the Moon, but hard landing, spaceship and astronaut both destroyed.
Third time, successfully landed, but couldn’t bring it back.
Would you call that success? Half success, but is such success acceptable?
Obviously not.
The Transit project now gives me the feeling that it succeeds in all the minor details.
But on the core navigation function, it hasn’t tested even once whether your design effect works.
Don’t you think that’s a big problem?” Lin Ran said.
Everyone present felt ashamed.
Because it was exactly as Lin Ran said: this navigation system, from design to now, hasn’t undergone a single test.
The problem Lin Ran pointed out was just theoretical.
Whether it’s actually like that in reality, whether it would take even longer than the fifteen minutes Lin Ran mentioned.
No one knows.
After all, the gap between theory and reality could be negligible or worlds apart.
“Professor, you’re right; we have indeed been failing in the past.
So do you have any good suggestions for us?” Jack Rui broke the silence in the meeting room.
Lin Ran nodded: “Of course, did you forget my slogan?”
The experts present looked at each other, then said in unison: “My life has no failure.”
Lin Ran smiled: “Exactly, looks like everyone is very familiar with me.”
Unfamiliar would be weird.
“So the first thing we need to do is”
Lin Ran drew out his voice, fully arousing everyone’s curiosity.
“Rename.”
Rename?
“Professor, what do you mean by rename?” Kshona asked puzzled; he thought there might be some deep meaning he hadn’t grasped.
Lin Ran said matter-of-factly: “Just like you think.
Change the name first.
Haven’t you noticed that everything called 5A has never succeeded?
Change the name first, to 5B.
Subsequent ones all called Transit 5B series.
Like 5B-1, 5B-2.
A project needs a good start; since you didn’t have a good start before, let’s have a good start from now on.”
Now everyone looked at each other: does this metaphysics really work?
Of course some believed.
Although feng shui isn’t prominent overseas at this time, abroad has its own superstitions.
“Alright, Professor.” Jack Rui broke the silence.
Lin Ran continued: “First have a good start.
Then we’ll talk about optimizations on other levels.
Let’s talk technical first.
I guess your principle is based on Doppler Effect.
Satellite runs on known orbit, broadcasts fixed frequency radio signals, probably 150MHz and 400MHz dual-frequency signals to correct ionospheric refraction.
Ground receiver measures the Doppler frequency shift between received signal frequency and satellite transmitted frequency.
Frequency shift caused by satellite’s radial velocity relative to receiver, manifesting as frequency increase (blue shift) when approaching, frequency decrease (red shift) when receding.
By recording the frequency shift curve during the satellite’s complete pass from horizon to horizon, the receiver can infer its geometric position relative to the satellite orbit.
Combined with known orbital parameters, it can calculate the receiver’s two-dimensional position.”
Lin Ran summed up their design in just a few words.
Lin Ran continued:
“Receiver records Doppler frequency shift changes over time, forming a Doppler curve.
The curve’s shape and key points contain position information.
Receiver transmits frequency shift data to dedicated computer on Navy ships, then these computers use least squares method to fit the Doppler curve and calculate receiver position.
Each pass provides a position estimate; multiple passes improve precision.
From the principle level, do you feel any problems?”
“Too complex?” an expert said weakly.
Everyone else admired his courage.
After all, answering wrong would mean being singled out and called trash.
“Exactly, too complex.
I won’t even talk about how long the computer takes to compute, or whether ionosphere and multipath effects’ noise will prevent your system from achieving theoretical signal processing ability.
You can’t even solve oscillator stability.
Oscillator affected by temperature and aging, easily causes frequency drift, which in turn affects your frequency shift measurement precision.
Shouldn’t this part be improved?
Shouldn’t the oscillator itself reduce temperature influence?
Shouldn’t there be redundant oscillators on the satellite, periodic calibration to reduce drift?
Including receiver using ground reference station’s reference signal, periodically sending signals to calibrate its deviation?”
After Lin Ran finished, brief silence, then the meeting room erupted in applause.
“Professor is indeed professor.” Jack Rui said, which was also the other experts’ heartfelt words.
“We considered this problem; our ideas were temperature compensation crystal oscillator and constant temperature crystal oscillator these two proposals to solve it.” Jack Rui continued.
Jack Rui is a MIT Electrical Engineering PhD, ARPA’s first technical bureaucrat, so very knowledgeable on technical details.
After hearing the first solution, not to mention other experts, even Jack Rui was convinced.
Otherwise, why could others get 68,000 US Dollars part-time, while he full-time as director only gets 18,000.
That extra 50,000 US Dollars is the value.
Transit project started in 1958, now 1963 after twists and turns, five years passed, spent so much manpower and resources to come up with the solution.
He didn’t even look at the information, just listened to your introduction, broke down the principle, and for just the oscillator gave one two three solutions.
They spent five years to think of one.
What is gap?
This is the gap.
These experts who hadn’t dealt with Lin Ran before finally understood why NASA’s colleagues stopped making trouble.
The gap is there; no capital to make trouble.
“Alright, next let’s talk the second optimization point.” Lin Ran signaled everyone to calm down.
“There’s more?” the thought flashed in everyone’s minds.
“Didn’t I mention noise earlier?
Need to develop more robust signal filtering technology; you can consider Kalman filter to remove noise from multipath effects.
Also, the least squares algorithm needs optimization, though I haven’t seen how your algorithm is designed.
But I’m sure your algorithm has optimization space.
Reduce computation, adapt to current computer computing ability.
Simplest one: use piecewise linearization to simplify non-linear fitting.
Finally, receiver hardware can use narrower bandwidth filters to increase anti-interference capability.”
Kshona was taking notes.
Other experts, upon hearing content related to them, also took notes.
“Professor.” Kshona was fully convinced; he even thought if he were Lin Ran, he’d spray from start to end.
The professor only said trash once, actually too gentle, Kshona thought.
“You mentioned ionosphere and multipath effects both cause noise.
But your solutions only included for multipath; is there a way to eliminate ionosphere influence?” Kshona continued.
Lin Ran said matter-of-factly: “Of course.
The problem is current hardware can’t do it.
Can add third frequency signal to improve correction precision.
Or develop more precise ionosphere model, deploy ionosphere detectors on ground, combine real-time ionosphere observation data to calibrate ionosphere signal.
But both will make the whole system more complex.
Higher requirements for computing equipment.
I think we first get the most basic navigation system done, then talk others.”
Three days later, Jack Rui returned to Washington.
ARPA’s workplace is in the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia.
It wasn’t until 2009 that ARPA separated from the Pentagon and got its own office building.
“How was it?” McNamara asked with a full face of smiles.
It was he who pushed internally against opposition to convince Navy and Air Force to let Lin Ran participate in Transit project.
Jack Rui raised his coffee cup to clink with McNamara and said: “Stunning!
The suggestions Professor gave in one day are more complete than Transit project team’s three years of design proposals, more feasible, and even more feasible.
Honestly, if Transit’s funds weren’t mainly from Navy and Air Force, I’d want to transfer Transit to NASA and let NASA take charge.”
McNamara laughed: “During Babylon, didn’t you witness the professor’s power?
You know, this world has very very many geniuses.
In the field of mathematics, geniuses are the least lacking.
I was a genius in our small town growing up; no one could beat me in mathematics.
But when I went to Berkeley, why did I study economics instead of my favorite mathematics? Because in math major I was no longer first; I couldn’t even enter top five.
In mathematics field, problems I had to think half a day to understand, others could get intuitively.
Your effort can’t even match others’ intuition; how despairing.
Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, Princeton etc., top-tier students from each university Mathematics Department, after entering academia, still have rankings among them.
The professor’s frog and birds metaphor is too apt.
You know this metaphor, right?” McNamara’s face was full of emotion.
Jack Rui nodded: “Yes, frog buries head in earth deeply drilling one problem, birds overlook earth, finding direction for frog.”
McNamara took a sip of coffee and nodded: “Exactly.
But who would want to be frog if they could be bird?
Among so many bird-type mathematicians, professor is absolutely top batch.
Do you know how stunning the Randolph Program is?
He almost saw the full picture of mathematics.
In this era when theoretical mathematics is increasingly abstract, how hard that is.
Simply put, professor is the bird that flies highest.
In mathematics he can grasp essence. Same in other fields.
Grasping essence is never easy.
Yet mathematics can help you grasp essence.
I just retired from the military; Ford II was also Navy soldier retired; he wanted to change Ford’s chaos, so hired the entire ten-man team including me.
Hoped we could use modern management and control theory to help the company rejuvenate.
At that time Ford’s employees didn’t accept us, called us ‘Quiz Kids’.
I changed Quiz Kids to Whiz Kids.”
Quiz Kids
Whiz Kids
Only changed two letters.
“So when professor said I can only bring you success, that resonates with me; I did the same in the past.
To make them sincerely convinced, just grasping essence isn’t enough; you also need to bring them success.
I then introduced computers, used computers to build models to find most effective, rational means of production, leading to great rationalization; I named it Scientific Management.
Used spreadsheets to show car industry trends; later my management style was widely imitated by executives in other companies, other industries.
Discover problems and force organization to change, usually against their will; especially making them think deeply and realistically about alternative schemes is harder.
But data doesn’t lie; data can make opposing voices disappear. Even if opposing voices exist, they won’t appear before you, won’t be your resistance.
This is the power of grasping essence.
Professor can grasp essence; I knew that from day one.
And professor keeps succeeding; that’s even better.
Professor’s amazing intuition for things’ essence is only stronger than mine; he’s the bird that flies highest!”
Lin Ran being pure mathematics Brahmin is one reason; Lin Ran’s management style and background having so many similarities is another reason McNamara values him.
Jack Rui pondered after listening.
“Minister, have you heard the rumor about professor and Soviet Union?” Jack Rui said.
“Of course I’ve heard, but impossible, absolutely impossible.
If professor were related to Soviet Union, how could Soviet Union tolerate such talent working for America?” McNamara didn’t believe at all.
“Professor, hope you can help with something.” John Morgan, after long appointment, finally met Lin Ran.
Morgan family is envious.
Envious of IBM’s recent popularity.
Though they don’t think Technological Singularity is that easy, they envy the huge profits now.
Whether stock market huge profits or massive orders from Department of Defense, enough to make Morgan family envious.
Current America hasn’t completed shift from industrial capital to financial capital.
Bretton Woods Agreement not yet destroyed; US Dollar and gold still strongly bound.
Finance important, but just supplement; real industry still has non-negligible status.
Especially General Electric that Morgan family rose on.
General Electric also does computers.
But General does small-scale computers, mainly spreadsheet processing.
Unlike IBM which does large-scale computer, small-scale computer, all computers.
“What help?”
“General has spun off computer business, newly established General Computer Company.
Because General Aerospace has always dealt with NASA and Department of Defense.”
Originally General Aerospace had some military business, mainly airplane electronic systems; after acquiring Glenn Martin, business richer, including engine.
“So family put General Computer under me.
I was thinking, can the user end of Transit project be handled by General Computer?”
Morgan smelled the scent and came.
Transit system computers mainly two types: ground station computers for orbital parameters calculation and data processing; user end computers, i.e., navigation computers on ships.
With Morgan family’s strength in Navy, getting this news is effortless.
“I’m just consultant.”
“No, Professor, you can decide this order.
We definitely can’t compete with IBM for ground station computers.
After all IBM’s large-scale computers are much stronger; General Computer’s large-scale computer still in research and development.
But small-scale computers on ships, General is not weaker than IBM or other manufacturers.
When the balance is even, Professor your attitude is enough to change everything.”
John Morgan’s eyes eager; General Aerospace’s success fully awakened his ambition.
John Morgan hopes to turn these two companies under him into new General Electric.
“What do I get?” Lin Ran asked.
em simply asking for monthly ticket
