Sentences with phrase «skunk works»

The cost - plus NASA contract, valued at $ 247.5 million, will allow the defense contractor's secretive Skunk Works division to continue development of Lockheed Martin's Quiet Supersonic Technology (or QueSST) aircraft.

Monsanto is also the financial backer of a 15 - person company called Preceres, a kind of skunk works it established just off the campus of MIT, where robotic mixers are busy stirring RNA together with coatings of specialized nanoparticles.

The Lockheed Skunk Works led by Kelly Johnson was responsible for its Advanced Development Projects — everything from the P - 80, the first U.S. jet fighter plane, to the U-2 and A-12 spy planes.

Developed in the company's secretive Skunk Works division, SPIDER (Self - Propelled Instrument for Damage Evaluation and Repair) solves a big challenge faced by the airship industry: pinholes.

Pericak, Nair, design chief Moray Callum, and a small, modern Skunk Works team of sworn - to - secrecy members set about to create a blank - sheet, mid-engine design.

Lockheed Martin Skunk Works is developing a compact fusion reactor small enough to fit in a truck and would generate enough electricity to power 80,000 homes.

And somehow those meetings lead to partnering with a 25 - year veteran of the CIA's Director of Operations, a Lockheed Martin Program Director for Advanced Systems at Skunk Works, and a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence to start a company to explore «exotic science and technologies» and turn innovative ideas into world - changing products and services.

With the vantage point of the 21st century, we can now see that a successful skunk works — separated from its corporate parent, with its own culture, in control of its own R&D and distribution channel — looked much like a startup.

In the 20th century corporate skunk works ® were used to develop disruptive innovation separate from the rest of the company.

But as successful as skunks works were to the companies that executed them well, innovation and execution couldn't co-exist in the same corporate structure.

Decades before we were able to articulate the value of «getting out of the building» and the Lean Startup, the value in having skunk works controlling their own distribution was starkly evident.

By the middle of the 21st century the only companies with skunk works will be the ones that have failed to master continuous innovation.

said Robert Boyd, a program manager at Lockheed's Skunk Works unit, devoted to advanced aircraft technologies.

Much of the work on next - generation UAVs is happening inside Lockheed Martin's legendary Skunk Works, where legendary spy planes the SR - 71 and the U-2 were created.

Its in - house Skunk Works team, formerly called (no joke) Team «Badonka Donk» but now known as «The Kitchen,» is a sub-group of five engineers who are tasked with high - concept thinking and spaghetti - on - the - wall ideation.

The outer half shines light on the airship surface, while the inner half detects pinholes using light sensors from inside the dark envelope, according to Cheryl Limas, Skunk Works software engineer.

«We created SPIDER to allow for inspection of the envelope in parallel with final assembly and maintenance actions,» Skunk Works mechanical engineer Ben Szpak said in the video below.

2006: Tesla Motors announces that it will produce an electric sports car, spurring GM vice chairman Bob Lutz to emphatically bless skunk works to cobble together Volt prototypes.

When development of the LFA started in the Toyota skunk works some nine years ago, the idea was to create a new high - end aluminum - spaceframe sports car that would feature a V - 8 or a V - 10 and, most likely, a dual - clutch transmission.

A nondescript building behind a Wellesbourne Sainsbury supermarket contains Q Advanced Operations, a top - secret skunk works where Vulcan was born and which will produce, per CEO Andy Palmer's instruction, similarly bonkers low - volume projects at the rate of around one per year.

Fortunately, longtime speed merchant John Hennessey recognized the Caddy's noodle - armed feebleness and resolved to do something about it, creating the V700 package at his Texas skunk works.

Michael Kranefuss, head of the new Special Vehicle Operations skunk works, imports a turbocharged Zakspeed Capri sedan racer from Germany and reskins it as a Mustang.

One particular avenue of development being heavily pursued by Mercedes - Benz's fast - car skunk works is the individual apportioning of torque to each wheel; the process allows AMG to more finely tune the handling of its new supercar than with a typical fixed apportioning of torque.

Sony has secretly been building their own skunk works department in Japan.

P.S. I also love the term Skunk Works.

No, man, not sure who your source was but my source, deep within Amazon Skunk Works, says the next Kindle will be going in the opposite direction... it's about the size of a deck of cards and half the thickness.

EEStor Capacitors - «This could change everything»: EEStor Ultra Capacitors: The Science Explained EEstor Update: People Are Losing Faith EEStor + Skunk Works = Big News

Episode 2 of our Inside Skunk Works podcast is available now.

Airships «give you access and much larger payloads at much lower costs,» said Peter DeRobertis, project leader for commercial hybrid air vehicles at Lockheed Martin's Aeronautics and Skunk Works division in Fort Worth, Texas.

Skunk Works ® is a registered trademark of Lockheed Martin Corporation.

«We call that the giggle factor — when you talk about a flying car, you have to kind of smile a little bit,» said Kevin Renshaw, another program manager at Lockheed Skunk Works.

The way they did so was to set up «skunk works» to develop their most advanced, disruptive products.

Skunk works will be the signposts of companies that will be left behind.

The defense contractor's Skunk Works division will continue development from a preliminary agency contract awarded in 2016.

«We see a whole commercial side to this as well,» said Kevin Lewelling, manager of the Skunk Works» Rapid Operations Programs.

To overcome that challenge, you have to give people the opportunity to participate in what's called «skunk works.»

After getting his doctorate and his U.S. citizenship, he settled into the «skunk works,» a busy, messy laboratory at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., where he often spends weekends tinkering with experimental devices.

But a series of smaller, challenging projects — perhaps modeled after prize competitions for developing «disruptive» technologies, or Lockheed Martin's famed «Skunk Works» facility that pioneered futuristic spy planes and supersonic aircraft — could help build esprit de corps, he says.

Steve Justice, TTSA's aerospace division director and former Lockheed Martin engineer who worked on advanced top secret aircraft for the latter company's storied «Skunk Works» division, speculates that in both cases such incredible feats of flight could be due to the objects possessing some sort of warp drive.

Hidden away in the secret depths of the Skunk Works, a Lockheed Martin research team has been working quietly on a nuclear energy concept they believe has the potential to meet, if not eventually decrease, the world's insatiable demand for power.

The strong smells that made their way into the make shift domicile made the Lockheed R&D workers think of the foul - smelling «Skunk Works» factory in Al Capp's Li» l Abner comic strip.

Governor Snyder's secret «Skunk Works» group was an unintended peek into the money grab voucher advocates and others are attempting by privatizing the public schools.

Designs were rejected, the project rebooted and placed in the hands of so - called «Skunks,» a reminder of Lockheed Martin's seven decades of behind - the - scenes toil in its Skunk Works.

As a reminder, SVO stands for Special Vehicle Operation, which is Jag's skunk works division.