CHAPTER 7
How to Take a Really Hard Problem and Make It Completely Impossible
Technological Innovation Constraints
In 1960, while conducting a spying mission for the CIA in a U2 aircraft, pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union. This incident demonstrated the immediate need for a new spy plane that could fly higher and faster and that would be less visible to radar. The CIA’s specifications for Lockheed were daunting. The new aircraft would be required to fly at more than 2,000 mph, four times faster than the U2; it would need to fly at over 90,000 feet, 20,000 feet higher; and despite being one hundred feet ...
