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From mach-20 glider to humming bird drone - Regina Dugan

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"What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?" asks Regina Dugan, then director of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. In this breathtaking talk she describes some of the extraordinary projects -- a robotic hummingbird, a prosthetic arm controlled by thought, and, well, the internet -- that her agency has created by not worrying that they might fail. (Followed by a Q&A with TED's Chris Anderson)

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The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was established in 1958 to prevent strategic surprise from negatively impacting U.S. national security and create strategic surprise for U.S. adversaries by maintaining the technological superiority of the U.S. military.
Clemenceau was the French Navy's sixth aircraft carrier and the lead ship of her class. The development of the Clemenceau represented France's effort to produce its own class of multi-role aircraft carriers to replace the American and British ships provided at the end of World War II.In aeronautics, transonic refers to the condition of flight in which a range of velocities of airflow exist surrounding and flowing past an air vehicle or an airfoil that are concurrently below, at, and above the speed of sound in the range of 600–768 mph.The Fox News article from April 2012 details a report released from the Pentagon about what went wrong when its Hypersonic Technology Vehicle (HTV-2) failed just minutes into a test flight in 2011 and barreled into the Pacific Ocean.

Read the article from March 2013 in Discovery News about "10 Superhero Traits Tech Will Bestow." Have a look at 10 technologies that could give people the powers of their favorite superheroes.In this funny and blunt Talk at TEDxUW entitled "Why you will fail to have a great career", Larry Smith pulls no punches when he calls out the absurd excuses people invent when they fail to pursue their passions.

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  • Speaker Regina Dugan

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