Real Genius/WMG: Difference between revisions

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Hathaway is just about the only person who doesn't get a happy ending. He doesn't have a house, and the government audits him for the money that was spent on the laser project (which, if you recall, he instead embezzled to fix up his house). He probably will also be brought before a board at Pacific Tech, and will lose his tenure and his job.

* Caveat: the accident investigation team taking the laser apart to try and find out why it fired off-course and then melted will find the traces of grease on the lens, which will tell them why it melted. They likely ''won't'' find the cause of the firing off-course, but since there is no hardware fault for them ''to'' find (as it was a deliberate software error introduced by the chip switching), the most probable conclusion for them to reach is the true one; that the targeting failure was a programming error. Whether or not they suspect deliberate sabotage or merely the black swan event of a thumb-fingered mechanic who didn't clean the lens after installing it happening on the same day as a major software bug, either way they will rationally conclude that there that the cause of the incident was due to mechanical fault, not inherently flawed design. And given that the dynamite laser clearly ''does'' work in one significant aspect (the laser beam actually is as powerful as advertised), the rational conclusion for DARPA to reach is that its worth at least some more money to put into future testing to try and work out the bugs.

* Caveat: the accident investigation team taking the laser apart to try and find out why it fired off-course and then melted will find the traces of grease on the lens, which will tell them why it melted. They likely ''won't'' find the cause of the firing off-course, but since there is no hardware fault for them ''to'' find (as it was a deliberate software error introduced by the chip switching), the most probable conclusion for them to reach is the true one; that the targeting failure was a programming error. Whether or not they suspect deliberate sabotage or merely the black swan event of a thumb-fingered mechanic who didn't clean the lens after installing it happening on the same day as a major software bug, either way they will rationally conclude that there that the cause of the incident was due to mechanical fault, not inherently flawed design. And given that the dynamite laser clearly ''does'' work in one significant aspect (the laser beam actually is as powerful as advertised), the rational conclusion for DARPA to reach is that its worth at least some more money to put into future testing to try and work out the bugs. After all, actually achieving a 5-megawatt chemical laser spike is the only part that required an actual theoretical breakthrough; successfully aiming the thing is merely a matter of applied engineering using already known technology.