Privately Funded

This is the Ghost:

Imagine a boat that moves through the water differently from any other boat in existence. It uses “supercavitation”—the creation of a gaseous bubble layer around the hull to reduce friction underwater—to reach very high speeds at relatively low fuel cost. Its speed and shape means it can evade detection by sonar or ship radar. It can outrun torpedoes. Its fuel efficiency means it has greater range and can run longer missions than conventional boats and helicopters.

The Navy is very interested in using it as a fast attack and patrol craft -- think PT boat on steroids. It was developed and built on a budget of $10 million, which is pennies in the modern defense industry.

By June of last year, using $5 million of mostly his own money, [Greg Sancoff and] his team had built a fully functioning prototype—Sancoff prefers the term “pre-production” vehicle. And earlier this year, he secured an additional $5 million from Avalon Ventures, the VC firm that invested in his last two companies.

After seeing firsthand what Juliet Marine built with $5 million, Kinsella [of Avalon Ventures] said, “If you were taken around by a handler from Lockheed or Grumman or Northrop or any of them, and they told you, ‘We developed this on $150 million,’ you wouldn’t bat an eye.” He told the story of a meeting with Avalon and its fund investors. Someone asked Sancoff, “How did you get to be so capital efficient in your company?” Kinsella relays, “He leaned on the podium and said, ‘Because it was my money.’”

Eisenhower warned us about enabling the military-industrial complex. A bloated, ten-fold magnification in weapons platform development costs is what we got for failing to heed his warning. A childhood friend of mine is part of the F-35 development team; you wouldn't believe what he's told me about cost overruns, all of which stem from practices a non-government-funded company wouldn't tolerate for a minute -- because they'd go out of business.

NASA, by the way, is part of the military-industrial complex, which is why building the Space Habitrail cost about a third as much as our total expenditure during World War II. To add insult to financial injury, the ISS is nearly as useful as a cheerleader in a monastery.