A reference to the Advanced Development Programs of the aerospace and defense corporation Lockheed Martin, the term “skunkworks” has some utopian tones, suggesting an unrestricted incubator. In Burbank in 1943, in around six months, Lockheed developed the first U.S. jet fighter, the P-80 Shooting Star, under a circus tent that accumulated unpleasant smells from a nearby plastics factory. The R&D technicians wisecracked that the odor matched imagined emanations from the moonshine factory Skonk Works in the comic strip Li’l Abner. The name stuck with modest permutation and became an alias for
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