Is War Necessary for Economic Growth?

General Purpose Technologies, International Technology Diffusion, and the Cross Section of Stock Returns

The aircraft industry was unique among modern U.S. manufacturing industries in that a government research and development organization, the National Committee on Aeronautics (NACA), was established prior to U.S. entry into World War I to conduct research on military and commercial aircraft technology and design. NACA made a series of economically important technical and scientific contributions prior to its absorption into the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) in 1958. Demand for military aircraft during the two world wars played an important role in the development of the aircraft industry and in the transition from the piston-propeller to jet aircraft propulsion system after World War II. The development of a mature commercial jet aircraft technology, epitomized by the Boeing 747 wide-bodied jet, was derivative of a series of military contacts for the design and production by Boeing of a series of military transports.

Implications of a growing spaceflight industry: Climate change

Most climate and energy scenarios created by international organizations and researchers include a considerable expansion of nuclear energy. In the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, for example, nuclear energy increases from a current 3,000 terawatt hours on average to over 6,000 terawatt hours in 2050 and to over 12,000 terawatt hours in 2100. This doubling and quadrupling of nuclear energy production by 2050 and 2100 is contradictory to the technical and economic realities: At no point have newly built nuclear energy plants ever been competitive, nor will they become so in the foreseeable future. This contradiction, referred to here as the nuclear energy scenario paradox, can be explained by a series of politico- economic, institutional, and geopolitical factors. In particular, the close relationship between the military and commercial uses of nuclear energy as well as the interest of the nuclear industry and its organizations in self-preservation play a role. The assumptions and model logic of the scenarios must be critically scrutinized. There is the risk that considerable public and private funds will be invested in developing technologies for the commercial use of nuclear energy despite the fact that other technologies are expected to offer a significantly better cost-performance ratio with fewer economic, technical, and military risks. In light of the urgency of climate change mitigation, continuing to channel personnel and financial resources into nuclear energy is problematic.

Estimates of energy supply versus consumption indicate the middle of this century as the critical point when world energy supply will no longer keep pace with the demand. The demand grows inexorably because of both the world population growth as well as the growth of average per capita energy consumption. Technological and economic progress are closely correlated with per capita energy consumption. Hence the inadequacy of energy supplies will limit the progress of human civilization, stifling its soaring spirit. Conservationism, making incremental improvements in this situation, is completely inadequate. What is needed is a giant step—the development of a new, limitless, clean source of energy—nuclear fusion energy. Nuclear fusion technology, when perfected to fusion-burn only deuterium, will have a fuel supply lasting millions of year, even with continuing energy consumption growth as in the past. Intensive efforts in five decades of Tokamak research has advanced the fusion product up by 107 times, to the point when breakeven is only a step away. The next step necessarily involves international collaboration on an unprecedented scale in ITER—the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, on which work has started in Cadarache France. ITER and later Demo are envisioned to bring online the first commercial nuclear fusion energy reactor by 2050. Using this as the starting point and the history of the uptake of nuclear fission reactors as a guide, a scenario is described here which depicts a not unreasonable rapid take up of nuclear fusion energy starting after the middle of this century. Just into the next century fusion energy should be able to take up the slack and allow Mankind to continue its progress and growth. Because the development of fusion energy is such a complex technological task it is probable that there will be several decades when the constraints of energy shortage will be severely felt as shown by the flattening of the energy consumption from around 2040 to 2100. Such a period of stagnation seems unavoidable even with the envisaged development and rapid adoption of fusion energy. On the other hand without nuclear fusion energy the scenario depicts a severe downturn unavoidably in the fortunes of Mankind with world population shrinking below 5 billion and eventually even lower.

Research Notes “THE INDUSTRIAL INSTRUMENT—MASTER OF INDUSTRY, SERVANT OF MANAGEMENT”: AUTOMATIC CONTROL IN THE PROCESS INDUSTRIES, 1900-1940 STUART BENNETT Herbert H. Dow, founder of the Dow Chemical Company, opined in 1930 that industrial development rested on three basic technical ad­ vances: “firstly the steam engine inaugurating power production,” then interchangeable parts “making possible mass production,” and third, an “advance still in its infancy, automatic operation by automatic con­ trol ofcontinuous processes.” He thought the latter occupied a position in the process industries akin to that of interchangeable parts in the assembly industries.1 From the 1890s onward, Dow sought to reduce the number of people employed in the production process. His strat­ egy was to increase plant size, use automatic analysis and automatic operation of the equipment governed by automatic analysis, and de­ velop automatically controlled and operated continuous processes. By automatic control Dow meant closed-loop feedback control, and the Dow Chemical Company developed its own electrically operated controllers during the 1920s.2 During this same period, specialist Dr. Bennett, a lecturer in the Department of Control Engineering, University of Sheffield, completed the work for this article during his tenure as a senior postdoctoral fellow at the National Museum of American History (NMAH), the Smithsonian Institution. He is grateful for financial support from the Smithsonian Institution fellowships and grants program and from the University of Sheffield, and to the NMAH Division of Engineering and Industry for providing a base from which to work. He thanks Carlene Stephens and Barney Finn, his fellowship advisers, for their support and encouragement; Carlene Stephens, Jeffrey Stine, Steven Lubar, Maureen Whitebrook , and Peter Liebhold for reading the manuscript and suggesting improvements; and Jim Roan of the museum library and the division staff for research assistance. ‘Herbert H. Dow, “Economic Trend in the Chemical Industry,” Industrial and Engineering Chemistry 22 (1930): 113-16. Dow’s views were summarized in the January 1933 issue of the Industrial Bulletin of Arthur D. Little, Inc., and an extract from this summary was quoted in an editorial entitled “Industry’s Third Horizon?” Instruments 6 (February 1933): A5. ’The Dow Chemical Company first attempted to introduce automatic control in 1894; see Dow, p. 115. It continued to develop its own controllers until the early 1930s;© 1991 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/91/3201-0005$01.00 69 70 Stuart Bennett instrument companies extended their product range from indicators and recorders to include electrically and pneumatically operated feedback controllers. These instruments were the forerunners of the pneumatic and electronic controllers that were to play a major role in automating a whole range of industries during the 1950s.3 The process industries to which Dow’s techniques for reducing labor could be applied include metals, power generation, petroleum, chemicals, food, textiles, paper and pulp, glass, ceramics, brewery and distillery, sugar, lumber, and paint and varnish. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) surveyed these industries for the period 1909—35 for a project that culminated in a report, Reemployment Opportunities and Recent Changes in Industrial Techniques. Published in 1938, this WPA report found that there was a very rapid growth, in both absolute terms and relative to other forms of machinery, in the sales of industrial instruments between 1919 and 1929.4 And although the absolute value of sales of instruments fell sharply during the Depression, instrument sales relative to sales for all machinery continued to increase, moving from approximately 0.4 percent of machinery sales in 1919 to 1.4 percent in 1935, with a peak of almost 1.6 percent in 1933. The instruments included in the survey were indicators, recorders, and automatic feedback controllers, and, by 1935, the sales were roughly one-third indicators, one-third record­ ers, and one-third controllers. There was a rapid increase in the see John J. Grebe, Ray H. Boundy, and Robert W. Cermak, “The Control of Chemical Processes,” Transactions of the American Institution of Chemical Engineers 29 (1933): 211-55. This was one of the first technical papers on industrial process control. ’To introduce automatic feedback control, three components are needed: a measur­ ing instrument to convert some physical quantity to an electrical or...

In order to have interchangeable parts in mass production, jigs and fixtures play a vital role in manufacturing process. A fixture is a special tool designed for specific purpose and specific component for operation. The present work deals with the design of machining fixture for milling and drilling operations for a Wabco body housing. The cutting forces involved in the operations are taken into consideration for designing the fixture. The present fixture designed is hydraulic operated and used for operation like face milling, drilling and boring of the body housing. Design standards are taken from Makino for designing this machining fixture. In the design process based on the geometry of the component to be machined, the machine, the table layout and corresponding clamping slot positions are then selected. Since the final component cannot be produced by a single operation, it is necessary to plan for various operations to get the final shape. The fixture is then designed by considering all the clamping forces from various cutting operations. An emphasis was also made to optimize the manufacturing cycle with respect to the original design and it was possible to successfully improve the cycle time involved in the manufacturing process while still meeting all the required standards.

The article discusses modern approaches to determining the effectiveness of investments in marketing projects related to the use of innovative technologies. The process of commercialization of innovative technologies involves the modeling of value chains, as it can transform them or form new ones. When implementing the commercialization process, it should be taken into account that the economic effect can be obtained both from the sale of innovative technology and from its consumption. However, these processes cannot be considered separately, since the transfer of innovative technology without installation, maintenance, and personnel training cannot be due to the fact that it is a combination of goods and services, and its seller is included in the consumer value chain. Therefore, economic efficiency should be presented as the effect of the functioning of a new or modified value chain. These aspects determine the perspective and limits of marketing effectiveness research during the implementation of the marketing project commercialization process. An important fact presented in the article is the impossibility of discretely determining the effectiveness of marketing communications on each subsequent stage due to the complexity of the process commercialization of innovative technology marketing project. The result of obtaining an effect on each stage are the efforts (projects, programs, actions) implemented at this stage marketing communications and undertaken on previous stage of commercialization. The effects of the commercialization of innovative technologies have a multidimensional and complex structure consisting of the effects of innovations and of the marketing of innovative technologies, and in an integrated form and create an even more complex structure of effects. It becomes the main reason for the complexity of the methods of evaluating the effectiveness of marketing during the commercialization of innovative technologies. The main thesis is that the calculation is to be able to analyze all the marketing tools used in commercialization and to have enough material, information and financial resources.

<div class="htmlview paragraph">Glass reinforced plastic molding compounds have demonstrated functional reliability with significant cost savings in certain portions of the OV-10A aircraft. New applications of these materials could form the foundation for revolutionary changes in aircraft construction. These materials, formulated of fiber reinforcements and thermosetting plastic resin binders, are currently in use in many nonstructural portions of military and commercial aircraft. Development of new higher strength reinforcing fibers and resin systems offers the promise of widespread use of die molded plastics throughout all portions of flight vehicles, including structural components.</div>

Commercial aircraft have undergone revolutionary changes in design, configuration and materials. This produces new challenges to the NDE community ranging from process controls of raw materials, to testing and fabrication of structural components, to service damage assessments. As we drive NDE up the value stream, it will become imperative to understand variousprocess parameters and their relationship to product quality. NDE may play a key role in characterizing and controlling those parameters. In production, inspection has become a critical aspect in the processing of large, unitized structures. Penetrant, radiographic, and magnetic particle techniques are less applicable while ultrasonics has taken on a critical role, earlier in the build process. NDE data are acquired over large areas at rates far faster than before, creating challenges in the time required to analyze and document the data. Qualified inspectors, equipment, and techniques are essential. In the field, eddy current and shear wave ultrasonic methods, long a mainstay of aircraft maintenance, are beginning to yield to ultrasonic techniques involving C‐scans and linear arrays. The building of new‐generation airplanes has revealed shortcomings in existing NDE technology and in some cases enhanced the case for non‐traditional methods. This paper will review Boeing's experience with NDE of advanced structures, in particular those present on the Boeing 787, and summarize the Boeing outlook for future NDE needs.

In the pursuit of decarbonization, states in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), like their developed counterparts, must ensure the realization of climate change objectives. The obligations relate to limiting greenhouse gas emissions and overall temperature increase as stipulated by the international climate change regime. Besides, the States have to ensure access to affordable and clean energy for all people as per the 2015 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Number 7. In SSA, South Africa has embraced the use of nuclear energy with many others like Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, Nigeria, Zambia and Ethiopia considering atomic power programmes. Although it does not fall within the ambits of renewable energy per se, nuclear energy is a two-sided sword tackling both the climate change concerns while addressing the access to energy challenges. This is crucial for Sub-Saharan Africa, where a significant portion of the population lacks access to modern and cleaner forms of energy. Effective regulation of the nuclear industry is vital in achieving the broader objectives of the climate change regime and meeting SSA energy needs. However, following the Chernobyl and Fukushima Daichi nuclear power accident disasters, populations are sceptical in embracing nuclear energy. Further, the utilization of nuclear energy poses questions relating to safety, environmental issues, and regulatory inadequacies, among other things. This chapter thus examines the major prospects and challenges of developing nuclear energy in the region while paying specific attention to environmental, safety and nuclear accident liability regulation under international law. Countries should incorporate these in the national legislation for achieving a productive nuclear energy industry. By comparing the SSA regime to that of the European Union (EU) with particular reference to France, ultimately, the chapter finds that for the region to reap the benefits of nuclear energy, it must put in place robust policies and regulatory measures to address the potential and resulting challenges.

CHAPTER 8 - Teachers and Technologies

One of the most important aspects of a successful space mission is the transition to the correct orbit and maintaining it. As a result, many modern orbit transfer techniques have been developed in space industry in order to accomplish this task in a more reliable and less expensive way. However, when it comes to the design of student satellites, usually there are serious limitations on the financial resources, technical database and satellite industry experts. These limitations may compromise the access to advanced methods and techniques. Therefore, reliability and expenses may no longer be the only criteria to be met in the process of design. As a result, at each step of the design, a decision should be made by the designer (student), which is not exclusively based upon system reliability and cost. The decision should also take into account criteria such as technology accessibility, implementation and integration issues, regarding the available or affordable equipment. Therefore, the process of design of a student satellite could be different from that of a commercial satellite. Furthermore, it is very likely for a team of students who try to follow standards and design criteria of industrial satellites to be disappointed after all. In some cases, students consider outsourcing parts of the design process. In this case, the creativity and innovation of the student team might be compromised by the industrialized routine procedures. Therefore, in order to achieve a genuine student design, a different approach should be adopted in the process of the design and the decision making process. This paper is the result of this approach in choosing an optimal propulsion system for a student satellite.

Industry in Taiwan inherently dominated by small and medium size enterprises mostly are engaged in OEM/ODM works, leading to the second mover approach, which is advantageous, because companies reduce their risk by entering the markets while the related technologies and manufacturing processes are in mature. Companies tend to acquire licenses from first movers, as well as purchasing, learning, and eventually imitating first mover technologies, that is reducing the costs through mass production. These approaches have helped Taiwanese companies to dominate the manufacturing value chain and achieve excellent performance for many decades. However, in the face of global competition, the increased competitors have made this approach severely being challenged because of the razor-thin profit margins. To overcome this phenomenon, a new strategies in paradigm shift for innovative value creation by extending the value chain of Taiwan beyond manufacturing has been proposed which includes extending the value chain into innovative R&D and marketing, branding, creative design, assertion of patent rights, infringement litigation and most importantly IP value creation, active participation in standards formation, effective integrating existing technologies, sensitive in market needs and adopting new business models and so on. For a long period, research organizations, especially the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), is one of the most important Taiwanese innovation system. ITRI has strongly influenced not only technical innovation policy, but also technological development, commercialization of technologies.

Since the 1960s, various methods have been used by major space agencies to measure the economic returns to space-related research and development. A number of approaches have been taken, including microeconomic analyses of specific technologies and macroeconomic modeling of long-term productivity gains. Most of these approaches have estimated very positive returns to investments in space. The problem is that these approaches have generally been carried out in an economic context, which no longer characterizes today's open economy, this calling for new ways to measure the tangible benefits in return for the considerable sums invested. The way to conceive technological transfer, R&D policies, collaborative modes, and evaluation procedures have changed in an open context. Such a context offers an opportunity to revisit and update the main methods and tools used to measure the economic, societal, and environmental benefits from space (in particular with regard to industry–government–university partnerships, user communities, collaboration within and between these communities, and so on). The wide variety of assumptions behind existing models often limits the range of results. Moreover, many controversies remain as to the interpretation of these results. In this article, we present the preliminary results of a three-year study, carried out on behalf of the Canadian Space Agency, on the state of the Canadian space sector. We focus on the limitations of the methodologies used to assess the indirect economic and societal impacts of public investment in space in an open innovation context. We present a new perspective on innovation in space in which innovation is not so much driven by spin-offs from the space industry, as it is by spin-ins from various terrestrial industries. This finding impacts strongly the way we measure indirect economic impacts and calls for new metrics. These new metrics should be helpful for governments and national space agencies to support long-term planification of public investments in the space sector, in order to protect and develop a national competitive advantage in niche markets with an emphasis in commercialization of space technologies on Earth and space applications.