The Economy of Hypersonia
The journey to a hyper speed world is about generating economic benefits. The destination or place itself – Hyperspacia is an economic geography. The businesses, companies, innovations, technologies, and services created bring growth, jobs, health, productivity, and wealth.
The abundance benefits all, but the scale and scope of derivation is determined by the levels of individual contributions. When the tide of Hypersonia lifts, it is about how respectively big the boats or ships are. According to Archimedes, buoyancy is the volume of water displaced by a vessel is directly proportional to the mass of the object riding atop it.
Therefore, the benefits that high-speed air flights bring to individuals and organisations, are determined by their respective contributions in the forms of finance, intellectual, talent, and time. These intangible resources are the creativity, entrepreneurship, leadership, and organisation that go into making services and technologies.
The political economy has entrepreneurs, engineers and innovators doing and making within companies contributing to the national economic pie. And relating with places and their governments and agencies, conversing with their fellow-creators, and exploiting and exploring industries to find solutions to economic and social problems.
Both national and global economies expand and grow in this transformation. Archimedes is credited with this dictum – ‘give me a lever and I will move the world’. The pole of stratospheric earthbound point-to-point hyper speed flights. To understand the lifting Hypersonia brings, is understanding how the introduction of Boeing 747 transformed national and global economies and trade.
Hypersonia is this pivot lifting individuals, organisations, and economies out of the darkness and doldrum of stagnation and stench. To creating a new world of abundance and advancement. Of surplus and surprise.
Transition
The transitioning to creating hypersonic technologies powered by scramjet-centred composite engines, creates socioeconomic transformation. The Moonshot is perceived as more successful than the Stratoshot because it created tangible space-faring missiles & vehicles powered by solid and liquid propellant-engines. The latter created more of intangible sciences of hypersonic materials, tools, and systems.
Hypersonia makes the economic pie to grow better and bigger. The new economy beckons.
Scramjetry is airbreathing engines having various composites of jet and rocket technologies for powering earthbound point-to-point flights. This, instead of rocketry powers the emerging economy. Rockets only power limited far and few in between space travels and occasionally used weapons. Hence, its circumscribed and limited imports on local, national, and global economies.
Hypersonia is Scramjetry-driven. Its impacts and ramifications deeper and far-reaching than the extant. As a pervasive technology, criss-crossing cities, nations, and continents, carrying people and goods, it touches every live, industry, organisation, and system. The benefits are quantifiable, but the qualities are more appreciated by the betterment it brings.
Earth-bound and space-bound hypersonics are converging in the US, as elsewhere. The dynamics of a transition affects companies and economies creating a cycle of boom and bust.
Dynamics
The image of a hypersonic aircraft in the Technicolor-themed headline picture of the last essay, speaks volume. Showing a hypersonic aircraft design – The Star Raker by Rockwell International, even in an era when high definition photography was nascent. Both the craft and the company were pioneers and boundary-pushers, and yet the former was not built. And the maker – the creator of the ground-breaking B1 Lancer bomber and the Space Shuttle, no more.
These absences call for an inquiry. To unravel the mystery of how an innovation emerges, but fails to stick. The dynamics of the economics and sociology of a company within a national innovation ecosystem. Its internal dynamics interacting with external drivers, diversions, and divergences.
The picture speaks above the intents of humans on the direction and depth of technology development. Today, there are both digital and analog cameras capable of taking even ultra-high definition pictures with unprecedented clarity and lucidity. The deliberate focus on digitisation, photoluminescence, optoelectronics and others by entrepreneurs and innovators, pushes in this direction. To the extent that today, we can vividly visualise nanoscale viruses, and see further into space. There is now a multi-million pixelated digital camera.
A similar intentional focus on Scramjetry was lacking. And hypersonic horizontal take-off and horizontal landing craft i.e. Star Raker, was unbuilt. Intentionality is key. When missing, progress and success are short-changed. Advancements in jet engine and even rocket engine innovations starting from after the 2nd World War to this day, came from intentional focus. The same that is giving the world digitised benefits is needed for Hypersonia.
To start with, Star-Raker[1] emerged as the same time as Convair’s scramjet-powered hypersonic aircraft design. And both preceded the Stratoshot. And yet none of the designs got a mention in the multibillion programme. The reasons are discussed earlier in the series. The dynamics of the actions and events prior to the Shot were informative as well.
The trajectory of the aerospace industry in the US and around the world was shaped by the Cold War and by the process and products of the Moonshot. With the US as the focus, concurrent and subsequent programmes were likewise shaped. The Supersonic Transport (SST) programme is an example, even though it must be noted that hypersonics is different from supersonics.
The SST was led by NASA for civilian flights. The main contractors were Boeing, Rockwell, and Lockheed. Without dwelling on the nitty gritty of the programme, the Star Raker (SR) came out as an offshoot. Even though it is capable of Mach 6+ turboramjet-powered stratospheric flight, it was also designed as a single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) vehicle. The cancellation by President Nixon in favour of the rocket-powered Space Shuttle shaped both the trajectories of both the SR and Rockwell. And of the other companies involved in its development.
Boeing and Lockheed (not yet with Martin) were not the main contractors in the Moonshot. The former built the Saturn rocket with its North America (NA). Rockwell became in the later end when it acquired NA. This is where its foray into rocketry started, the journey which brought it into an oxymoronic contentious and cooperative relationships with Grumman. Shaped by the post-Moonshot environment and politics.
Grumman[2] is the archetypal city-company. Accounting at its peak, for a majority proportion of jobs, revenue, and innovation in its host town. It cut its teeth developing fighters for the military, and was a main contractor in the Moonshot making the unprecedented Lunar Module (LM). This contract and its execution established the company as an aerospace giant at the time when both rocketry and jetry were in ascent.
The financial stimulus Grumman received from NASA fuelled a boom in the company and city. Contributing to a larger national one created by the Moonshot and by the Vietnam war, creating complex dynamics of company-civic-country inter-economic relationships. The company grew enormously in capacity and capability on the back of making the LM. Abounding in complex design and engineering skillsets.
The end of the financial stimulus when the Moonshot ended, and the losing out to Rockwell from making the Space Shuttle put the company in a downward spiral. In between, Grumman won a contract to build a jet fighter for the US Navy. A fixed cost pricing model was used in the contract, Grumman eager to win to plug its bleeding finances, submitted and won with a relatively low bid.
This tactical error together with cascading reductions of orders in subsequent purchase lots, pushed the company to the brink of bankruptcy. Internal dynamics such as losing the entrepreneurial drive of the founding fathers of the company contributed to the seasonal decline.
The post-Moonshot bust in the aerospace industry affected many companies. Exacerbated by the withdrawal of the financial stimulus from the Vietnam war, the impact was national. Cities with dominant aerospace presence such as Grumman’s were hard-hit. Even as rocket-driven space and weaponry industry and the jet-based civilian aviation industry were deepening and expanding.
Boeing at the time was also near bankruptcy. Losing its SST contract was compounded by the earlier Moonshot-themed NASA-Airforce rivalry, which mediated the loss of the contracts to make the rocket-powered X-15 and Dynasoar Spaceplanes. Adding fuel to the raging inferno, was the reducing sales of 747 Jumbo jet, but succour came by the rising sales of the 727 and 737 series.
This event conditioned series of mergers & acquisitions (M&A). Douglas and McDonnell merged, the latter a major contractor in the Moonshot. General Dynamics acquired Convair, and the then known as North America Rockwell won the contract for making the Space Shuttle.
The companies were by no means jellybeans. They had the intellectual capacity to create or change directions. For instance, the now quoted RAND was co-founded with the US Airforce by the eponymous founder of Douglas. And James Webb, the brainy administrator of NASA, was a senior executive at McDonnell, where he was poached from. But, both sources of organisational and professional intellectual founts for the aerospace industry at the time, narrowly favoured rocketry. By the time of the Stratoshot, a couple of decades later, RAND now embedded in the rocket-driven aerospace economy, called[3] against Scramjetry. Even not seeing the feasibility of a SSTO vehicle, calling for a rocket-powered two-stage-to-orbit design.
The nagging question to ask at this junction, is how did the likes of Boeing, Grumman and Lockheed survive the economic fallout of the Moonshot? And a pivotal one such as Rockwell (NAR) did not. NAR made the unprecedented rocket-powered Shuttle powered by the engines supplied by its then subsidiary Rocketdyne. And in show of companionship, it subcontracted some aspects of the craft to its erstwhile competitors – Boeing and Grumman.
The latter survived on this goodwill, but it was not enough. Downsizing its workforce post-Moonshot stimulus, Grumman’s inadvertent action, put its host city in a turmoil of economic hardship. As unemployment rose, with jobless highly trained engineers finding it difficult to find other jobs in the aerospace industry, and in others. The imports of this fallout for policymaking as regarding understanding the direction and dynamics of the reallocation[4] of finance and talents, are elaborated on later in the essay.
Coming to the question, Grumman survived by merging with Northrop creating a trans-continental company with facilities in the East and West Coasts of US. Keeping its technical capabilities intact to continue making iconic bombers and electronic warfare and reconnaissance aircrafts for the military. And it is making hypersonic technologies today.
The trajectory of Hypersonia was negatively impacted by the fallout of the dynamics of the boom and bust caused by the Moonshot. The choice of funding the Shuttle over the SST programme also contributed. And retrogressive environmental regulations such as banning supersonic flights over continental landmass, because of sonic boom, and reducing carbon emission were contributory.
The favouring of banning technological progress instead of promoting innovations to overcome environmental challenges, marks the retrogression. The post-Moonshot sectoral aerospace recession was in the embrace and foreground of a bigger national one. And the reconversion of engineering skills for solving social ills and environmental impacts of industrialisation were mooted. The making of internal combustion engines greener was one area for policy consideration.
The interlocking recessive company-city-complex-country dynamics were unhelpful. The loss of manufacturing capacity and capability because of the fallout of the bust, created both physical and psychological baggage. The poor mental states of the unemployed and the diminishing physical infrastructure for the motley crew of the employed to work with caused by increasing, but unintended servitisation, frustrated the pivot to greening.
The hydrogen-fuelled Star Raker was birthed in this turbulent post-Moonshot period. It became a victim of the eroding industrial aspiration and purpose. And the Space Shuttle built by Rockwell was birthed in this decline. The main outcome was lowkeying, perpetuating rocket-centrism and delaying Hypersonia.
Rocketry
A governmental organisation such as NASA has a fruitful history of planning for innovation. Acting as an agency to steward creativity and entrepreneurship. This, however, has been largely rocket-driven. A quasi-market one, which Scramjetry supersedes.
The economic benefits that NASA is creating in the last five decades after the Moonshot, stems largely from the rocket-based military-industrial complex it created. Its pan-national economic and technological footprints across the US states, run into annual multi-billion worth of employment, financial and innovation benefits. And this not counting the catalytic roles the agency is playing in industrialising the southern US states, creating hubs and spheres of services and technologies.
An argument in favour of the fruitfulness of rocketry, is that it is now yielding after years of innovations being controlled and financed by governments. Partially true. Private entrepreneurship is blossoming in the last decade, with a full market emerging after decades of quasi-markets dominated by governmental finance, but by the pre-eminence by private industry.
It is still, nonetheless, limited to miniscule percentage outputs of national and global economies. Notwithstanding that NASA, as a totemic national space agency, with spinouts and direct investments, is sustaining the still segmented rocket-fuelled economy. Not least that many accruing and spinning off technologies are satisfying the useful needs of customers in the wider economy.
NASA has two main technological parts. The first is rocket-based space systems; and the second is aeronautics, which is now jet-focused, but early on its inception as a separate entity, furthered the advancements of propeller-driven aircrafts. Notwithstanding, its technical dichotomy, organisationally, rocketry and spacefaring dominate its research outreach investments. Even to the detriment of giving less attention to aeronautics.
It is hard to deny that rocketry is not advancing. Cities and nations from around the world in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Australia are pushing boundaries. Their companies coming up with better performing and varying scalar technologies amenable to different use-cases. The concentration of which is in the US, powering military and nascent civilian spacefaring.
The emerging low orbit space economy is bringing in new and old innovations by extant and emerging companies. Astrobiotics, Masten Space System, Blue Origin, Generation Orbit, Dynetics, Space X, Firefly, Frontier Aerospace, RocketLab, Stratolaunch, Virgin Galactic and others are rising leaders in this sphere.
The space-bound hypersonics converges with the making of satellites. This by old and new companies bringing many innovations in communication, earth monitoring, navigation, and surveillance. Scalar innovations have dominated – reducing sizes down to the nanoscale, whilst still increasing bandwidth and performance. There are rising stars in the United Kingdom from nascent concentrations in the northern and southern parts of the tetra-nation.
The rising space economy includes satellites in the higher orbits, space exploration with ion-thruster, solar-, sail-, and possibly nuclear- driven propulsive systems, supplementing the advancing rocket-based ones. It also includes the planned mining of planetary places for mineral resources and for power generation.
The commercial and policy attentions being directed at the emerging space economy, still must be impactful for it to manifest its widely touted plentiful potentials. Even though, already both earthly-based and galactic-situated economies are ever converging. Moving beyond communicating or navigating with satellites, to storing or routing data in space.
The ether[5] is rising, as Cloud computing is linking memory & storage devices in satellites with earthly datacentres. Microsoft recently signed an agreement with Space X, and IBM did a while back with a satellite operator for such operations. An arch-converger in this sphere is Amazon.
It has the world’s largest Cloud business – The AWS, and the contents and digitised merchandise for transmission, and it is planning to launch a multitude of satellites with its Kuiper system. Already it is building a global system of earth stations for Cloud services. And by its founder, has the capable space launching capacity with Blue Origin.
Generation Orbit with its US military contracted rocket-powered X-60 hypersonic missile project and Dynetics with a similarly contracted organic one, can one day as Space X’s, using the gained technical knowledge for earthbound civilian flights.
Earth-bound and space-bound hypersonics are converging in the US, as elsewhere. The convergence creating a shift, which is favouring Scramjetry. Understanding the process conditioning getting to the destination is essential.
Process
The destiny of an innovative company can be shaped by its placement within a declining civic, industrial, and national economies. The choice of a propulsive technology driving both sectoral and national innovation systems, to be retro-dependent on the past.
The Moonshot gave the world rocketry, the Stratoshot attempted same for Scramjetry. Rockwell bridged the gap between the two spheres of innovations, and did not cross over successfully. Favouring the rocket-powered Shuttle over the Supersonic Transport (SST) programme, precluded a global snowball effect.
The immense footprint of the US economy and innovation system in the global ecosystem, could have cascaded that of the one created by the laudatory, but commercially ‘incomplete’ Franco-British supersonic alliance[6]. Even though, hypersonics is different from supersonics, the accruing industrial learning and persistent and pervasive market exposure of a global supersonic system, could have whetted the appetite for Hypersonia. Exposure in markets makes customers to ask for better choices.
The decline of Rockwell started with a less entrepreneurial internal dynamics, but precipitated by a conditioning external recessive economic one. The gradual rather than rapid making of the Shuttle caused cost overruns for the company. This factor, and like Grumman, the low biding to win the contract, are possible explanations for its declining. Not only its destiny was altered, but that of an epochal technology transition was as well.
The gene of rocketry inherited from making the Space Shuttle got carried over to the Stratoshot, which came thereafter. Rockwell starting to lowkey with its previously long acquired expertise in making jet-powered aircrafts. To the extent that it emerged as the main contractor in the Shot, by building a countervailing alliance around rockets, instead of the original policy intent of advancing Scramjetry.
Such subversion breeds incrementalism. And persists in national and global economies, because of such frustrated transition. Rather than radicalism – creating new paths for expansion, compensation, growth, and productivity.
A thought is that Rockwell could have persisted with making the Star Raker, from the revenue it derived from making the Shuttle. Such was not possible, as it was losing revenue from protracted making. The pivot less feasible, as its hypersonic focus was not for the civilian market. The Star-Raker was designed for lofting astronauts and space supplies for the military and governmental research programmes. Earthbound point-to-point hypersonic flights were not high on the corporate strategy for the craft.
The lack of full commercialism and industrial parochialism precluded the possibility of a reallocation of corporate resources from rocketry to Scramjetry. The main turbojets used in the Star Raker were procured partly from Pratt & Whitney (P&W). No doubt that it’s making of engines for the legendary SR 71, was contributory in this potential effort.
Although, there is no recent news of P&W of making hypersonic engines, it is perceived that further incremental and radical refinements to the baseline technology, is making combined cycle composite turbo-scramjet engines possible. The ones that can be capable of powering the 6th Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) craft.
Lockheed Martin (LM) is known as working for a long time with P&W in developing such radical engine. A hint is that the single F135 engine powering the LM built info-centric and multi-role F35 Fighter, is receiving further funding from the Pentagon to refine it. A single engine capable of powering such a big Fighter at varying subsonic and supersonic speeds, points to a one, which is powerful and thrusty. And yet with deliberate in-building, improvements, and reengineering, capable of powering sustained hypersonic flight.
Innovations in engines and their making, are key to Scramjetry. The Star Raker combined ten turboramjet engines together to power to stratospheric Mach 6+ flight. Bearing in mind these were built on old knowledge and technologies, modern equivalents will be far more capable and powerful. Instantiating fewer engines to power a hypersonic plane. An ultrafan-SABRE or a turbofan/ultrafan-scramjet compositions built with advanced engineering sciences and techniques, for instance, suffices.
The innovations ensuring improvements in the power (thrust of engines) to weight (mass of the whole craft) (P/W) ratio of such hypersonic engines. The best performing gas turbine jet engine has a ratio of 1:6[7]. This is a sub-scalar exponent. Meaning that the best available jet engine generates thrust that is 1/6th of the weight it carries. Powering against the countervailing forces of drag and gravity, to lift and propel. Being able to do so with such sub-scalarity, hallmarks the enormous lofting and propulsive capacity of modern jet engines, and the ingenuity of their creators and makers.
The sub-scalarity must be a focus of innovation. As such gives more speed and going the distance. Improving both efficiency and productivity. A P/W target of 4:1 is possible with Scramjetry, as lighter high heat resistant composites and metallic alloys using 3D printing afford. For making both the airframe and the engines. Not far-fetched. The combined thrust from the deca-turboramjets for powering the Star Raker, had a P/W ratio of about 4.5. Whilst not predictive, it informs that going over the target is possible. It is about innovating.
Such engine innovations afford varying numbers to fit the different structural hypersonic needs. One engine is enough to power a Business Jet the size of a HondaJet; two enough for a Bombardier, an Embraer, or a Gulfstream; and between 2-4 engines for powering various types of commercial civilian passenger jets. Even a Boeing 747-sized one.
The combined take-off thrust generated by the 10 turboramjet engines powering the Star Raker, was about 1.5 million Newton. Considering that the Gross Take-off Weight of its smallest configuration was x2.5 that of the biggest 747-8, such many engines are not required today. Lightness and bigness co-existing because of modern knowledge, even that the 10% payload capacity of the SSTO, can be increased to 25% available in today’s Jumbo jets. The better performance with far less weight, but with more speed and endurance for non-stop globetrotting.
Ideas from how diesel engines are growing bigger, and yet producing more commensurate output can be considered. The super scaling mass/power ratio of such is attributed to the more (C-H), diesel carries, even though, it is not suitable because of its heaviness for flight. Of course, the rotatory propulsive mechanism such an engine uses for generating power, is not the same as the turbulent propulsion of jet engines. Nonetheless, its upward scaling outputs are worthy of being studied for bettering Scramjetry.
An idea previously stated on this platform about Rotating Detonation Engine, took me two months to concretise. The ultimate is finding techniques of making a single combustion chamber to combine the turbulence of scramjets with that of amplified & stable detonation. Intermittent detonation is less productive; needed is one – streaming not sparking. Hence, such combinatorial innovation affords.
The process of corporate innovation in businesses and companies creates transformation. Rockwell did not cross the bridge post-Stratoshot. With its declining and eventual acquisition by Boeing, Scramjetry suffered, and Hypersonia was delayed.
External economic crises frustrate corporate innovations for making a ground-breaking technological transition with immense national and global economic benefits. Nonetheless, it is the internal dynamics that are more amenable to change. Leadership in companies and governments are required for successful transformation.
Transformation
The favourable destiny of a company is largely determined by a singular act of the founder(s) or the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Of course, ably assisted by teams of advisors, board members, managers, and employees. This act is either in starting the company, making it work, and running it smoothly to deliver on its operational and strategic purposes. Getting these functions right leads to transformation.
This founder foundationalism was missing in the latter years of Rockwell. When the founder died, there was a brief period of activities to maintain the portfolios he built. The winning of the contract to make the Space Shuttle came a year after his demise. Informing that the founder made the winning possible. Bearing in mind that it takes at least a couple of years of prior hard work and countless negotiation, before submitting a bid and to be successful. And at least another one year for the awarding agency to carefully select the winner.
The main successes of Rockwell (NAR) such as the B1 Lancer and the Space Shuttle came under the watch of the founder. And once this creative agency was missing, the downward spiral started. The founder can be blamed for not raising a proper successor. Truly, this charge can stick. However, his immediate successor – his son was the CEO, but left after a year. The short period in which the Space Shuttle contract was won.
The main reported cause of decline according to Wikipedia, is the stoppage of the revenue flow for making the Bomber and the Shuttle after the expiration of the contracts. After this, the company started to crumble, selling off its portfolios to stay afloat. By the time of winning the contract to lead in the Stratoshot a couple of decades later, Rockwell was a less creative company, with little appetite for risk-taking, and for pushing the boundary.
Hence, the push for rocketry over Scramjetry, and the jettisoning of its ramjet-centric Star Raker. The company lacked a transformative leader to push it ahead and out of the comfort zone of lethargy and retrogression. Eventually, it wound up with its various parts existing today in Boeing, Raytheon, and others.
The lack of exploiting commercial opportunities for its aerospace and electronic expertise is costly. This stems from being too military-centric. A problem most companies with their large revenue stream coming from the Defence Industry face. Grumman suffered from this industrial parochialism as well.
This happened before and after the demise of its founding fathers. Grumman is noted for its founding culture of deep employees’ relationship. Such was instrumental in making unprecedented innovative space vehicles and military planes. This founding attribute and leadership was key in surviving the parochialism.
However, when eroding, creativity and productive working suffered. A situation that defined the Shuttle years, and it’s trudging along feature that made its long-term making of specialised planes for the military, untenable. A position which opened it up for acquisition by Northrop.
In between building the Lunar Module and losing out of the contract to make the Shuttle, Grumman extended its relationship with the US Navy to make the jet Fighter. This was a lock-in relationship, which partly contributed to its insularity, as the military agency influenced NASA not to award the making of the Shuttle to it, as the former fears that it creates a distraction for the continuous but unprofitable making of the Fighter.
This is by no means accusing the Navy of sabotage or as non-innovative. It and the other arms of the US military are purveyors of high-tech R&D, which goes into making innovative weapons. And some spill over into the civilian sphere. Not least that the Navy with the Army under the Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) programme, are developing common boost glide hypersonic missiles.
The former to equip its rising fleet of planes, submarines, and warships. And the latter to arm its fleets of armoured tanks and artillery vehicles. The CPS builds on past efforts under the Hypersonic Test Vehicle project.
An exchange of knowledge and technologies by the combination of Lockheed Martin (LM), Northrop Grumman and Raytheon, is building these suite of aerial, maritime and terrestrial hypersonic weapons. For the Army, LM with Aerojet is making the ground-based Next Generation Interceptor for depending against Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. No doubt, such will include using hypersonic interceptors and defending against hypersonic missiles.
The charge of military lock-in by Defence-oriented companies, nonetheless, is hard to shed. A challenge to which possible solutions has been proffered to in the last three essays of this series. Notwithstanding, the CEOs of these companies are wise to be riding on the crest of a new technology wave, making their transformation possible for a new era of economic and industrial emergence.
A transformative company in the civilian sphere is Aerion Corporation. Driven by founder foundationalism, it is building an ecosystem for Hypersonia. Such singular act includes pivoting to making hypersonic airframe and engines. And recently signed a partnership with an electric propulsion flying car maker for ferrying passengers to and from airports and neighbourhood drone ports or pick-up points.
The Texan start-up is actualising a vision of Hyperspacia being espoused on this series. One where high and hyper speed transportation systems co-existing to create lasting user-experience for the passengers. Calling for the use of micro-turbines/jet engines for powering drones and flying cars to make them faster and more capacious.
Place matters in the transformation Hypersonia brings. Cities and towns require adjustments to the frequency of hypersonic flights. The ongoing different innovations by NASA and aspiring supersonic start-ups, contribute to boomless flight and reduced carbon emission. And Hypersonia benefits. Nonetheless, a replanning of places to accommodate building airports away from population centres, suffices. Such makes the use of drones or flying cars for ferrying passengers to and fro commercially viable.
The skies of towns and cities teeming with such aerial vehicles in the lower atmosphere, and hypersonic crafts in the Stratosphere is emerging. And Aerion by its transformative CEO, is catching the vision, and making it happen. The flourishing emergent economy is both aerial and terrestrial. The start-up is forming national and international partnerships with various companies in making hyper speed grade technologies. Such as avionics, fuelling infrastructure, in-flight communication and entertainment systems, and others.
Boom Aerospace is a leading contender in the supersonic sphere. Being led by a transformative founder, has recently flown a partially 3D printed XB-1 demonstrator. The short journey to this pivotal interim stage, is laudatory, and gives a model for emulation. Especially, for appreciating the financial toll of advancing.
The cost of the making is tentative, but a figure of between US $160-200 million is being touted. Not making a predictive judgement, but this is by no means a small amount, considering that it combines bespoke and off-the-shelf components in the making. Using jet engines made in the 1950s for sub—scale demonstration, hides the still to come costs of making a full-scale airframe and co-funding the real engines with Rolls Royce.
This is not to deter aspiring Hypersonic entrants. As the payoff is possibly enormous. A recent study conducted by PwC for the British Ministry of Defence, promises considerable returns in the forms of job creation, corporate & local industrial regeneration, and growth in national innovation ecosystem. Even for a 6th Generation hypersonic Jet Fighter, which usage is few and far in-between, the impacts are far-reaching. Let alone, for a national economy driven by Scramjetry, and is producing hyper speed crafts being used all over the world, generating momentum for national and global economies.
Transformation comes by implementing and visionary leaders, ably supported by commensurate teams. The furtherance of Hypersonia requires overcoming lethargy, insularity, and myopia to embracing entrepreneurship, exploration, surprise and surplus. Economic growth is driven by such pro-innovation mindset. Policymaking (planning to actualise governmental purpose for the economy) and strategizing needs to facilitate such transition.
Reborn
The making of Hypersonia creates economic booms. However, the current pandemic is impacting the economy at all levels. Companies and industries are going through hardships, and coming back to the original state of growth and productivity, is tentative.
The trajectory and outcomes of economic and placial recovery is determined by the deliberate actions, taking by companies and governments in reallocating resources. Allocative efficiency is an executive function, and its directionality and intentionality essential for progress and success. About making the purposeful judgements about finance, talent, and time.
Nonetheless, productivity rather efficiency is the preference. And reallocation is not about the usual practices of execution and organisation. These are key drivers of favourable or positive outcomes and outputs. Rather, it is about birthing a foundation of a fruitful structure of innovation system. One, which is forward-looking, futuristic, enabling, empowering and beneficial and equitable.
At all levels, reallocation of talents towards achieving the rebirthed purpose is key. Training is key. Re-skilling and skilling-up are drivers. Intellectual capacity and capability directed at suitable ends. Such purposive actions require matching skills with the right problems, and addressing the physical and psychological impacts on the talents. Many nations have different extant institutions and systems for education and training. These are amenable.
It is humbling to realise that the vision in this series is being actualised – being put into practice. The Pentagon recently came out with a comprehensive and integrative plan for hypersonics. This expansive policymaking embraces the multidisciplinarity of the innovation process – having Scramjetry at its centre. Creating a Joint Hypersonics Transition Office to bring focus to disparate public and private initiatives. This also includes fostering education and research.
The US government, recently, earmarks a considerable amount for advancing hypersonics knowledge in its universities. A nation-wide action that is building on an emerging hypersonics hub in Texas. And includes international partnerships with like-minded organisations in Australia, Canada, and United Kingdom. Such supplements the nation’s growing R&D activities in laboratories and research centres. In the UK, Reaction Engines, is creating a scholarship programme for apprenticeship to train aspiring young people and graduates in its offices and workshops.
Purposeful reallocation of resources is essential for addressing the fallouts of an economic bust. Pandemics create economic crises. The financial stimuli for addressing such, can create busts, eroding extant gains and can threaten the fruitfulness of emerging and future ones. Hence, prudence is essential to forestall wastage and rather promote plentiful.
The reallocation and rebuilding of talents key. Essential, also, is directing attention and finance toward innovation. Creating products and services that demonstrate potentials for creating wealth and wellbeing and solving current and envisaged problems.
The message of Hypersonia is making advancements in biological, chemical, digital, mechanical, and physical sciences and technologies, which enhance and enable doing, living, making, servicing, and relating. National and global economic growth and productivity are by hyper speed flights, in a world where the virtual are combined with the valuable.
Servitisation is becoming a major part of national and global economies. Both developed and developing nations, have services growing more than 50% of their economic outputs. Such progression enabled by digitisation is creating jobs and wealth. However, a rethink is required about its trajectory and its causes. Currently, the shift is not deliberate nor purposeful.
The loss of manufacturing capability in all nations is either forced on by economic busts or insular or myopic actions and policies. And the supposed best efforts at addressing the fallouts often exacerbate the unintended shift. Recovery starts by understanding that servicing has always being part of making.
The bane of unplanned servitisation is not being underpinned by an ‘ensemble’ of fruitful core technologies. This is what Hypersonia represents. In its full identity and various manifestations, it makes possible transformative making, servicing, and tooling. Reborning the personhood, the corporation, the cityscape, the nation-state, and the global stage.
The making of Hypersonia, for instance, requires creating both intangible and tangible technologies. This action, together with maintaining and using the tools are services being provided to solve the problems, makers and customers are facing. These are also grown and supported by service providers. They are nurtured by families, taught by educators, looked after by doctors and nurses, and their needs and wants catered for by different commercial, recreational (i.e. going to Disneyland), supplying, subsistent, and social services.
In a nutshell, this is the dynamics of any continuously innovative economy. As creativity and ingenuity are needed in all the manufacturing and services processes. Services are developed to make better, different, and easier use of technologies. For instance, no digital ticketing without the planes to fly passengers on. An e-ticket goes above the physical technology – the paper-based one. It allows them to book online, check-in and board quickly.
The world economy is undergoing a transition mediated by the Covid-19 pandemic. And transiting has a cost. The right price must be paid. A purposeful transition has both intended and unintended outcomes and outputs. How the latter but lesser unfavourable impacts are addressed is key.
The old always jostle with the new. The past and present with the future. The extant and the emergent. The dynamics of this frictional relationship creates tensions. These must be addressed. Hypersonics is radical and the future, a marked departure from the extant. Creating it in parallel with supersonics comes as a logical step to take. It can, however, results in lowkeying and present management. The strategic efforts of the Pentagon creating a focal system for hypersonics is pushing a separate organisational system.
Boeing for all its reticence, has a good mastery of transitions. Whilst not being a main candidate in either the Moonshot and Stratoshot, it survived and thrived. Creating suitable and varying weights for different businesses and technologies at different times of transitions key. Its pivot to deepen its civilian aircraft business and making, wise, at a time when military contracts were drying up. Having different technology sections catering for different customer bases also helpful. It caters for all aspects of the aerospace industry. In this crisis, it is staying afloat with military and space contracts, even as the civilian market is stagnating.
Such mastery also makes Boeing the biggest exporter in the US. In an ironic twist, the same relationship with the Navy which conditioned the lowkeying trajectory of Grumman, is making Boeing to leapfrog to Hypersonia. The Pentagon recently awarded a contract to it to using its dormant dual nose scramjet technology, for making missiles for the Navy’s Carrier-based F-18 Fighter. This can be interpreted as a stimulus to leapfrog.
Hypersonia supports suitable fuels. Using the extant the creating the emergent. The key is using one which generates enough thrust, and at the same time minimises economic and environmental fallouts. The imperative is innovation. The emergent is forward design. Exploring and exploiting creating engines with the capability and capacity of using available and emerging fuels.
Several nations are investing into decarbonisation. For various economic, political, public health and social factors, these countries making efforts at influencing energy transitions. Policymakers have preferences for the direction to which to go as the optimal alternative choices. It is, however, important that the weights being used to measure the cost of transition are equitable. The price of creating the future alternatives is as high as that of rapidly killing off the extant.
Geopolitics conditions national policymaking. Several nations in the past have mismanaged transitions. Invigilance and sloppy policymaking allow other nations to use cost-price differentials and gaps in international trade system, to advance on the back of extant technologies. Using such to rapidly leapfrog. It is essential that in making either energy or technology transitions, nations are not caught out in the game of tactical manoeuvrings. The strategic fallout is often costly.
It is important to direct suitable resources at the whole economy. Ensuring that the infrastructure and systems empower and enable reallocation of resources at all levels. Shifting from organisations, industries, sectors to other in other to drive growth, productivity, and recovery.
To reborn is to recreate and repurpose.
Be wise
The intention, quality and state of leadership underpin successful transition and transformation. Boeing today survives and attempting to thrive, despite sessional missteps by executives, because of the foundational culture of innovation laid by its founder – William Boeing.
Rockwell started declining when its founder and the chosen immediate successor departed. The latter sadly died of cancer. A situation, which forced his premature departure from the company at a time of industrial upheaval and transition. He was not able to bring his pioneering space commercialisation acumen to bear.
Getting to Hyperspacia requires imbibing the power of founder foundationalism. Ensuring that a culture of faithfulness to the original purpose and perpetual culture of entrepreneurship, innovation and industry is constantly in motion.
The aerospace industry has a history of seasons of cyclicity of booms and busts. And each time it comes out of the bust. The coming out is not often conducive to all sorts of possible innovation trajectories. The growth and productivity of Scramjetry was stunted in favour of rocketry in previous coming outs. It is humbling to see that path-correction is being made. The US is showing the way.
The rocket driven Hypersonia is converging with that of the rising one driven by Scramjetry. Creating a new economy of hyper growth and productivity. Combining with and creating more digital innovations along the way. Digital services underpin by technologies created in prior aerospace-driven fervour of electrical, electronics, mechanical and physical innovations, are providing the mainstay of the chastising Covid-19 economy.
Policymaking is planning to create solutions to economic problems. Counting the costs. It is a deliberate enterprise of future-making. It is, however, not stifling markets, but a co-creation between the public and private sectors to amplify the favourable but minimise the unfavourable. Where each foregrounds respective allocative and creative powers.
Creating is at all levels of research. For the public sector, it is allocating more towards basic and applied research. For the private sector, more at commercial and developmental initiatives. Every economy is a mixed one. This is an informative lesson from Joseph Schumpeter. The creative economy such as the US’s or UK’s is the one, which, democratically and openly enables and encourages entrepreneurial sprouting.
It is essential to realise that an economic stimulus can create boom and bust. At personal, corporate, civic, complex, and country levels. Shocks often reverberate globally. Not making a direct intervention in the economy is a policy option. Another is making it, but creating a system of observation to pre-empt the negatives, but amplify the positives.
The ongoing dichotomous debate about the concentration or diffusion of making and servicing in the economy, requires a rethink. The true picture is that both occur in parallel. At times, one is pre-eminent over the other in innovation, productivity, and size. The time and season of an economy determines the dynamics, process, and transition.
Innovation is about looking at an individual economy in its wholesome across time and space. Companies that stunted Hypersonia in the past are making it happen now in their respective cities. Building the future, creating new jobs and wealth. Paying up for their prior lowkeying. Those that got acquired or merged, have their active and dormant expertise being use.
Both small and big companies were creative in the past. These concentrated expertise are now being diffused by both start-ups and established companies. Creating both Scramjetry and rocketry. This is a reversal from concentration to diffusion of benefits and innovations.
Most innovations are birthed at the times of crises. The leadership to identify and capture the times and seasons is key. So also, is the ability to mobilise the requisite resources and allocate them to the purposeful plans, planes, points, and places.
The wholesome appreciation of the economy helps in making prudent allocations. Both Grumman and Rockwell could have declined with or without the Shuttle contract. Allocating the whole lump of resources to one company is essential in singling out the best design, and it minimises the dangers associated with integrating from multiple makers. Nonetheless, recognising that investing into the whole economy rather than its pieces or parts is equally essential.
Th allocation in an economy happens with or without active intervention. It can be autonomous – taking its natural course as dictated by the market. Rather, it can be automatic – following a pattern already set by prior and prevalent design or intervention. And it can be anticipated – pre-empting the direction away, divergences, and differences, from the set purpose. The third is the preferred.
The import for economic and placial strategy is to understand the time and season. It is wise to know how, when, why and who to contain, correct or create. Hastiness can be costly. So also, is tardiness. The wisdom is ensuring that the expected outcomes and outputs of an economy are commensurate with the inputs. And that abundance is equitable. The mass of individual planes in line with the volume of air being absorbed to create lift & thrust.
The wisdom is Davidic. The founder of Israel as a nation-state, David, established a national innovation system noted for its enterprise, industry, and prudence.
Airbreathing engines are key to national and global economic growth and productivity. The vision of Hypersonia is creative and productive. It is humbling that even the Nobel Prize appreciates such in its recent awards.
In aeronautics, buoyancy works for lifting airships and dirigibles. Hypersonia lifts the world. This is its momentum.
Thank God. Jesus Saves.
[1] Information about is from Star Raker – Airbreathing/Rocket-powered Horizontal Takeoff Tridelta Flying Wing Single-Stage-To Orbit Transportation System by David A. Reed, Jr. Hideo Ikawa & Jonas A. Sadunas.
[2] This 700-page long PhD Thesis – The Triumph and Decline of the “Squares” Grumman Aerospace Engineers and Production Workers in the Apollo Ear 1953-1973 by David Hugh Onkst. Helps in understanding the trajectory and the times of Grumman.
[3] The Hypersonic Revolution: Case Study in the History of Hypersonic Technology Volume III. Dr Larry Schweikart. A joyous study of the initiation, organisation, and political economy of a large-scale technology system. Reading between March and July the over 500 page-eBook.
[4] Allocative efficiency is a key economic and organisational decision. Informative was reading Creative Construction: The DNA of Sustained Innovation by Gary P. Pisano in 2018.
[5] It is used here to describe the rapid movement of computing, storage, and software infrastructure to the intangible world of the Cloud in the Covid-19 economy. Ether is synonymous with Blockchain, this technology, as with AI, Quantum, 3D printing and others deepening by Hypersonia.
[6] The Concorde was a radical innovation at its time. But as previously explained, its inability to become a successful commercial product made it not fully radical.
[7] Information about the 1:6 Power/Weight ratio of Jet engines is from Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities By Vaclav Smil.
