Nader Elhefnawy has written a stimulating essay (The Space Review, 6/23/08) on how long waves in the economy were fundamentally responsible for the 1960s space program. Because this is essentially what this weblog was created to probe, especially in the context of forecasts for future technology and space initiatives, I read it with some interest!

With the exception of a couple of points that I’ll get to shortly, I like the thrust of his essay and first explored these and related themes in my 1996 Space Policy paper and more recently in Futures Research Quarterly (2006); both online here.

It’s clear to most people who’ve looked that long — 50 to 60 year — waves exist in the economy and can be traced back at least 200 years. They were discovered by the famous Russian Kondratiev (“K-Waves”) in the 1920s and initially explained by Harvard economist Joseph “creative destruction” Schumpeter as triggered by clusters of technological innovations that ripple through the economy.

The most revealing, data-rich book on this topic is by Brian J. L. Berry (1991) Long-Wave Rhythms in Economic Development… The book that convinced me that long waves are real – and that they should be useful in forecasting — was the Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Workship of 2005 in Portugal edited by T.C. Devezas. For those who prefer social psychology to economics, rest assured that Michael Alexander (2002) has convincingly linked these long economic waves with the generational cycles of Strauss and Howe; see The Kondratiev Cycle: A Generational Interpretation.

Elhefnawy does an admirable job of briefly explaining how the 1960s “Camelot” economic boom paid for Apollo. But he’s not clear about the mechanism at work here, and so is fuzzier than he needs to be about prospects for the future.

Because I initially scanned not just the last 50 years, but the last 200, I noticed that in addition to Goldstein-style major wars, there were two other separate entities clustering around peaks in the long economic wave roughly every 55 years: the Great Explorations (e.g., Lewis and Clark), and Macro-Engineering Projects – MEPs (e.g., Panama Canal); See The Forecasts.

It’s significant that the first time over the last 200 years that any MEP was physically associated with a Great Exploration was during the Apollo program! Prior to this watershed event, they were separate and usually soon terminated or at least negatively influenced by the major wars.

These and other insights suggested this model: Reliable upswings in the long wave result in rhythmic, unparalleled economic booms about twice per century. This triggers widespread affluence and ebullience, as large numbers of people ascend to the higher levels of Maslow’s Heirarchy. Thus, an ebullient societal mindset appears where large technology and exploration initiatives are not only favored by most, but seem momentarily almost irresistible.

This model — societal “ebullience” modulated by long economic waves — is being tested 24/7 by comparing current events and trends from around the world to The Forecasts. Our preprint, summarizing the “State of the Wave,” will be available here by the end of July.

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