Equation 2 · The Metabolism of Civilization: Energy to 2100
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Symbol z
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The formal relationship goes back to Theodore Wright’s 1936 observation that aircraft manufacturing labor hours fell as a power-law function of the number of airframes already built, and Way et al. build their entire forecasting method on a stochastic version of it, fitted to more than fifty technologies’ historical cost and production records [ 1 ] . Written in its cleanest form, cost c at cumulative production (experience) z relates to a reference cost at reference experience by:
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