The year is 2050. A fictional RAND analyst reflects back on how the United States built the labor force it needed to establish an independent human colony on Saturn’s largest moon—outshining a manned mission by the People’s Republic of China two decades earlier (in 2030) and demonstrating that no technoeconomic feat is too large for the collective intellectual and engineering might of the United States and its allies.
The intent of the “backcasting” analysis is to provide rough order-of-magnitude estimates of how the U.S. scientific and technical labor force needs to evolve during the next 25 years (2025–2050) for the United States to sustain its technoeconomic leadership. The approach is anchored in the real threat of strategic technoeconomic surprise—in this case, the historical antecedent is the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957 that galvanized the United States to land a man on the moon a decade later (in 1969).
The authors find that a tripling of doctorate-equivalent researchers and a nearly 70-percent increase in the number of U.S. engineers and technicians graduating each year will likely be needed. While the United States can build the engineering and technical capacity domestically, international collaborations will be necessary to access sufficient research talent to sustain technoeconomic leadership.
Building the U.S. scientific and technical labor force is projected to cost approximately $1.1 trillion over ten years, although more than half of this cost could be reasonably offset by U.S. private sector investments, including in-kind support.
This publication is part of the RAND expert insights series. The expert insights series presents perspectives on timely policy issues.
This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited; linking directly to this product page is encouraged. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial purposes. For information on reprint and reuse permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.
RAND is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND’s publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.
