Strong Personal Beliefs Research Articles

The Role of Competition in Aeronautics

It is a great privilege to be here before you today at this lecture which honours the memory of Wilbur and Orville Wright and all that they brought to that very favourite subject of all of us—Aeronautics. I have chosen as my topic for tonight “The Role of Competition in Aeronautics”. My thesis is that competition has been extremely important in the advancement of aeronautics through the years. Much progress has come in the heat of competition. The monetary costs of competition are small and completely overshadowed by the economic benefits accruing from competition. Competition has been the life blood of aeronautics. We must keep competition alive. My objective in this paper is to stimulate in each member of this audience a strong personal belief that competition has been a major contributor to making aeronautics what it is today and a most necessary ingredient in the future of aeronautics.

The cost of competition

FORTHRIGHT comment on the value of competition in the aerospace industry was the theme of Mr George S. Schairer, F.A.I.A.A., V.P. for Research and Development of the Boeing Company, when he gave the annual Wilbur and Orville Wright Memorial Lecture at the Royal Aeronautical Society early in December. The title of his paper was ‘The Role of Competition in Aeronautics’ and in his introduction he said that much progress had come through the heat of competition and that the monetary costs of competition were small and completely overshadowed by the economic benefits accruing from it. Competition had been the life blood of aeronautics and must be kept alive. His objective in presenting the paper was to stimulate in each member of the R.Ae.S. audience ‘a strong personal belief that competition has been a major contributor to making aeronautics what it is today and a most necessary ingredient in the future of aeronautics.’