With those risks, inevitably, goes the chance of failure in the test program and the need to adapt designs, build work-arounds and make modifications to subsequent production articles.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Center for Security Policy | FOR A CREDIBLE DEFENSE POSTURE IN THE FUTURE, INVEST IN THE B-2 TODAY

For example, microchips will be a major component in renewable resource technology such as solar panels, helping make the collection of solar power and the subsequent production of usable energy as efficient as possible.

FORBES: Why Chip Makers Must Keep Innovating

The subsequent industrial production of billions of tonnes of synthetic nitrogen fertilisers - particular after the 1950s - have flooded terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems with reactive nitrogen, and supported the century's human population explosion.

BBC: Leaving our mark: Fossils of the future

Last-ditch spending reductions cut to the bone, delaying production and subsequent billings.

FORBES: When Shooting for Growth Can Leave You Broke

But with the advent of hydraulic fracturing technologies and the subsequent scramble to tap into prized shale formations like the Bakken pushing domestic oil and natural gas production to record highs, brokers say an increasing number of newly minted millionaires from the energy industry have been plowing money into farmland.

FORBES: Energy Boom Fueling Demand For Ranch Real Estate

While it hasn't much changed for subsequent years, that's a figure being used to underscore the argument about the volatility of oil production and prices, and how much that could put the finances of an independent Scotland at the mercy of markets and drillers.

BBC: Budget 2013: Stagnation Nation