by Alastair Trower | May 23, 2024 | Articles, Marine
It is widely understood that much more is known about outer space than the depths of our oceans, greater than 80% are yet to be explored or charted. The challenges of exploring and understanding what lies beneath the water’s surface are characterised by frigid...
by Alastair Trower | Apr 8, 2024 | Articles, Industry 4.0
“If a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too.” – Sarah Connor, Terminator 2 : Judgement Day Let’s take a trip in time. Five hundred years before the Industrial Revolution, (aka the First Industrial Revolution) the waterborne...
by Alastair Trower | Mar 26, 2024 | Aerospace & Defense, Articles
Due to sensitive subject matter, many client and project details have been omitted. Alarm bells are sounding. Polish President Andrzej Duda has recently called for all NATO member states to increase their defence spending to 3% of GDP. The reason for his remarks is...
by Alastair Trower | Mar 11, 2024 | Product Design
Back in 1997, the public reaction upon first seeing the Vacanti Mouse (the laboratory mouse who appeared to have an ear grown on its back) was a mix of shock and fascination. The striking image spawned several concerning, yet rather ill-informed protests. But once the...
by Alastair Trower | Jan 22, 2024 | Marine
Being a captain ain’t easy. Critical, life and death decisions, ensuring the seaworthiness of the ship, handling payroll, staffing, and grievances all while being responsible for all persons and cargo on board; the daunting weight of all these responsibilities are...
by Alastair Trower | Jan 16, 2024 | Industry 4.0
In August 1987, the world was in a deeply dire state. Sixty years of chlorofluorocarbon (CFCs) filled refrigerators and aerosol spray cans had depleted a large part of the ozone layer to a perilous level. A future of blinded children, scorched earth and extreme...
by Alastair Trower | Jan 5, 2024 | Aerospace & Defense
noun: also skunk works, skunk·works [skuhngk-wurks] .Slang. an experimental laboratory or department of a company or institution, typically smaller than, and independent of its main research division. The summer of 1943 was a hot one. The world was mired in an...
by Alastair Trower | Dec 20, 2023 | Electronics, Mechanical, Product Design
Barely three weeks before Christmas, Mike Rizkalla looks out of a window on American Airlines flight 134 and reflects upon the beauty of the Jundu mountains below. The electrical engineer and serial entrepreneur is heading back to his family in New Jersey after...
by Alastair Trower | Dec 15, 2023 | Marine
In mid-November 2023, a decommissioned tidal turbine barge washed up on the shores of Nova Scotia in Eastern Canada. The abandoned hulk hung upon the rocks, leaving licence only to cormorants and puffins to take a berth upon her deck. This was an unfortunate end to...
by Alastair Trower | Nov 23, 2023 | Articles, Marine
Deep. Well. Connected. The Importance of Trust and B2B Alignment James Fisher Decommissioning & Enginuity Inc. Picture this – you’re on a rolling deck of a ship in the North Sea, dawn is breaking, dark, foreboding clouds hang low in the air, there is...