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it is daunting. He missed: Composites breaking into commercial aerospace in a big way with the 787 and A350. The development of the F-35 jet fighter, the military’s largest consumer of composite materials today. The wind energy boom that fueled unprecedented use of composite materials in wind blades. The closed molding revolution, which is fast putting open molding in the rearview mirror. The application of carbon fiber in sporting goods, ranging from golf clubs to hockey sticks to tennis rackets. And a dizzying array of mergers and acquisitions. In short, he missed a lot, and he returned just in time to witness firsthand how composites will move into high-volume automotive production.

These megatrends have been launched by different people and companies for the reasons we always list when we talk about composites: High strength, light weight, durability, corrosion resistance, etc. But we often overlook the fact that these mega- trends are only possible because the composites industry is what I call chronically dynamic — full of people not just comfortable with change, but obsessed with it, willing to tinker and try and poke and prod and fiddle and tweak to solve a problem or meet a challenge. This is engendered, in part, by the dynamic nature of composites themselves, the products of almost infinite resin, fiber, tooling and processing variations, which makes tinkering so easy and tempting.

The big question we face now is this: What will our chronic dynamism produce over the next 20 years? This is difficult to contemplate because understanding where we’re headed requires impossible-to-come-by knowledge of the disruptive technologies the future might have in store. A good starting point might be this simple statement: The application of composite materials has, over the past two decades, gotten easier, faster and less expensive, and it will only become more so in the two decades to come.

So, don’t go anywhere, but if you do, be prepared to come back to a much-changed composites world.