Raven measures how far an idea has moved toward a product, from the public record alone. A chain is a root, the thing that was there first, and the products the record can be checked for: what got researched, what got funded, what got tested, what got regulated, and what still stands in the way.
Four layers, each measured by a stated rule. A trajectory is a count per year from one search, printed beside the whole index so growth is never mistaken for the index growing. A dependency is the share of one literature's references that land in another's, measured both ways, with a negative control beside it. A barrier is a sentence in a document, hand-checked and typed by whether it can lift: a physical barrier is permanent, an economic one is a price, a political one is a vote away. Speculation is written by hand, labelled, and kept below its own line.
Each product carries a score: growth positioned between two controls fixed before any chain was run, dependency, precedence, stages, and a barrier penalty, every component printed with the sentence behind it. It is an evidence score over one chain, anchored to two controls. It is not a probability, and nothing on this site calls it one.
Chains are added one at a time, each with its own hand-checked truth, and published only when the record behind it is complete. What is here is what I am willing to stand behind.
Every chain on this site is anchored to these two searches, fixed before any chain was run: 0 is "grew as the barcode scanner literature did", 1 is "grew as the large language model literature did".
The multiple beside each is the sum of its last 5 years plus one over the sum of its first 5 years plus one, and "works" counts every work the search returned in the year band. On the scale the chains are placed on, 0 means "grew as the barcode scanner literature did", not "flat".
| control | works | 2000 | 2025 | multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| large language model | 148,587 | 2 | 88,754 | 16,490.9x |
| barcode scanner | 918 | 3 | 70 | 11.9x |
| every work | 220,506,496 | 3,795,719 | 14,806,877 | 2.6x |
Root: Orbital debris. Products: Active debris removal, Debris shielding, On-orbit servicing, Small satellites. Years 2000–2025; cutoff 2025-12-31; model none.
Chosen because it is dull enough to measure honestly: a root everyone agrees exists, four products the record can be checked for, and no company to root for.
A product whose barriers were never read takes a penalty of zero, which is the same number a clean sample takes, so these two groups are never ranked against each other.
| chain | product | score | growth | dependency | precedence | stages | barriers | barrier kinds found |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Orbital debris and its downstream products | Active debris removal | 0.48, moderate | 0.51 | 0.81 | 1.00 | 1.00 | -0.35 | physical, economic |
| Orbital debris and its downstream products | Debris shielding | 0.43, moderate (barriers unsampled) | 0.00 (clamped) | 0.29 | undetermined | 1.00 | 0.00 (not sampled) | unsampled |
| Orbital debris and its downstream products | On-orbit servicing | 0.59, moderate (barriers unsampled) | 0.00 (clamped) | 0.36 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 0.00 (not sampled) | unsampled |
| Orbital debris and its downstream products | Small satellites | 0.51, moderate (barriers unsampled) | 0.00 (clamped) | 0.06 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 0.00 (not sampled) | unsampled |
an evidence score over one chain, anchored to two controls; not a calibrated probability