41–50 of 190 posts
Two articles now I try to access the content at archive.ph and cannot make it past the Captcha. I've disabled uBlock Origin and that seems to make no difference. Is anyone else seeing this and if so, have a solution? (Firefox 117.0.1 (64-bit) on Debian Linux.)
Meta: What is it about this post that attracted so many flippant comments? Non-meta: Why does the US have so few of these ships? Were more just not produced? I didn’t see an answer in the article but it’s possible I missed it.
Makes me wonder how much manufacturing knowledge has been lost in the west, and how long it might take to rediscover it all. Does anyone know of any good sources on this?
Makes me wonder how much manufacturing knowledge has been lost in the west, and how long it might take to rediscover it all. Does anyone know of any good sources on this?
"Big Oil’s Talent Crisis: High Salaries Are No Longer Enough
Energy companies scramble to attract engineers as young workers fret over climate and job security
Good news from the oil patch: Jobs are plentiful and salaries are soaring.
The bad news is that young people still aren’t interested.
Even as oil-and-gas companies post record profits, the industry is facing a worsening talent drought.
At U.S. colleges, the pool of new entrants for petroleum-engineering programs has shrunk to its smallest size since before the fracking boom began more than a decade ago. European universities, which have historically provided many of the engineers for companies with operations across the Middle East and Asia, are seeing similar trends.
...."
"This new idea could reduce steel’s carbon emissions by 90%" https://www.freethink.com/energy/decarbonizing-steel Why is steel necessary for ships? From "Plant-based epoxy enables recyclable carbon fiber" (2022) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30138954 : > And once it’s completed you have an insanely strong material that makes steel look weak and brittle. It’s reported to be as much as ten times stronger than st…
The problem with carbon fiber and epoxy composites. Once it cracks, you cannot repair it, easily. It relies on a continuous composite structure. You can't patch it because that patchwork joint will just be a weak spot. So you are talking about writing off tens of millions of dollars of a boat just because someone lost control and hit something too hard. Steel is infinitely repairable, cut out the damaged section and…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Generally speaking, states try to avoid having critical dependencies on other states, because they become points of leverage for adversarial foreign policy. For the purposes of keeping America running, yes, we really do need to own icebreakers in the same way that we need to own powerplants, steel mills, chip foundries and and refineries.
But then market pressures for efficiency will lead to mergers and acquisitions...
Things like energy independence sound cute and quaint until you find yourself being taken advantage of at best, or ground to a halt during armed conflict at worst.
Makes me wonder how much manufacturing knowledge has been lost in the west, and how long it might take to rediscover it all. Does anyone know of any good sources on this?
It's the skills that are lost. The knowledge is safe in print.
I know it can build military vessels, but at horribly slow pace. Australia will get their nuclear submarines some time in 2040. I can not imagine building civilian nuclear ice breakers in US.
Do we really need to OWN icebreakers? Maybe we could start a website where countries and companies who own icebreakers can operate them for the benefit of other countries and companies who want to use them. They just walk to the shore in the Canadian north, click the "Call Icebreaker" button on the app and wait for an icebreaker someone else owns to arrive.
That would depend on one's strategic goals and priorities. Personally, I do not believe the US should be the world police so I don't think it is necessary.
> designers, engineers and welders grapple with something the U.S. hasn’t done in decades: reliably shape hardened steel that is more than an inch thick into a curved, reinforced ship’s hull I don't understand. Aren't modern military ships armoured anymore?