51–60 of 190 posts
Does USA even have civilian dry docks to build ships? I thought everything was outsourced to Korea. 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.
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?
Not the same industry, but here is an article in the WSJ about declining numbers of petroleum engineers: https://www.wsj.com/articles/big-oils-talent-crisis-high-sal... "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…
And maybe that is also good news, because the youth realizes what we won't and what is at stake? Wouldn't have thought that not everything can be bought.. a little hope for them's still there, as we will ignore it til our deaths ;)
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.
Article mentions that as the polar ice melts there is MORE activity up there which increases the need for these ships. And the US is about to have just one left, which for some reason in down for maintenance in... the winter?
Surprise, this is what happens when you shift everything in heavy industry or production in general off to India and China without keeping at least some production domestic or at least have everything documented and regularly (i.e. once every ten years) check if the documentation is accurate and workers can understand it to build a product that meets specifications.
The U.S. doesn't have a centrally planned economy. Each business is free to do as it wishes... and if they wished to survive competitively, they moved their production offshore (helps avoid UAW strikes). Easy to know U.S. lost expertise, but tough question how do you get it back? Tariffs? A larger military-industrial complex? Even larger government?
You don't need a centrally planned economy. Subsidies are enough incentive to at least keep a bit of production around.
> Easy to know U.S. lost expertise, but tough question how do you get it back?
Invest money into subsidies / R&D like in the icebreaker case, or raise tariffs against Chinese and Indian price dumping.
Surprise, this is what happens when you shift everything in heavy industry or production in general off to India and China without keeping at least some production domestic or at least have everything documented and regularly (i.e. once every ten years) check if the documentation is accurate and workers can understand it to build a product that meets specifications.
You probably mean just China. India's manufacturing output is less than 1/10th of China's manufacturing output.
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.
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.
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.)
1.1.1.1 does not work with archive.ph and the related family of archive sites, due to choices on the archive.* end of things. See ex. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36970702
Thanks!
> 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?
No, they aren’t armoured nearly as much as WWII era ships; it shorten range, slows them down, and doesn’t really work against guided weapons