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To build ships that break ice, U.S. must relearn to cut steel

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Re: To build ships that break ice, U.S. must relearn to cut steel

#141

Post by moonchrome »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #106
moonchrome wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of practical/contextual knowledge that isn't documented, and what's documented isn't guaranteed to be correct or can be misleading (terminology changes, standards change, some things are implied because they are obvious at the time, etc.)

Give some examples? That kind of 'undocumented' knowledge is lost because better tech has completely replaced it. I'm talking about inventions like the Spinning Mule or the steam engine. We have superseded them with electric motors and logic boards.

First thing that comes to mind is friends father was hitting retirement age after working at a petrochemical/plastics facility for ~20 years, was in charge of maintenance of some section. I think he told me the owner had to call him twice to help diagnose problems that were causing product outages.

These things don't get built on a whim - there's risks, regulations, documentation, procedures, experts, etc. At the end of the day you have people doing the work for decades, with an intuition about how things work.

Given infinite time you can recreate anything - but by the time you're done putting the puzzle together you're out of business.

Re: To build ships that break ice, U.S. must relearn to cut steel

#142

Post by Alupis »

georgeg23 wrote: post #118
Alupis wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Versus being quite literally held hostage by a non-cooperating foreign power for political gain? 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.

Can't we all just get along...

One can dream - but we have the entirety of human history as evidence that no, we cannot all just get along.

Re: To build ships that break ice, U.S. must relearn to cut steel

#143

Post by Arrath »

throe37848 wrote: post #48

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.

There's Gunderson Marine in Portland, OR.

Re: To build ships that break ice, U.S. must relearn to cut steel

#144

Post by User23 »

hwillis wrote: post #96
User23 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The U.S. doesn't have a centrally planned economy. Each business is free to do as it wishes... Currently US federal government spending is around 36% of GDP, which means 36% of the US economy is in fact centrally planned, albeit with some devolution in some cases.

I don't really disagree with you, but that's very misleading to say. 64% of the federal budget goes to social security, medicare/medicaid, disability etc. That is, it goes to individuals. It's not meaningful to call that economic planning. It's not in the slightest like paying for defense contractors or research or infrastructure. 11% goes to interest payments, ie people who bought bonds etc. For individuals that's c…

You raise valid points and I agree with the thrust of what you're saying. To quibble a bit though I'd say that Medicare and Medicaid aren't really individual spending, but rather a pharmaceuticals and healthcare subsidy, much like how food assistance programs amount to a food and agriculture subsidy.

Re: To build ships that break ice, U.S. must relearn to cut steel

#145

Post by pydry »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #97
0xDEF wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is actually a surprising that Russia is not the manufacturing capital of the world. They have super-cheap energy, Soviet-era high-quality STEM education, and 50 million cheap workers from Caucasus, Siberia, Far East Russia, and the Central Asian countries.

Russia is still structured as an empire, though the fraction of ethnic Russians is relatively high, historically speaking. That, together with its large size, requires a large section of the economy be slaved to the security sector. Frankly, Russia as a Chinese suzerainty might be one of the more productive alignments for the global economy, even if it isn’t great for America.

For those interested in a more analytical approach, this article/youTube video explains how the geographical vulnerability of Russia's western borders has led to both its high degree of overall militarization as well as its extreme sensitivity over Ukraine in particular:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/12/05/caspian_r...!

Although it is usually ignored, geography is fundamental to understanding why nations act the way they do.

Re: To build ships that break ice, U.S. must relearn to cut steel

#146

Post by cpursley »

pydry wrote: post #145
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia is still structured as an empire, though the fraction of ethnic Russians is relatively high, historically speaking. That, together with its large size, requires a large section of the economy be slaved to the security sector. Frankly, Russia as a Chinese suzerainty might be one of the more productive alignments for the global economy, even if it isn’t great for America.

For those interested in a more analytical approach, this article/youTube video explains how the geographical vulnerability of Russia's western borders has led to both its high degree of overall militarization as well as its extreme sensitivity over Ukraine in particular: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/12/05/caspian_r... ! Although it is usually ignored, geography is fundamental to understanding why nati…

There's actually an interesting book on this topic (first chapter covers exactly what you just wrote):

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25135194-prisoners-of-ge...

Re: To build ships that break ice, U.S. must relearn to cut steel

#147

Post by fragmede »

notamy wrote: post #30
HankB99 wrote: post #29

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

It's Cloudflare's fault.

Re: To build ships that break ice, U.S. must relearn to cut steel

#148

Post by dragonwriter »

bluGill wrote: post #140
dragonwriter wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The age of imperialism is not over, except where someone enforces it. That someone is mostly the US, but UK and France also do a lot of work that I know of. I would suggest that “the age of imperialism is over only to the extent that what were among the last of the great imperial powers enforce that condition” is absolutely no different than “the age of imperialism continues, under some of the same imperial powers…

Imperialism has a specifc definition which is not what we are doing. I'm not claiming the US is good, but it is better than imperialism anyway.

> Imperialism has a specific definition

Yes, when a central power (the metropole) dictates outcomes and behavior to other powers (the peripheries).

> which is not what we are doing

Its exactly what the upthread claim is that we are doing. I’m not as much arguing whether or not that is happening, as that the assertion that it is happening and that it is a constraint on imperialism is self-contradictory.

Re: To build ships that break ice, U.S. must relearn to cut steel

#149

Post by 1970-01-01 »

moonchrome wrote: post #141
1970-01-01 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give some examples? That kind of 'undocumented' knowledge is lost because better tech has completely replaced it. I'm talking about inventions like the Spinning Mule or the steam engine. We have superseded them with electric motors and logic boards.

First thing that comes to mind is friends father was hitting retirement age after working at a petrochemical/plastics facility for ~20 years, was in charge of maintenance of some section. I think he told me the owner had to call him twice to help diagnose problems that were causing product outages. These things don't get built on a whim - there's risks, regulations, documentation, procedures, experts, etc. At the end…

>At the end of the day you have people doing the work for decades, with an intuition about how things work.

That's exactly my point. This intuition is undocumented however it becomes superseded by new tech. Nobody can (successfully) run a plastics plant with decades of old hardware knowledge and expect to be in business another 20 years.

"In 1991, Aldo retired and Ed took over day-to-day management of the company. First Plastics began the initiative to replace and update its molding equipment with new large capacity presses in 1995. This initiative has placed First Plastics as one of the most technologically advanced injection molders in the Northeast. Today it continues to add the latest technology while increasing its manufacturing capacity."

https://firstplastics.com/about.html

Re: To build ships that break ice, U.S. must relearn to cut steel

#150

Post by FooBarBizBazz »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #106
moonchrome wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of practical/contextual knowledge that isn't documented, and what's documented isn't guaranteed to be correct or can be misleading (terminology changes, standards change, some things are implied because they are obvious at the time, etc.)

Give some examples? That kind of 'undocumented' knowledge is lost because better tech has completely replaced it. I'm talking about inventions like the Spinning Mule or the steam engine. We have superseded them with electric motors and logic boards.

One example is how they had to reinvent the material codenamed fogbank.
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