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Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

construction-physics.com

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Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#161

Post by leshow »

decafninja wrote: post #118
toomuchtodo wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Winning is winning. History is written by the victors. Important to know who you’re playing against, and whether you’re playing by the same rules, and if the rules matter. It’s not great, but it is what it is. We must operate in a way based upon how the world is, not the way that we wish it was.

At this point, China is outdoing the West in so many ways, and rapidly catching up in the areas where it still lags. I’m not one to eagerly praise the CCP, but it’s hard to not see how China is progressing while the West lags more and more. The West plays nice as much as possible. China is playing to win.

> The West plays nice as much as possible.

Please, tell us how you came to this conclusion

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#162

Post by kjs3 »

thfuran wrote: post #142
beloch wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada has the same problem with building icebreakers. The problem with icebreakers capable of dealing with multi-year ice is that they're a very expensive and specialized kind of ship that's hard to construct, but also the sort of ship that has a very long lifetime. Only a few governments in the world have any need of such ships, and they typically only need a few in the span of many decades. By the time Canada got…

>However, then shipyards that haven't made an icebreaker for twenty years would become shipyards that haven't made one for forty years. Is there really much difference?

Well...it's reasonable for the shipyard to still employ folks with hands on experience 20 years later. I occasionally get tapped to pitch in on things I did 20 years ago (even if it's just "why the hell did you do this?"), and shipbuilding changes vastly slower than my gig. That's much less likely 40 years on.

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#163

Post by leshow »

bgnn wrote: post #87
cyberax wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US has globalized away its maritime industry It hasn't. Jones Act _protects_ the US maritime industry, so it stagnated and died. Nobody wants the US ships unless they have to use them, they're crap compared to ships from other countries. > and they still can't find builders. That's because shipyards are basically a defense industry subsidiary. So they receive a fixed amount of orders, and it's known for years i…

Isn't it a similar case with the American busses? They are crap because they're protected? Similar with Boeing too.

The decline in quality of out Boeing has coincided with a collapse of the regulatory framework that kept profit extraction limited since the 70's and 80's. Now you've got the worst of both worlds, where the industry is protected and subsidized, production gets off-shored and outsourced anyway while massive profits flow into shareholders pockets in the form of stock buybacks. It's funny that you look at this and blame the protectionist aspect when "protectionism" literally built the industry in the first place.

Every country who isn't just getting exploited for their natural resources or labor has built their industry by protecting it.

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#164

Post by kjs3 »

mattmaroon wrote: post #140
0xffff2 wrote: post #3

An interesting summary, but I don't think the article really answered the headline. In particular, I'm left wondering which is the bigger problem: Is it that the US ship builders aren't competent and have turned what should have been a fairly straightforward modification of an existing design into a huge boondoggle, or is it that the government requirements are poorly thought out and/or overly ambitious, resulting in…

The root cause is that naval warfare has practically no role in national security and hasn’t in a long time. Even ignoring nuclear weaponry and mutually assured destruction, ships are expensive and fragile. They are easily destroyed from above or below, which makes them only useful against nations that don’t have modern military technology. If you need a floating platform to fight Houthi rebels they’re useful, if we’…

Ships are useful for more than combat. Even icebreakers.

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#165

Post by davemp »

thijson wrote: post #17
wongarsu wrote: post #5

So in short the US only builds a tiny number of them once every two to three decades, so nobody has any experience. And letting someone with experience build them is out of the question because then it wouldn't be built in the US. This seems like a reoccurring story when talking about anything vaguely infrastructure related in the US.

Seems so, TSMC had issues with keeping costs under control while building their fab in Arizona. The military is having trouble building submarines and ships at the same rate as China is capable of. Nuclear plants are being built way over cost. I'm reminded of this article which explains why elevators cost so much more here in the USA than the rest of the world: https://archive.is/u7Bp9

> And plumbing codes in America require an entire network of ventilation piping that has been deemed largely unnecessary in much of the world.

There’s a lot of surprising info in that article. This one section that I actually have passing knowledge of is just blatantly false. The majority of US states use and heavily contribute to the international plumbing code which allows for single stack ventilation as described in their linked article. My house from 1958 has single stack ventilation…

Sections like that with easily verifiable falsehoods bring the rest of the facts presented by the article into question for me.

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#166

Post by [deleted] »

decafninja wrote: post #109
cyberax wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US has globalized away its maritime industry It hasn't. Jones Act _protects_ the US maritime industry, so it stagnated and died. Nobody wants the US ships unless they have to use them, they're crap compared to ships from other countries. > and they still can't find builders. That's because shipyards are basically a defense industry subsidiary. So they receive a fixed amount of orders, and it's known for years i…

What’s the general consensus on the state of US Navy ships? The most recent classes seem riddled with various problems - see Zumwalt, LCS, Constellation. I suppose the Ford is relatively ok.

[deleted]

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#167

Post by wakawaka28 »

0xffff2 wrote: post #3

An interesting summary, but I don't think the article really answered the headline. In particular, I'm left wondering which is the bigger problem: Is it that the US ship builders aren't competent and have turned what should have been a fairly straightforward modification of an existing design into a huge boondoggle, or is it that the government requirements are poorly thought out and/or overly ambitious, resulting in…

Labor is much more expensive in the US than elsewhere. That is the overwhelming burden in every industry. We need protectionist laws to guarantee that we can manufacture what we must have for strategic reasons, at minimum.

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#168

Post by leshow »

ronjakoi wrote: post #97
cyberax wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US has globalized away its maritime industry It hasn't. Jones Act _protects_ the US maritime industry, so it stagnated and died. Nobody wants the US ships unless they have to use them, they're crap compared to ships from other countries. > and they still can't find builders. That's because shipyards are basically a defense industry subsidiary. So they receive a fixed amount of orders, and it's known for years i…

I can assure you, shipyards here in Finland are just as, if not more, unionized.

I would guess the shipbuilding industry in Finland is also built on subsidy and "protectionism" just like every other successful industry too. A cursory google search shows millions that were made available to shipbuilders: https://www.businessfinland.fi/en/for-finnish-customers/serv...

I'd bet that's just scratching the surface. The only way any country has been able to develop their productive capacities is through public grants and subsidies. The history of US industry shows the same thing, research in materials, electronics, the internet, etc were all accomplished through publicly funded research.

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#169

Post by wakawaka28 »

hintymad wrote: post #145
jahewson wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it that the US ship builders aren't competent Yes, they are woefully uncompetitive. They produce single-digit numbers of commercial oceangoing ships annually, at 2-4x the cost of elsewhere. It’s an industry on life support.

Curious why the US does not think this is a big problem. I mean, look at the US 80 years ago. The US easily out produced the Axis. We could produce faster and cheaper. There's really no excuse that the cost of making canon shells is 10x higher than Russia. Isn't being able to manufacturing cheaply the signature of a highly developed society? Besides, expertise is not just volumes of blueprints, right? We can only kee…

>There's really no excuse that the cost of making canon shells is 10x higher than Russia. Isn't being able to manufacturing cheaply the signature of a highly developed society?

We have prioritized high wages for workers in the US, a phenomenon also driven by the reserve currency status of the dollar. Russians, Chinese, and Indians work for a fraction of the price we do. We have high labor costs and have to import many components due to them being made much cheaper elsewhere.

>We can only keep our expertise by actively doing. If the next war breaks out, how would the US win? By sending armies of lawyers and coders?

You're totally right. This war is coming very fast as well, and by some accounts has already started. I worry we will all soon find out just how bad of a position we are in, the hard way.

Re: Why the U.S. can't build icebreaking ships

#170

Post by mattmaroon »

kjs3 wrote: post #164
mattmaroon wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The root cause is that naval warfare has practically no role in national security and hasn’t in a long time. Even ignoring nuclear weaponry and mutually assured destruction, ships are expensive and fragile. They are easily destroyed from above or below, which makes them only useful against nations that don’t have modern military technology. If you need a floating platform to fight Houthi rebels they’re useful, if we’…

Ships are useful for more than combat. Even icebreakers.

Didn’t say they weren’t.

But if they were useful for national security we’d be building them just fine.

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