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Why jet engines aren't made in China

aakash.substack.com

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Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#11

Post by azan_ »

dmitrygr wrote: post #3
ivell wrote: post #2

This is a strange article. I did not find anything that is a blocker for China. China is a relative new comer to jet engines and this technology is tightly guarded by incumbents and needs time to mature. If China can master nuclear, space, chips, it seems a bit stretch to say they it is the Jer engines where they fail.

Material sciences needed for modern jet engine blades are a closely guarded secret, and thanks to not manufacturing them in china, those secrets have managed to remain not stolen. Fun story: it is not just jet engines - it is only recently that china was able to actually make indigenous ballpoint pens https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38566114

Isn't China currently among the leaders of material science with lots of top 10 universities located in China? [0] (in rankings that do not incorporate prestige but actual scientific output)

[0] https://scholars-stage.org/china-and-the-future-of-science/

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#12

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #6
dmitrygr wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Material sciences needed for modern jet engine blades are a closely guarded secret, and thanks to not manufacturing them in china, those secrets have managed to remain not stolen. Fun story: it is not just jet engines - it is only recently that china was able to actually make indigenous ballpoint pens https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38566114

Can Chinese companies order just the blades from RR or P&W? I've watched their manufacturing video recently and shocked how much of it was hand labour - it's not something I'd associate with precision. My partner said they must know better tho lol.

The RR video showing manual assembly of wax molds is a low volume development line. It isn't their main production process.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#13

Post by OneDonOne »

dmitrygr wrote: post #3
ivell wrote: post #2

This is a strange article. I did not find anything that is a blocker for China. China is a relative new comer to jet engines and this technology is tightly guarded by incumbents and needs time to mature. If China can master nuclear, space, chips, it seems a bit stretch to say they it is the Jer engines where they fail.

Material sciences needed for modern jet engine blades are a closely guarded secret, and thanks to not manufacturing them in china, those secrets have managed to remain not stolen. Fun story: it is not just jet engines - it is only recently that china was able to actually make indigenous ballpoint pens https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38566114

[dead]

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#14

Post by wmf »

azan_ wrote: post #11
dmitrygr wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Material sciences needed for modern jet engine blades are a closely guarded secret, and thanks to not manufacturing them in china, those secrets have managed to remain not stolen. Fun story: it is not just jet engines - it is only recently that china was able to actually make indigenous ballpoint pens https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38566114

Isn't China currently among the leaders of material science with lots of top 10 universities located in China? [0] (in rankings that do not incorporate prestige but actual scientific output) [0] https://scholars-stage.org/china-and-the-future-of-science/

Quantity isn't quality.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#15

Post by azan_ »

wmf wrote: post #14
azan_ wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't China currently among the leaders of material science with lots of top 10 universities located in China? [0] (in rankings that do not incorporate prestige but actual scientific output) [0] https://scholars-stage.org/china-and-the-future-of-science/

Quantity isn't quality.

Isn't having universities in global top10 actual quality?

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#16

Post by Lerc »

While I think the scale of American decline is overstated, I think there is a degree of Hemingway's law of motion.

A desired task that requires the most skilled makes those skilled people in demand. If a power has significantly more resources then they have more to offer those most skilled people.

It isn't at all disputed that there are a huge number of scientific discoveries that have occurred in The USA by people born outside the USA. That shows the draw of that power, but it is a relative draw. As the ratio becomes smaller the draw is less.

Advances like this are a feedback mechanism, being ahead gives you more resources to stay ahead.

If you consider the average contribution of advances to be a relatively steady force advancing a nation, yet a nation is in decline, it stands to reason that the decline is in another area and is being mitigated by the advances.

If the force propping things up goes somewhere else the change can be quite swift because the force of the decline becomes suddenly much more apparent.

I don't see the world going full Mad Max, but I can certainly see a sudden shift to the USA being considered no different to the UK,Japan, or Germany.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#17

Post by notahacker »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #6
dmitrygr wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Material sciences needed for modern jet engine blades are a closely guarded secret, and thanks to not manufacturing them in china, those secrets have managed to remain not stolen. Fun story: it is not just jet engines - it is only recently that china was able to actually make indigenous ballpoint pens https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38566114

Can Chinese companies order just the blades from RR or P&W? I've watched their manufacturing video recently and shocked how much of it was hand labour - it's not something I'd associate with precision. My partner said they must know better tho lol.

They can order engines from RR or P&W

But those companies have no commercial interest in supporting a Chinese manufacturer that just wants the blades even without export controls, when they can make much higher margins selling whole engines that must be maintained using their parts (in practice variants of the engines destined for COMAC also omit some of the IP that finds its way onto Airbus and Boeing because you can help a customer too much...)

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#19

Post by SecretDreams »

Grombobulous wrote: post #10
ivell wrote: post #2

This is a strange article. I did not find anything that is a blocker for China. China is a relative new comer to jet engines and this technology is tightly guarded by incumbents and needs time to mature. If China can master nuclear, space, chips, it seems a bit stretch to say they it is the Jer engines where they fail.

I even thought that the example of automobiles proved the jet engine analogy wrong. Sure, automobiles aren’t as complex as a jet engine, but they’re still complex, especially the internal combustion variants. Something like 10 years ago we were laughing at videos of Chinese cars spectacularly failing crash tests, and now China is selling to very heavily regulated markets. Same deal with things like high speed rail.

> but they’re still complex, especially the internal combustion variants.

I'm not sure China is known for their ICE designs. Like Korea, I suspect China partially pushed hard for EV specifically because the complexity in a battery + motor system is meaningfully simpler than the ICE equivalent and there's relatively little overlap in many facets outside of some first principles.

Jet engines are like ICE, but with a very reliability threshold. ICE is already complicated, but OEMs will accept a certain deviation on reliability if they need to because occurence might be low and severity is manageable. Not so in jet engine design. A single failure is a big deal.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#20

Post by alterom »

OneDonOne wrote: post #13
dmitrygr wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Material sciences needed for modern jet engine blades are a closely guarded secret, and thanks to not manufacturing them in china, those secrets have managed to remain not stolen. Fun story: it is not just jet engines - it is only recently that china was able to actually make indigenous ballpoint pens https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38566114

[dead]

This article is AI slop that explains exactly nothing about how ballpoint pen tips are made, or what makes it a difficult problem.

Do you have a better source?

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