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Why jet engines aren't made in China

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Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#81

Post by vkazanov »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #63
FpUser wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"50 years of trial and error that is well kept under lock in key in the west." Bollocks. Russia does that as well, single crystal turbine blades in particular so the west is not the sole gatekeeper here. Given the circumstances Russia might as well share the tech for some things in return

Cheap AND high performance. There is a reason Russian passenger jets are often engined with western jet turbines even though Russia makes their own.

One more factor: Similar to how this works in semiconductors, some things are just too expensive to build without having an economy of scale.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#82

Post by KennyBlanken »

> A failure in these blades would be catastrophic, resulting in the destruction of the engine, likely followed by the plane itself.

Aaaaand the author just lost any credibility with me whatsoever. This is someone who knows big words, maybe did some research and ChatGPTing, and doesn't actually know shit about aircraft or their engines.

On passenger aircraft because passengers sit directly inline with the path a blade with insane levels of kinetic energy will probably go, the nacelle is designed to contain it.

The engine must be able to contain a "blade off" event where a blade snaps during full rated thrust. Two videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j973645y5AA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcALjMJbAvU

The aircraft will not be "destroyed."

The blade could fail during takeoff climb and the plane would still be able to climb because all twin engine passenger jet aircraft must be able to conduct all phases of flight on one engine.

SWA 1380 had a passenger fatality not because of the blade hitting them, but because part of the cowling disintegrated, broke the window, and she was partially sucked out of the aircraft, which killed her.

If she'd been wearing her seatbelt, she would likely be alive today. As would several other passengers who, over the years, have been killed by debris breaking the window and them being sucked out.

The blade itself did not leave the engine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1380

That article lists a number of incidents, in roughly half of which the blade was contained. All the flights made it back to an airport...

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#83

Post by FooBarWidget »

ifwinterco wrote: post #78
tzs wrote: post #76

> It may be surprising, then, that in jet engines, China remains at least a full decade behind the West Do they need to be at the same level as the West? For civilian aircraft a decade or two behind seems like it would be good enough. For military aircraft that could be a significant disadvantage, but from what the net is telling me they have excellent air defenses so it seems unlikely someone with superior planes is…

If you want to sell commercial jets to anyone who isn’t Chinese, 20Y old engines aren’t good enough because modern engines are slightly more fuel efficient. The difference isn’t huge (I think it’s 10-20% or something), but when fuel is your main cost that’s enough to make older engines undesirable

What from I understand the issue is mainly service frequency rather than fuel efficiency.

Also, the domestic commercial jet market is still sizable, so excluding the domestic market from analyses is kinda weird.

Finally, lots of countries are spooked by arbitrary US sanctions and want to diversify.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#84

Post by irjustin »

shalmanese wrote: post #74

The more parsimonious explanation is that commercial jet engine production is downstream of commercial airbody production and China's currently limited by COMAC's scaling woes. All the money and talent in the world can't replicate real users generating real data that you can use to improve. I'd argue the opposite that jet engines have a market structure that's uniquely terrible for traditional free market societies.…

> All the money and talent in the world...

One nitpick, all the money in the world would be able to achieve the goal by simply giving rides away for free.

Overall, I agree that any industry that is extremely optimized requiring ultra high precision+knowledge in multiple verticals makes the barrier to entry beyond difficult. It just requires too much up front cash.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#85

Post by deterministic »

Cherry-picking individual technologies (such as jet engines) doesn't really say much. You could argue that companies like ASML and Rolls-Royce (jet engines) are evidence that Europe knows how to innovate and the US doesn't. That Airbus overtaking Boeing in a market once completely dominated by Boeing shows the US has lost its edge. That the European-designed ARM architecture winning the mobile phone wars shows the US has lost its chip design advantage. And so on.

But there are obvious counterarguments if you cherry-pick technologies where the US currently leads — Google Search, AI, and so on.

So I would be really careful extracting any kind of simple "truth" from examples like these. Different countries have different advantages, and those advantages shift over time. That's it.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#86

Post by yourapostasy »

colechristensen wrote: post #36
dylan604 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is aviation encumbered with patents like software development is?

For aerospace it's more like asking if Google, Meta, and Apple are encumbered by patents, because they're all big players. The smaller players tend to do one hyper-specific thing for a big player. Also for aerospace the patents are more legitimate. Software is encumbered by stupid patents but on a computer! whereas aerospace patents are more legitimately about hardware that indeed took years and millions to develop a…

> ...whereas aerospace patents are more legitimately about hardware that indeed took years and millions to develop and optimize.

Something that leaps out at me reading through semiconductor and aerospace patents is a noticeable fraction of them are basically saying, "hey, to achieve some desired effect was found to be useful, but it consumed because it was such a convoluted journey filled with zillions of dead ends, so we want a patent on that because the end result only looks obvious in hindsight". I don't see as much of this in software at this time, though I suspect it may change in the future.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#87

Post by FooBarWidget »

yanhangyhy wrote: post #75

This is also why China has heavily invested in high-speed rail. Even today, many people who are influenced by persistent misinformation and years of criticism toward China continue to question its high-speed rail system, asking why China doesn’t follow the U.S. model of relying on cars and airplanes instead. But China’s limited ability to rapidly scale commercial aviation means it would have to purchase large numbers…

Furthermore we should thank the amount of fossil fuel and CO2 reduction that HSR has given, or the planet will be really in trouble.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#89

Post by zuzululu »

the one thing that this article leaves out is very obvious and simple: culture

when you don't have an environment where truthful valid opinions or facts are allowed to freely be tested and communicated you simply can't build anything complex that requires strong individual integrity and honesty.

jets aren't the only stuff that China cannot make. Semiconductors are also a great example.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#90

Post by ifwinterco »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #83
ifwinterco wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to sell commercial jets to anyone who isn’t Chinese, 20Y old engines aren’t good enough because modern engines are slightly more fuel efficient. The difference isn’t huge (I think it’s 10-20% or something), but when fuel is your main cost that’s enough to make older engines undesirable

What from I understand the issue is mainly service frequency rather than fuel efficiency. Also, the domestic commercial jet market is still sizable, so excluding the domestic market from analyses is kinda weird. Finally, lots of countries are spooked by arbitrary US sanctions and want to diversify.

Yes I think eventually they will catch up because the Chinese domestic market is big enough to give them a market while they iterate.

With petrol/diesel engines they just gave up and went straight to electric, but there's no viable alternative to jet engines for planes, so they'll put in the work (plus the military incentive running in parallel)

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