Assuming China has spent 50 years already on jet engines, yeah. All these article just write off China.
Rote learning, no democracy. Proper jet engines WILL come out of China soon. lol. Just watch this space.
Why jet engines aren't made in China
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Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China
#92Earlier 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
Does Russia do it at comparable yield at the same quality level? India can do single crystal turbine blades too, but at a small scale.
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Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Material engineering is the well known blocker for China, same with semiconductors. They basically have to replicate 50 years of trial and error that is well kept under lock in key in the west. China hasn’t mastered chips either yet in the same way it hasn’t mastered jet turbines: they can do cheap (high yields, low maintenance costs per hour of use), they can do high performance, they can’t do both yet at the same t…
>"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
I doubt that very much. 20ish years ago I read about the Indians being very upset that the engines in the Sukhoi fighters they bought weren't even making it to the promised (very modest) 300 operating hours between overhauls. That's far less than Western engines routinely achieve. And with the hollowing out of the Russian industrial base that's occurred since then, I'd be surprised if it's gotten any better in the intervening years.
Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China
#94Earlier 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
It is not the pen, it is the pen tip . Ballpoint pen tips are microscopic tungsten carbide ball held inside ultra-thin steel sockets. So you need cutting tolerances precise to 0.001 millimeters. If the socket is a fraction of a micron too loose, the ink leaks. Too tight, and the pen won't write. Source from al-Arabiya: https://english.alarabiya.net/variety/2017/01/14/At-last-Chi... The point (no pun intended) is that…
The ballpoint pen was invented in 1938. It doesn't rely on any arcane manufacturing technology.
Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China
#95> 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…
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Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China
#96this interview also talked a bit about the reasons its hard for get turbines to be manufactured in China, but coming at it from the gas power generation side.
https://www.decouple.media/p/the-gas-turbine-the-final-revel...
Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China
#97> 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…
For cruise missiles couple hour blade operating life is also a non problem.
Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China
#98> 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
The GEnx which powers the 787 is a 20 year-old engine design. There are thousands of jets flying around with 40+ year-old engine designs, especially in operations like charter and cargo where the aircraft spends more time on the ground than in the air. At the right price a 20 year-old design would be quite viable. Which indicates China is much more than a decade behind.
Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China
#99The 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.…
> The free market fundamentally doesn't have a good response to this problem
The market may not for the most capital-intensive businesses, but US laws at least attempt to address the situation. In Boeing's case, for example, the McDonnell-Douglas merger likely could have been blocked under existing anticompetitive laws.
The US's longstanding refusal to apply antiticompetition law causes a number of harms to consumers, entrepreneurs, and the stability of our economy.
Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China
#100While 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 b…
“America is in decline” is the consensus view. America dominating on all fronts is the contrarian view. I expect these views to swing like a pendulum in public discussion until something meaningful happens or until it’s clear in the rearview that America is in fact is more like UK, Japan, or Germany.
I think it's less that America is declining and more that China is rising. And really, most of the world is getting richer.