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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

#161

Post by Lio »

rvba wrote: post #121
csomar wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All the money and talent in the world can't replicate real users generating real data that you can use to improve Basically, China excellence in EVs and Solar was driven by the market being new. It's hard (almost impossible?) to outrank an incumbent very entrenched in a big market. You need a paradigm shift (ie: iphone vs nokia) to make the change.

Or good spies who steal the secrets + few years of subsidies to give runway for the new companies

When I was at uni in the 90s I remember hearing one of our lecturers tell stories about visitors to British Aerospace being caught wearing shoes with sticky soles to try and capture small amounts of swarf for industrial espionage.

So yes, that does happen.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#162

Post by seanmcdirmid »

russli1993 wrote: post #124
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #24

Earlier 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…

CJ1000A is being certified by 2028. It is equivalent to LEAP engines on fuel burn. WS15 and WS19 are all shipping today and have thrust to weight ratio above 10. CJ2000 is a 35-ton trust, genx fuel burn class engine, on track for 2030.

Like all of high performance Chinese engines, the CJ1000A won’t be commercially viable if it has to be overhauled for every 100 hours of flight time. There is a reason China still imports most of the jet turbines it uses.

Once China figures out how to have both at the same time, they will basically take over the worldwide market, let alone their domestic market.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#164

Post by jurgenburgen »

margalabargala wrote: post #71
OneDonOne wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They are not microscopic! I can easily see the balls in the tips of ballpoint pens.

The BBC article even mentions that they are milliscopic, not microscopic.

> 2.3-millimetre

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#165

Post by jurgenburgen »

TFNA wrote: post #156
8note wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is it really a tired meme? its a clear prioritzation choice from the government, and that prioritization is itself a technology notably this same prioritization mode resulted in the soviet union failing to produce quality of life improvements for its citizens. the failure is that the CCP is unable to prioritize making simple useful stuff

Have you been to urban China anytime after that 2017 article? The country is now as developed as anywhere else, indeed it feels like it is gradually overtaking other developed countries. The comparison to the Soviet Union feels ridiculous to anyone with a firsthand experience of the country.

The political push in the US to cling to legacy fossil fuel technologies feels to me more Soviet-like if anything.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#166

Post by mschuster91 »

> When it takes months to determine whether a single change has produced a positive impact, directional intuition is critical to faster development, and that lives entirely as tacit knowledge amongst generations of aerospace, materials, and mechanical engineers.

... and implied by that is that no one who holds that knowledge is going to be braindead enough and go and help China to destroy their industry just like they did with everyone else.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#167

Post by netcan »

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.…

≥jet engines have a market structure that's uniquely terrible for traditional free market societies.

A lot of the theoretical concepts behind this... They need updating to account for the last generation of experience. For the most part, the concepts were developed in the context of the industrial revolution(s) and manufacturing.

We are talking about manufacturing here, but the US economy in the last generation is a story about software, services, non-manufacturing firms and manufacturing firms the side step (as best they can) the core paradigm of manufacturing economics.

Competitive pricing, substitutes and alternatives, a strategic paradigm governed by market prices, marginal costs, and manufacturing quality... This is relatively marginal paradigm in the US economy, certainly in terms of market cap. In china, it is their bread and butter.

Low margin, highly competitive components manufacturing... Is that really a forte a free market societies in 2026? We outsource the "commodity value add" parts of the process. We certainly do not put them at the center of corporate strategy.

I agree about "corporate rot." I don't think anyone has a good answer to this either. China included. In practice, the best solution appears to be young vibrant companies. VW or Ford vs Tesla & BYD. VW and Ford exist because of history. Tesla & BYD exist because they perform well.

Schumpeter's free market solution was creative destruction... But, we've never really had a system for promoting this.

Part of the problem is that in a global market, allowing a company to fail creates room in the market for renewal, but there's no guarantee that your country will fill it. If Germany had come down hard on VW after the turbo diesel scandal... They probably would have just ceded market share to Korea or China or the US or something.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#169

Post by bruce511 »

foldr wrote: post #133
bruce511 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But interestingly their ambitions are "local". This has a large impact on the machines and materials required. In other words, let's says the Chinese military jet engine is 15 years behind is say fuel economy. Which reduces range. If the conflict is local that doesn't matter overmuch. Equally operating from land, not carriers, reduces reach, but if what you want to reach is local then that doesn't matter. If China ha…

In a military context, the main technological gaps relating to jet engines are supercruise and maintenance hours. Both are potentially quite relevant in a ‘local’ conflict.

I'm not sure about maintenance hours. That matters as a function of proximity to maintenance staff, parts, new supply and so on. Flying from home bases, with no shortage of skilled labor can cover that.

Supercruise also matters a bit less when the distance to combat is shorter. Less fuel expended on "getting there" is more fuel for "on station". Plus, assuming more-or-less unlimited supply of machines and pilots means more flight hours on station.

So while the engines play a part in a hypothetical conflict, supply lines (and the length thereof) play (I think) a larger part.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#170

Post by amanaplanacanal »

inglor_cz wrote: post #129
bluGill wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are about as many gender study majors in the U.S. per year as there are aviation engineering majors. That is one small niche of engineering majors that includes all of gender study.

That's actually pretty bad. The rest of the world is very willing to spend money on American aerospace products and services. Is it willing to buy gender theory from you for similar amounts of money? If not, the production of specialized majors should not be 1:1.

Even in our "productivity at any cost" society, sometimes people still study things that they find interesting. That's probably a good thing, in the long run.
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