Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why jet engines aren't made in China

aakash.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 342 posts

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#171

Post by vasvir »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #82

> 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…

This is not my understanding by reading the article. The blade failure will destroy the plane if developed independently of the rest. So modern nacelles will contain the blast as you say but they have decades of integration testing together with the blades in all kind of conditions.

if you develop everything anew there will be mismatches in tolerances and thousands of potential individual failure risks that can be combined in interesting, unexpected and fatal ways.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#172

Post by WillAdams »

netcan wrote: post #167
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…

That said, we're still running heavy presses:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoa_50,000-ton_forging_press

(which has made parts for pretty much every U.S. produced jet aircraft since the '60s)

Interestingly, Tesla has invested in some largish presses:

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

which makes for a large reduction in the quantity of parts (but also complicates repairs https://www.northwestautocollision.com/the-most-common-tesla...)

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#173

Post by Alpha3031 »

lenkite wrote: post #123

> The USSR, now Russia, entered in the 1950s, when the technology was still new and the Western advantage was much smaller, and they still, over their entire history, did not produce a civil or military engine that had parity with West. Interesting reading. Sadly, once I encountered this, I realized the article was extremely biased. The USSR successfully achieved this several times. I suspect this article will age ba…

Do you mean WS-19? It gives 2023 as the production date for WS-15, which is in the past.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#174

Post by lonelyasacloud »

dgudkov wrote: post #65

> And jet engines do not have any lower-tier market with underserved demand They actually do. The segment of small jet-powered (military) drones is rapidly growing and isn't served by the big jet engine manufacturers.

If there was ever a sector where the Chinese ability to cost effectively churn out good enough then drone applications are it.

Getting a handle on how nations are doing for jet powered drone is a bit tricky because of limited data available for what is primarily a military application. But, if we take model aircraft applications as proxy, then my understanding is that the Chinese company Swiwin (est. 2013) is already undercutting everyone else.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#175

Post by csomar »

noir_lord wrote: post #159
csomar wrote: post #114

The OP is trying to summarize a 1.4Bn country failure to achieve jet engine in: if you do these couple tricks; or because of these two things. If you're a small country, sure, that kind of strategy might make sense. Pick your battles, run the country like a startup (i.e. bet on one or two industries). China's strategy is the opposite of that: just make production costs low across the board (transport, energy, housing…

Almost everyone at the top of the CCP has an engineering background. So yeah their five year plans are indeed often “Invest in science/engineering”, they are an interesting country.

Is that really that interesting? Imagine giving a bunch of tech nerds some funds and freedom to do whatever. The end result will be software/tech (whether the product is useful is actually another story).

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#176

Post by inglor_cz »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #170
inglor_cz wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Scale matters, and there are aftereffects on the society as a whole.

Historically, societies which produced a lot of ideologically minded professionals (such as clergy), tended towards implementing that ideology top-down. I am on board with Turchin's theory of elite overproduction here, and gender studies is modern equivalent of catechism.

To choose a less ideological example: personally, I love Egyptology, but I would be a strict opponent of producing as many Egyptologists as aerospace engineers. Chances are that the superfluous graduates would push for an Egyptocentric department in every public institution and half of private ones.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#177

Post by foldr »

bruce511 wrote: post #169
foldr wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mean…

Supercruise matters directly for BVR combat. It means that you can get high and fast to launch your missiles with the best parameters without burning half your fuel via afterburners. (Many fighter jets would burn through all their fuel in under 10 minutes at full afterburner.)

Maintenance hours are sure to matter in a real war where equipment is getting destroyed and supply lines are being disrupted.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#178

Post by Zigurd »

leonidasrup wrote: post #142

Jet Engines Aren’t “Made In China” because companies are not allowed to outsource jet engines manufacturing to China. Gas turbine engines and associated equipment are seen as military technology, which is subject export controls by International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) of U.S. Department of State. https://precisionam.com/articles/precision-machining/itar-re... https://aircraft.zone/navigating-the-rules-a-g…

This plus subsidizing R&D via military contracts is how jet engines for passenger aircraft remain a US and European pursuit.

Will jet engines never be made in China? Don't bet against them. There's no guarantee that the legacy of the Cold War technology race will continue to subsidize western jet engine development.

There are reasons to think this subsidized moat will hold for a while: geared turbofan engines will deliver another increment in efficiency that passenger airlines can't ignore. Until that technology step is commoditized, the incumbent jet engine makers are relatively safe.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#179

Post by wahern »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #149
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…

This is the part I don't understand about chip export restrictions; the argument used is that high-end chips would be used for high-tech weaponry, but most weapons don't need high-end chips, 2-5 generations old chips are good enough for most smart weapons. I mean the Tomahawk is from '83, the HIMARS from the late 90's, etc. I don't believe that high end, small process chips are used in any weapons right now. The only…

Weapons systems like the Tomahawk and HIMARS are continually evolved, especially the electronic systems like navigation and command+control. The iteration isn't nearly as fast as in other industries, but the modern incarnations are not 30+ years old, AFAIU, old stockpile notwithstanding.

That's also why they're so damned expensive, and why it's difficult for upstarts to break into the market with cheaper alternatives. Like any tech company, once they get the customer locked into a platform they're constantly pushing upgrades to both stay technologically competitive and, more importantly, keep their margins high.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#180

Post by rbanffy »

mrmlz wrote: post #135
rbanffy wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can endure buggy software but I don’t want to deal with buggy planes A plane built for resilience against defective engine components would be very different from the airliners we fly today. I would assume more engines for redundancy, better protection against catastrophic failure, different designs to allow engines to function even if parts flew out, and so on. It’s an interesting design exercise to build from r…

Lol. Do you think todays aircraft are not designed with the idea that the engine can fail? And if you have unreliable components do you think redundancy is going to save you? And lets be real - there already exist a aerospace arena where you have a higher number of CAT-events - it's called the military. And they deal with it by having a parachute for each passenger.. No - in effect building jet-engines (that are comm…

> Do you think todays aircraft are not designed with the idea that the engine can fail?

Of course they are - but the engines are also designed to be extremely reliable, and that's why you get away with two engines on long flights over water, something previously only available for planes with four engines.

> No - in effect building jet-engines (that are commercially viable i.e. fuel and efficeny) is not a easy to disrupt business.

That's true. My point being that building a better jet engine might be the hardest way to disrupt the business - making a better propulsion system, which might or not include a jet engine, is a less difficult approach. If you have an electric plane with two motors, a big APU-like turbine charging a battery and powering the motors, you might get away with a cheaper turbine, running in less extreme regimes, and still have a more fuel efficient plane requiring less maintenance than a pure turboprop would.

You don't win a stacked game by playing it by the rules. You win by changing the game to another one you can actually win. China did that with cars already.

Post reply on HN