Why jet engines aren't made in China • Hacker News Board

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#261

Post by coverband » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 6:24 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #231

Veedrac wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simplest explanation is surely that China is new to having a highly educated workforce and the ‘failed for some fifty years’ claims the article makes don't mean much given it. I don't think you need to entrain market arguments or whatnot to this, when it's only in the last decade China was a strong advanced manufacture player, and turbines are the kind of project that you probably wouldn't expect to go much faste…

Exactly. Advanced turbine manufacturing is largely a chemistry and metallurgy problem. The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution killed off China's intellectual capital so they had to start from scratch in 1976, and only really got moving in 1992. They've been way behind but will catch up eventually.

According to the article, the skills gained from decades of manufacturing experience and the yield capabilities are more critical than simple chemistry and metallurgy.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#262

Post by nradov » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 6:41 PM UTC

coverband wrote: post #261

nradov wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Advanced turbine manufacturing is largely a chemistry and metallurgy problem. The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution killed off China's intellectual capital so they had to start from scratch in 1976, and only really got moving in 1992. They've been way behind but will catch up eventually.

According to the article, the skills gained from decades of manufacturing experience and the yield capabilities are more critical than simple chemistry and metallurgy.

The chemistry and metallurgy involved here are far from "simple".

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#263

Post by nradov » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 6:46 PM UTC

guywithahat wrote: post #260

nradov wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boom Supersonic is entering the turbine engine market using private funding (they have received some limited government contracts and tax incentives). It seems like the free market is responding pretty well, although they still might fail. https://aviationweek.com/air-transport/aircraft-propulsion/b...

That was my thought too. You can absolutely enter the industry, and big players do as the industry becomes profitable enough to sustain more competitors, it's just not available to the average person in the same way the average person can easily compete in the todo app industry.

It's available to the average person if they're willing to put in the work necessary to attract investors. Blake Scholl was a regular engineer before he founded Boom Supersonic. He had made some money on previous jobs but wasn't super wealthy or connected.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#264

Post by KylerAce » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 6:49 PM UTC

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…

There are uses for AI running on the platform, you can see this in Ukraine right now where many kamikaze drones use AI for terminal guidance if the connection to the operator breaks after a target has been selected. How intensive that workload is and how it needs to be however I can't say.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#265

Post by fragmede » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 7:56 PM UTC

coverband wrote: post #261

nradov wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Advanced turbine manufacturing is largely a chemistry and metallurgy problem. The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution killed off China's intellectual capital so they had to start from scratch in 1976, and only really got moving in 1992. They've been way behind but will catch up eventually.

According to the article, the skills gained from decades of manufacturing experience and the yield capabilities are more critical than simple chemistry and metallurgy.

Okay. Advanced chemistry and metallurgy then. What do you want to call it? Jetenginebuildingology?

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#266

Post by ryukoposting » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 7:58 PM UTC

usernametaken29 wrote: post #210

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Regulatory pressure is a market force and a useful one too. That's assuming the regulations are competent. But if you let the market consolidate then the incumbent has enough money to buy off the government. Or it happens the other way around and the government is kind enough to set out regulations that only a megacorp can satisfy, thereby destroying the competition and awarding the last company standing the vaunte…

I agree partially with this. America is a special circumstance because of the way the industrial complex and government contracts are linked, and there’s a lot of blatant corruption. If you look at the European regulation framework I believe it works rather well. You have multiple big companies delivering components for different parts of the airplanes from different countries which are all individually big but not t…

The US Gov't doesn't always act like a single buyer. The contracts people talk about are like that, but most of what the DoD does is a much smaller scale.

Work for a company with lots of small contracts and you'll quickly see "oh the Navy does things this way, AFSOC wants it that way, DHS does it another way" and so on. Competition arises among the small companies because all these different agencies behave like independent buyers, even if they are all part of the same government.

The corruption issue is damped within the realm of small contracts, because it's hard for executive-level corruption to trickle that far down the bureaucracy. It's just hard to make a bunch of smaller organizations move in lockstep, even if they have the same top-level leadership.

Granted, network effects still matter. Certain groups want their stuff to be compatible with other groups' stuff. They all talk to each other too. If you bin a demo with JSOC and the guy has a buddy in AFSOC, you bet he's gonna get a beer with his friend and say "man, company X really binned it today." So there are still some consolidating pressures.

And you're right, all of this falls apart with the huge contracts. Just food for thought.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#267

Post by ablob » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 8:28 PM UTC

m3047 wrote: post #258

p_l wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Condit would probably still set in motion the moves that enabled the rot - moving HQ, unrealistic targets for 7X7 (now known as 787), selling off portions of Boeing to skim just the cream at the top, and so on. Not letting Boeing grab McDonnell-Douglas military projects might have stopped some of that, but it might have also accelerated it.

My impression was that it was a reverse buyout. Where did senior management come from after the merger?

Douglas afaik. Boeing moved HQ and quite a few engineering practices were abandoned.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#268

Post by MichaelZuo » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 8:39 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #232

MichaelZuo wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern high bypass jet engines are already pretty close to maximum possible thermodynamic efficiency, given realistic constraints such as weight, wing clearance, noise, and so on. Even if all constraints were relaxed, the absolute limit might be another halving of fuel consumption. (with trillions of R&D) And beyond that, there literally can never be jet engines significantly more efficient, until the end of the univ…

There is still the potential for significant efficiency improvements with open rotor ultra-high bypass propfan designs. https://www.geaerospace.com/news/articles/shape-things-come-... And for short flights, battery electric or hybrid power could boost efficiency even further. Although that will depend on developing batteries with better safety and power density characteristics.

The further halving already includes literally everything under the sun, such as open rotor ultra-high bypass propfan designs.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#269

Post by leonidasrup » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 8:48 PM UTC

SecretDreams wrote: post #19

Grombobulous wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ve…

China pushed EVs for multiple reasons:

1. Geopolitical risk of oil dependence. Domestic Chinese EVs are not dependent on imported oil. Oil imports would be at risk in case of a Taiwan conflict.

2. China already had established battery manufacturing. EVs are essentially batteries on wheels. For example the BYD Company (formerly named Shenzhen BYD Battery Company Limited) manufactured batteries long before manufacturing cars.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#270

Post by m0llusk » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 9:45 PM UTC

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…

High speed rail in China is a disaster. Basic safety failings have led to repeated crashes and deaths. Confiscation of property on a massive scale has damaged government credibility. Trillions of dollars worth of investment is not paying off while depreciation does it's work. Prices have been cranked up, large numbers of workers have been fired, and the whole system is still deep in the red. The only solid good coming from Chinese high speed rail is the demonstration of how much damage out of control dictators can do to the bottom line.