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Why jet engines aren't made in China

aakash.substack.com

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Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#281

Post by null_shift »

torginus wrote: post #130
ivell wrote: post #2

This is a strange article. I did not find anything that is a blocker for China. China is a relative new comer to jet engines and this technology is tightly guarded by incumbents and needs time to mature. If China can master nuclear, space, chips, it seems a bit stretch to say they it is the Jer engines where they fail.

It seems the author started from a desiserd conclusion, and strung together fact(oid)s to support it without any understanding of them, sometimes making huge mistakes. For example the monocrystalline blades, which are touted as some holy grain, were in production engines on both sides of the iron curtain by the 70s. China has mastered this technology by the 2010s at the latest. As for airliner engines, I looked up bo…

As someone in the industry it is amusing to watch HN do some cursory googling and then make definitive statements with confidence.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#282

Post by maxglute »

m0llusk wrote: post #270
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 comin…

This delulu take. PRC HSR only had 1 disaster WenZhou, after which they shaped up and is functionally as safe as Japan, i.e. best in the world, more than euro operators, except on a magnitude larger network. Prices was kept flat literally for 10 years plus, after hike it is still far below inflation / wage increase. The whole system basically pays for itself in a few years on domestic fuel import savings alone, i.e. the aviation and freeing up slow rail from passenger to to freight which displaces diesel/trucking displaces like 1.5m barrels of oil PER DAY... ~50b+ per year in fuel cost alone never mind emissions avoided. It is objectively one of the highest ROI projects PRC has ever build, and stupendous bargain at 1T, which US overspends every 6 months on healthcare.

Like everyday US wastes on healthcare over OECD basline = enough $$$ for PRC to build like 300km of HSR, stations hardware and all. 1 week of US healthcare waste can build out entire Beijing to Shanghai route. Chinese HSR is best demonstration of why developmental dictatorship works.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#283

Post by nradov »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #280
nradov wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a silly idea. Design and manufacturing of something as complex as an airliner is inextricably coupled. There's no way for one company to design the whole aircraft and then just hand it off to others. We're not talking about toasters here.

> There's no way for one company to design the whole aircraft and then just hand it off to others. This is exactly what they do anyway whenever they subcontract any part of the production. You don't need a single company that makes the entire plane and don't even have that now. You can have companies that make engines, other companies that make the passenger seats, other companies that make the fuselage, other compan…

[dead]

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#285

Post by insane_dreamer »

russli1993 wrote: post #126
insane_dreamer wrote: post #116

another reason why China can't build jet engines: the jet engine manufacturers never relocated their manufacturing to China, which therefore prevented the Chinese from getting their hands on their IP. it's well known that the way China dominated in solar panels was by "transferring" (aka stealing) the IP from US solar panel makers who had foolishly set up shop in China to reduce costs, and ended up going out of busin…

Chinese solar technology is multiple generations ahead of US companies. First solar panels have a conversion rate of 17% while longi is 24.8% and demonstrating 26%. First solar should be out of the market without US government subsidies and protectionism.

sure, now it is 20 years later; but my point was about how the Chinese co's got started (basically, IP theft because US companies located production in China)

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#286

Post by bsder »

runako wrote: post #99
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.…

> 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…

> The US's longstanding refusal to apply antiticompetition law causes a number of harms to consumers, entrepreneurs, and the stability of our economy.

It's worse than this.

The US Government had an actual goal to reduce the number of defense suppliers. And they succeeded at it.

Yeah, talk about an own goal ...

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#287

Post by restalis »

ragebol wrote: post #225
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.…

I'd expect the competition for these companies to come in not from someone using the same technology, but a different technology that serves the same purpose. Eg. what happened to Kodak and Nokia. For jet engines, the only thing that comes to mind is electric aircraft. No single-crystal turbine blades needed at all. I may have picked a bad example, but the principle stands. EDIT: China has an extensive high-speed rai…

"For jet engines, the only thing that comes to mind is electric aircraft. No single-crystal turbine blades needed at all. I may have picked a bad example, but the principle stands."

I understand the idea you wanted to convey and that commenting on the technical detail is not something we're supposed to do, but the technical side of your example is just too glaring to ignore. A people-carrying aircraft, be it of electric propulsion, or of other type, is heavy. Like, several tons (at minimum) heavy. To acquire the necessary portance, the aircraft has to be accelerated (on its inert wheels) on the runway up to the take-off speed and then to be able to hold the cruising speed, using engines capable of generating such thrust by only moving the air. That's a lot of force right there, and the engine that has to do this, will have to be pretty tough. Regardless of the fact that the source of the on-board energy is electric or not, that same air will have to be moved, somehow, at the needed speeds, and it will be by an engine that will look and work pretty much the same way the current jet engines do, since the shape is dictated by the aerodynamics and the internal design is given by the (air) fluid dynamics it has to work with. The single-crystal turbine blades are just an optimization. Weaker (regular fine-grained casting) materials can be used, but that will mean limiting the performance to lower tolerance levels (and most likely be heavier as well, to compensate for the lower mechanical strength).

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#288

Post by restalis »

Merad wrote: post #238
ragebol wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd expect the competition for these companies to come in not from someone using the same technology, but a different technology that serves the same purpose. Eg. what happened to Kodak and Nokia. For jet engines, the only thing that comes to mind is electric aircraft. No single-crystal turbine blades needed at all. I may have picked a bad example, but the principle stands. EDIT: China has an extensive high-speed rai…

Serious electric aircraft are really gated behind major advancements in battery technology or some alternative power storage tech. The energy density of batteries is an order of magnitude less than fossil fuels, and you have to carry the heavy batteries with you the entire trip (vs burning off fuel as you fly).

"The energy density of batteries is an order of magnitude less than fossil fuels, and you have to carry the heavy batteries with you the entire trip (vs burning off fuel as you fly)."

It's even worse. Nowadays, in order to land, the aircraft needs to be almost empty, otherwise the mechanical structure that supports the stress of impact with the runway may break. So, heavier (as with batteries included) aircraft landing will mean the need to design sturdier landing gear, and stronger landing gear will most likely mean heavier materials as well.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#289

Post by JSR_FDED »

zuzululu wrote: post #252
JSR_FDED wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has an incredible engineering culture. If you think their meteoric rise is accomplished without being able to share opinions or facts you’re very much mistaken. To imply they lack “individual integrity and honesty” is misinformed, deluded, and likely racist.

reaching for racism over what is an obvious gap in cultural and political environment is just lazy if China has such incredible engineering culture where are the jet engines? semiconductors ?

Two weeks ago I took the high speed train to Shenzhen, which was better than any domestic flight in the US. Then I had a drone deliver an iced tea. I took a driverless taxi to get there. The roads were incredibly quiet and the air quality was excellent because almost all cars and motorcycles are electric. World’s first small modular reactor goes live in a few months. The Huawei Ascend GPUs aren’t at Nvidia level, but they’re still allowing the Chinese models to be within a few months of frontier labs, with the gap closing with every new model release. They have no EUV capabilities yet, but neither does the US because that comes from the Netherlands.

Maybe I shouldn’t have used the word racist. But in the same way that stupidity and evil look very similar, so do racism and ignorance.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#290

Post by zuzululu »

JSR_FDED wrote: post #289
zuzululu wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reaching for racism over what is an obvious gap in cultural and political environment is just lazy if China has such incredible engineering culture where are the jet engines? semiconductors ?

Two weeks ago I took the high speed train to Shenzhen, which was better than any domestic flight in the US. Then I had a drone deliver an iced tea. I took a driverless taxi to get there. The roads were incredibly quiet and the air quality was excellent because almost all cars and motorcycles are electric. World’s first small modular reactor goes live in a few months. The Huawei Ascend GPUs aren’t at Nvidia level, but…

you are just rambling with totally unrelated topics the article is about why china can't make jet engines.

im asking you a second time because you keep avoiding it: why can't china make jet engines and semiconductors if they have such great engineering culture and talent as you claim?

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