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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

#301

Post by coderenegade »

nradov wrote: post #239
coderenegade wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The philosophy in aerospace is more to build a better engine rather than to have more engines, and this extends to every aspect of aircraft design. Engines are already built to contain catastrophic failure, and the planes themselves remain functional for all but the most extreme situations. We're at the point where essentially every lost aircraft is a compound failure, with significant human factors contributing to t…

There's no reason think that removing pilots altogether would enhance safety. Military experience has shown that mishap rates for unmanned aircraft are significantly higher than similar crewed aircraft. Routine flight operations can be automated pretty well now but where human pilots really earn their pay is with handling emergencies and other unexpected situations. The variety of potential emergencies is effectively…

When I last looked into it (admittedly a number of years ago now) this was true for remotely piloted aircraft, but there wasn't enough data on systems that pilot themselves with humans doing the navigating.

I'm not convinced that humans are particularly effective in emergency situations, especially when they're expected to go from monitoring systems that work 99.99% of the time, to suddenly aviating with alarms going off everywhere. I guess there's not really much of an alternative as it currently stands, but seeing how effective agentic AI is at chewing through data and analyzing systems makes me think that eventually, such systems will be used if they ever get to the necessary level of reliability.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#302

Post by p_l »

ablob wrote: post #267
m3047 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And all of that was initiated by Condit, who was from Boeing side

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#303

Post by p_l »

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?

The reverse buyout story is popular, but totally ignores that a bunch of the decisions and policies were established under Condit who was "lifer" at Boeing, and in fact said policies were complained about by engineering from both Boeing and McDonnell-Douglas side, all before Condit was forced by procurement scandal to leave his position

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#304

Post by foldr »

owenversteeg wrote: post #275

This, like the linked article by the same author ("America Doesn't Have the Stomach for Growth") raises a few interesting points but doesn't have a strong central thesis. If I could summarize this article, the main thrusts are 1) it's too technically complex, 2) the margins are thin, 3) there are strong regulatory requirements, and 4) opportunity cost vs. AI and chips. Anyone that knows Chinese modern manufacturing k…

The WS-15 is impressive, but it’s on a par with the jet engine technology available to the US military in ~2005. No-one doubts that China can make functioning jet engines. The question is how long the West can maintain the technical lead that it still does have.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#305

Post by moi2388 »

ReptileMan wrote: post #183
torginus wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very surprisingly it's never mentioned that car turbos have very similar requirements - spin at 10K+ RPM at 10000K+ for or tens of thousands of hours with little expected maintenance. They are often made of superalloys, yet regular cars, down to econoboxes costing 20-30k or less have them, and are made by the millions.

If you figure a way for airplane to stop on a cloud in mid flight to wait for a tow vehicle I have a Nobel award for you in whatever field you want.

Do blimps count?

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#306

Post by nradov »

coderenegade wrote: post #301
nradov wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reason think that removing pilots altogether would enhance safety. Military experience has shown that mishap rates for unmanned aircraft are significantly higher than similar crewed aircraft. Routine flight operations can be automated pretty well now but where human pilots really earn their pay is with handling emergencies and other unexpected situations. The variety of potential emergencies is effectively…

When I last looked into it (admittedly a number of years ago now) this was true for remotely piloted aircraft, but there wasn't enough data on systems that pilot themselves with humans doing the navigating. I'm not convinced that humans are particularly effective in emergency situations, especially when they're expected to go from monitoring systems that work 99.99% of the time, to suddenly aviating with alarms going…

LLM based agentic systems can never meet current FAA certification requirements for civil aircraft. The problem is that the internal logic is essentially a black box and there's no way to verify that it won't go off and do something totally bizarre in an unpredictable way. Now you could argue that human pilots are subject to the same limitation, and there have been a few cases where humans have intentionally crashed airplanes, but we have an intuitive model of how other human minds work and in an emergency you can depend on human pilots to at least try to save themselves.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#307

Post by notahacker »

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…

Considering the design and certification is the expensive bit that needs thousands of sales to break even (want certification to be cheaper? Well I guess if you like more crashes) I'm not sure what some artificial separation of design and systems integration to create the illusion of a competitive market achieves, except perhaps worse safety as suddenly you've got a lot of companies selling the same licenced design manufactured by the same supply chain competing only on how many QC corners they can cut to reduce prices...

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#308

Post by Lio »

DANmode wrote: post #274
Lio wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> swarf New word for me: filing debris!

Filing or cutting debris from a lathe or mill.

Something important to remember if you come across it, never pick it up with a bare hand because it can be razor sharp and never wear gloves when using a machine tool like a lathe unless you want to loose a hand... or worse.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#309

Post by Zigurd »

eduction wrote: post #251
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.

Because repression is a thing of the past in China? They continue to persecute investors and business executives who get too successful and to repress academic work they find politically objectionable. The communist party continues to exercise control over all intellectual endeavors. And don't think it doesn't matter for jet engines. This article gets into how the open acknowledgment and dissection of engine failure…

Persecuting or favoring investors on a political basis "and to repress academic work they find politically objectionable" has come to America. The only business people intellectually weak enough to not be a threat are real estate developers.

Not that the tech industry leaders who are way too comfortable with fascism are making such a good showing either.

Re: Why jet engines aren't made in China

#310

Post by vpcs111fm »

fragmede wrote: post #265
coverband wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Quick question. Same issue in Japan. They have talents and capital -- why do you think they are not able to come up with a reliable turbine -- when they can manufacture almost everything else?
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