5 ms·

You bring up a good point. During the cold war, the soviet union had a lot of success just copying western airframes. While at this point A320/B737/C919 class

You bring up a good point. During the cold war, the soviet union had a lot of success just copying western airframes. While at this point A320/B737/C919 class aircraft using traditional construction have reached a design consensus, it'll be interesting to see what happens if they try composites.

sjm-lbm 9y ago
Yeah, and it could also be interesting to see if they can quickly acclimate to more advanced technology. Back when the C919 launched, I read some speculation that it was built from stolen A320 plans - the dimensions are suspiciously similar. At least as I understand it, though, the current consensus is that they simply copied the size because the 320 proved the market for a plane of, more or less, exactly that size. If they can do something similar with composites - learn from/reverse engineer Airbus and Boeing composite designs, but not genuinely steal plans - they might be able to skip a fair amount of the extreme pain with composites A and B have had over the past decade.
vermontdevil 9y ago
See Concordski
- pdelbarba 9y ago
  Ok, maybe "success" was the wrong word to use ;) Edit: for the uninitiated, the Tu-144 was a bit of deathtrap. While it made some interesting improvements to the original design, it had numerous problems due to less advanced Soviet manufacturing.
dingaling 9y ago
The Soviets copied the B-29 and ... what else? The DC-3 was made under license so hardly counts as copying. Many of their aircraft had similar configurations to Western equivalents but different design aspects. Just like 707 and DC-8 in the West. On the other hand China literally copied Soviet types after the Sino-Soviet split. Tu-26, MiG-21, An-24, An-12 were all reversed engineered without tooling.
- pdelbarba 9y ago
  To name a few notable ones beyond the B-29: Tu-144, Tu-160, Buran and Yak-38 Of course, we don't know for sure what happened with these. It's unlikely they were cloned the same way the B-29 was (rivet for rivet) but they were very likely products of the espionage environment at the time.

sjm-lbm 9y ago

Yeah, and it could also be interesting to see if they can quickly acclimate to more advanced technology. Back when the C919 launched, I read some speculation that it was built from stolen A320 plans - the dimensions are suspiciously similar. At least as I understand it, though, the current consensus is that they simply copied the size because the 320 proved the market for a plane of, more or less, exactly that size. If they can do something similar with composites - learn from/reverse engineer Airbus and Boeing composite designs, but not genuinely steal plans - they might be able to skip a fair amount of the extreme pain with composites A and B have had over the past decade.

vermontdevil 9y ago

See Concordski

pdelbarba 9y ago
Ok, maybe "success" was the wrong word to use ;) Edit: for the uninitiated, the Tu-144 was a bit of deathtrap. While it made some interesting improvements to the original design, it had numerous problems due to less advanced Soviet manufacturing.

dingaling 9y ago

The Soviets copied the B-29 and ... what else? The DC-3 was made under license so hardly counts as copying. Many of their aircraft had similar configurations to Western equivalents but different design aspects. Just like 707 and DC-8 in the West. On the other hand China literally copied Soviet types after the Sino-Soviet split. Tu-26, MiG-21, An-24, An-12 were all reversed engineered without tooling.

pdelbarba 9y ago
To name a few notable ones beyond the B-29: Tu-144, Tu-160, Buran and Yak-38 Of course, we don't know for sure what happened with these. It's unlikely they were cloned the same way the B-29 was (rivet for rivet) but they were very likely products of the espionage environment at the time.