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Comac engineers miscalculated the forces that would be placed on the engines
- DoofusOfDeath 7y agoI'm curious of COMAC's engineers are facing similar levels of pressure to cut corners as did Boeing's engineers while working on the 737 MAX. Does anyone know if / why we should expect COMAC to avoid repeating Boeing's institutional failures? EDIT FOR CLARIFICATION: I'm not assuming that Boeing and COMAC face the same kinds of pressure. I'm asking if they face similar levels of pressure to have a design ready for large-scale roll-out.
- JackFr 7y agoBased on the very different commercial, cultural and political constraints they operate under, I would imagine any institutional failure would probably be unique to COMAC and certainly not a repeat of Boeing.
- monocasa 7y agoBoeing was cutting corners to try and have to avoid pilots being required to certify on 737-MAX if they have certs for previous decades of 737s. There's literally no way that any state flight administration would allow any previous certifications to apply to such a new airplane, so it's more just growing pains of a new design.
- ReptileMan 7y agoBoeing were not cutting corner with MAX. They were trying to fit square peg in a round hole. They tried to fit clean sheet design performance increase into age old mold. The fact that they mostly succeeded shows how amazing and talented engineers are there.
- tus88 7y agoWhat's a Comac?
- malandrew 7y agoBasically the Chinese equivalent to Boeing or Airbus.
- wereHamster 7y agoLiterally the first paragraph of the article: > BEIJING/PARIS (Reuters) - Development of China’s C919 single-aisle plane, already at least five years behind schedule, is going slower than expected, a dozen people familiar with the program told Reuters, as the state-owned Commercial Aircraft Corporation (COMAC) struggles with a range of technical issues that have severely restricted test flights.
- tus88 7y agoI don't bother reading things unless I can confirm my interest in the article. I can't do that with unknown acronyms.
- StreamBright 7y agoI guess you never read any article about any startup then.
- NextHendrix 7y agoVery annoying when you choose to reject cookies in the optional cookie consent menu and the page refreshes to ask you again
- dmitrygr 7y agowell, if they cannot store a cookie, how would they remember that you said "no cookies" ?
- Skunkleton 7y agoThere should be an option to only reject some cookies. No to tracking, yes to chocolate chip.
- blackrock 7y agoPerhaps this is just a growing pain, and they’ll eventually figure it all out. And it’s a good thing they did extensive testing and caught this now, while it was still in development. This is where you are supposed to catch these errors. Maybe this article was purposefully released to spread lies and defame COMAC’s reputation? Because that is what western journalism is pushing out these days about China. But the bottom line, is that COMAC didn’t have 2 of their planes fall out of the sky, like Boeing did.
- thisisnico 7y agoI agree with you, I've seen articles like this on hacker news for the past 5 years about how China is failing and China is unable to produce what North America is capable of. And the interesting thing is yes, at first they fail. Why should we expect them to get it right the first time? You learn with practice, and mistakes, and testing. I guarantee eventually they will have a functioning aircraft. This is normal process, with a narrative western spin.
- inferiorhuman 7y agoWhy should we expect them to get it right the first time? This isn't their first time (the ARJ21 was). Will COMAC succeed where Mitsubishi (Japan), Bombardier (Canada), Sukhoi (Russia), and Lockheed (USA) have failed? Maybe. But China's set a deadline of 2025 to have their own homegrown product in service and it's doubtful that specific goal will be met. The western aerospace industry is hardly betting against China here. I think Airbus was expecting COMAC to be competitive by 2020. Hell, a huge part of the reason that the 737 MAX exists today is that the Boeing CEO thought China was their biggest threat.
- thisisnico 7y agoBombardier (Canada) failed because they had produced a better plane, and boeing made efforts to make it impossible to sell in America. So they've teamed up with Airbus to be able to access the market.
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- JackFr 7y agoThe recent failures of Boeing and this story underscore how very, very, very, very difficult it is to build a modern airliner. I'm hard pressed to come up with any other product which has as many complex interacting systems, requiring expertise in aerodynamics, materials science, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, software, UX design among other things, with very little margin for error. Honestly they're kind of amazing.
- hangonhn 7y agoThis is sort of one of the metrics James Fallows outlined in his book, "China Airborne". In order to build a competitive airliner, it requires integration of so many discipline: metallurgy, software, aeronautics, engineering, etc. He argues that when China can build a competitive airliner, their development can be said to have to be on par with the West.
- brenden2 7y agoIt's worth noting that Brazil[1] has been exporting aircraft for quite some time, although it's still regarded as 3rd world. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer
- inferiorhuman 7y agoThat's almost cheating given Santos-Dumont's role in the origins of aviation. That said I don't think there are any modern, high bypass turbofans coming out of Brazil. China will need those if they hope to have a fully homegrown solution.
- TylerE 7y ago3rd world doesn’t mean poorly developed. It just means not 1st world (NATO countries) or 2nd (Soviet Bloc)
- juahan 7y agoSo for example Finland and Sweden are third world countries?
- KFC_Manager 7y agoA lot of the parts in these planes + the automation supplied to build the planes are from companies owned by western companies. China is trying to own more parts of the process (Broetje acquisition for automation, things like Kuka and other industrial companies are getting bought up by Chinese companies). https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/chinas-comac-to-challenge-boeing-and-airbus https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/chinas-comac-to...
- im_down_w_otp 7y agoSometimes I think we're in some weird version of a neo-Dark-Age where the ways to do everything amazing that we figured out how to do start to atrophy along the same path as those things being taken for granted. Because they're no longer considered amazing, so they're reprioritized as such, and we forget how hard they actually are to do as well as they need to be done. We sort of seem to end up with a built-in assumption that absolutely everything can be commoditized just because we're used to having it around, not because it is actually able to be commoditized effectively.
- yummypaint 7y agoI think this ties into the importance of living knowledge. Even the most meticulous notes must be interpreted and executed by someone, and there is no substitute for an experienced person. This has already happened with technologies like vacuum tubes. It isnt a simple matter of economics to restart production because much of the know-how must be rediscovered. In the absence of the original volume of demand that led to the first generation of tube engineers, it may be lost forever. There are some niche high power RF devices still using tubes from decades ago.
- smiley1437 7y agoEven in something as important as nuclear weapons, the method of manufacturing a critical component was lost due to a broken chain of living knowledge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOGBANK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOGBANK
- stretchwithme 7y agoProbably why Idiocracy will not come to pass. And truly idiotic civilization will succumb to its competitors. All the more reason to avoid a single global government. Besides never being able to escape tyranny.
- simplicio 7y agoEh? This is China's first time trying to build a commercial narrow body airliner, isn't it? So its not like they used to have the capability and forgot how to do it, they're developing it for the first time.
- someperson 7y ago> The engine miscalculation does not reflect a lack of theoretical understanding - China has been putting people in space for almost two decades. But it does illustrate the national aerospace manufacturer’s lack of experience in designing and building commercial aircraft. Does this line in a Reuters article suprise anyone else as editorializing? What does COMAC's theoretical understanding have anything to do with the Long March rocket's manufacturer CALT (China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology)?
- jvanderbot 7y ago"Someone in China could have done it, but the knowledge and experience is not as widespread as it is in other nations" It gives context on how to interpret the two results. China can do great things, but it may not have the pipeline of engineers set up to enable widespread commercialization of those great things.
- Florin_Andrei 7y agoMinor detail: C919 somehow strikes me as a non-impressive-sounding moniker. The sound of it is somehow "off". Does it "sound" better in Chinese? Not sure how to explain it better.
- Already__Taken 7y ago919 is one of the greatest Porsches ever so some marketing dept thinks its pretty good.
- inferiorhuman 7y agoHow impressive does B747 or A380 sound? Manufacturers have largely stopped giving fancy names to airliners, and I'm sure Boeing has some regrets about calling the 787 'Dreamliner'.
- johnny-lee 7y agosee the wikipedia entry on Chinese numerology, esp. number 9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_numerology#Nine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_numerology#Nine tl;dr - Chinese pronunciation of 9 sounds similar to the Chinese word for longevity/long life. You'd rarely see the number 4 used since that sounds like the pronunciation for the word 'death'. 8 is another popular number, synonymous with wealth. Go into a parking lot with many Asian drivers - you can pick many of the Chinese drivers just by looking at their license plates and checking if they have one or more 8's or 9's (and lack of 4's) in the license plate. Applies to many number-based items - phone numbers, highrises targeted at Asians may skip the 4th and 14th floors (haven't been in such buildings with more than 20 stories, but I'd assume the pattern would extend to any floor with a 4 in it - no idea about buildings with more than 39 floors) Once you know about it, it's hard to unsee...
- Florin_Andrei 7y agoOMG, that explains so many things. Thanks!
- Gravityloss 7y agoWhen talking about the duopoly, the article omits Sukhoi Superjet, though it seems to not be an easy alternative airliner: https://www.airportspotting.com/cityjets-sukhoi-superjets/ https://www.airportspotting.com/cityjets-sukhoi-superjets/ The comments on the page are really good. It seems the plane itself was good but simple lack of culture of fast spare parts delivery made the planes unprofitable.
- woodandsteel 7y agoI wonder if the fact that Comac is a state-owned company has anything to do with these problems. From what I have read, Chinese state-owned enterprises are inefficient and can stay in business only with major help from the government. But maybe Comac is an exception.