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This is astonishing: China has thus far failed to build a successful commercial aircraft because it’s harder than ***going to space***

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Brian Potter

@_brianpotter

Oct 23

China has been trying to build a successful commercial jetliner since the 1970s. This week on Construction Physics, I try to understand whether they'll succeed in competing with Airbus and Boeing. construction-physics.com/p/will-the-chi

7:51 AM · Oct 23, 2024

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Alec Stapp

@AlecStapp

Oct 23

Japan tried and failed too. Maybe we’re too hard on Boeing? (Not really.)

a rocket needs to work once, an airliner needs to fly every day for 20 years and do so profitably

Yup

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The reliability of commercial aircraft is astonishing. The odds of dying per flight are now 1 in 13.7 million. If manned space flight required anything remotely close, it would be hopeless.

yup

the hard part is probably making one that’s commercially viable for mass use

exactly

“successful” doing the heavy lifting here. Chinese spacecraft don’t have to compete with western spacecraft in a market. the Chinese can build commercial aircraft they are just too inferior to western aircraft to be commercially successful.

good thing I included that word then

Astonishing and...beggars belief. That that a country that builds its own 5th generation fighters cannot build commercial airliners is laughable. That is does not will be a matter of geostrategic indifference, not one of capability.

I mean, they've been trying and failing for decades. Military capability is just a fundamentally different thing than competing in the global commercial aircraft market

yes, and this is exactly why what SpaceX is doing is so important. They're trying to bring to spaceflight what Boeing and Airbus bring to commercial air travel.

absolutely

Are Boeing and Airbus both so subsidized it doesn't make sense to even compete for the industry?

that's one reason among like a hundred, which makes it very hard overall

4.1K

chinaspotlight

@chinaspotlight1

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It’s not that hard and China will succeed. Paperwork is the biggest issue.

When you look at the supply chains for airliners you quickly realize airplane building is more about organizing a quasi international deep state with connections to every foreign intelligence agency rather than actual aeronautical engineering. It's a political game

Going to space: Nuclear payload delivery research project under the guise of scientific research. Making commercial aircraft: For profit venture. No wonder the CCP is good at one and not the other.

Here’s a false assumption, in fact this other fact is because of my false assumption, which shows my assumption is very true

Jordan Thibodeau

@JWthib

Oct 23

"BuT ChInA WiLl EClIpSe ThE US AnD ThEn CoNqUeR Us."

Most commercial planes have parts made by various countries. For one country to make everything, make it reliable, commercially viable, can be significantly more difficult. Airbus has all of EU behind it. The jet engine alone, running thousands of hours, is a marvel of

Maybe rockets are just more important to them and that's where more resources have gone. Buying an airliner from Boeing might be easier than buying a rocket so they decided to focus on building a rocket instead?

Like when the Soviets tried to build a Concorde clone - the quote I remember was roughly “at least you could not hear the screams of the other passengers over the sound of the engines.”

254

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They have definitely built passenger aircraft, they just can’t sell them to any willing buyers.

Yet Brazil has a successful commercial aircraft industry (Embraer) and a mid space program!

944

Christian @homoveritas

@christianvanck

Oct 23

They are building pretty decent fighter jets. Do not buy it. There must be another reason then just tech. Maybe cost scale but that would be surprising too. Whats to tricky about it?

845

Andrew Lavery

@thelaverya

Going to space is a static difficulty level - other countries being good at it doesn't make it harder for you to do it too. Building a successful commercial airliner means being at the same level as the other successful players.

Caleb James DeLisle

@cjdelisle

Oct 23

No it's not. The hard part is "successful commercial". If you're doing one-offs and you don't care what it costs, it's easier to do anything.

Yet Embrear out of Brazil has managed, and does 200+ deliveries per year of super high-quality passenger jets.

Why is this surprising? You can have rockets blow up on the regular and the only pain point is cost ( and some administrative hurdles ). You lose a single aircraft and the impact on confidence of your customers and consumers is huge and regulatory agencies can ( and will )

Commercial air travel (especially enjoyed as a window seat at 40,000 ft) is THE most amazing invention of the 20th century. The sheer proportion of people that can or have experienced it makes it so.

High bypass turbofan?

The service life and up-time of commercial aircraft is nearly miraculous. To have engineered machines which spend close to 20 years continuously in use is

194

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But doesn't a spacecraft also fly through the air? What am I missing?

Maybe because many of the patents on space is available but not for commercial aviation. Did you think they did it all themselves without stealing anything from us? 🤦‍♀️

One-off high ticket bespoke things are harder than machines that work reliably, 16 hours per day, for decades. I think COMAC will be successful, though.

Well... Brazil has Embraer, the third largest aviation company after Boeing and Airbus, and a number of other minor ones, while the Brazilian space program failed miserably. Explain that.

585

J. F. Carpio

@jfcarpio

Well, airplanes have to *return*.

OldSchoolLiberal

@TheOldSchoolLib

Oct 23

China purchased its spacecraft from Russia.

If the Brazilians and Canadians can do it….

535

Cerv3ra

@cerv3ra

We all read the same 5 substacks.

Matvei Lapushinskii

@matvl77

There is a lot more to the airplane than just tech. Mountains or regulations, legacy infrastructure, difficult buyers etc. It is a very very complex administrative challenge. Not to mention insane engineering complexity.

joseph anya

@josephanyaa

17h

don’t bet against china

Mikael Koivukangas

@mkoivuka

Oct 23

One more reason among dozens is that commercial aircraft are civilian technology, and for whatever reasons totalitarian countries are absolute ass at that Ostensibly China manages to make jet fighters

257

@CanadaKenyaDad

Oct 23

It’s true. The Boeing 777x is probably the most complex piece of technology on earth.

Big push vs. continuous reliability, easily believable for "made in china" products at any scale

Fabrice

@Fabrice1963633

Oct 23

They are doing it with Russia, the frame is Russian, the engines are European and the electronics is from the US .. they call it a Chinese plane ..

It is because their rockets are not reusable.

Tell that to Boeing and their starliner.

298

@JZ281C

Oct 23

There is actually nothing astonishing about this. A rocket engine only have to work reliably for a few hundred seconds, while an aircraft engine has to work reliably for thousands of hours.

Canada used to be one of the handful of countries on the planet with the ability to build them and they basically gave it up for nothing

Of course it is. The key word there is "Commercial." It's *really* hard to make something that will reliably move millions of people through the air every year with a death count in the single digits. Just getting to space is pretty easy comparatively.

I watched C-beams glitter in the dark

@accidentalflyer

Oct 23

Harder than one-time use rocket systems because of high utilization. On a related note, Boeing B777 and a new generation of Toyota Camry came out about the same time. R&D on the Camry actually higher. It's all about utilization and end users.

"Aerospace is one of the deepest branches of humanity’s technological tree. It is a telling fact that more countries have produced a nuclear bomb than have mass-produced a jet engine."

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From palladiummag.com

Building an aircraft is "easy". Building an aircraft that is reliable over decades, has competitive economics and is certifiable with EASA/FAA is really hard.

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@arnoblalam

Oct 23

Weird given multiple companies have been successful at it: Boeing, Airbus, Lockheed, Bombardier, Embraer, Tupolev, Ilyushin, Sukhoi, Antonov, Sud Aviation, British Aircraft Corp...

A rocket is actually considerably simpler than a jet engine. Jet engines require all sorts of rotating turbine blades and compression of high-speed air. Rockets are little more than fuel/oxidizer tanks, a simple pump, a combustion chamber and nozzle.

JT Booth

@jtbooth1021

Oct 23

This is like saying "getting a medal at the 100 meter sprint is harder than running a marathon". It's hard because you have to win!

"Rocket science" is overrated. Compare SpaceX and Tesla.

116

The_Crypto_Bag_Hodler

@the_bag_hodler

14h

It’s decades of small improvements in processes, labor experience and methodology that add up to supremacy. When Boeing hired cheaper non-unionized labor in SC they ran into lots of QA issues b/c of poor workmanship. Something MBA types will never understand.

Ali Khayrallah

@alisk

Oct 23

This may fit my theory that if cost is no object, and it’s not a commercial product competing in the market, it’s show and tell. All space stuff is a lot closer to show and tell.

I don't think that's fair comparison. Undefined "spacecraft" is anything that goes into space, it doesn't even say "manned" spacecraft. Was Sputnik spacecraft? Is New Shepard spacecraft? V2 went into space. We are basically talking WWII / 1940s technology here.

Daniel Håkansson

@DanielHaknsson

Oct 23

I'm not so surprised. It has lot's more functionality, has to have amazing reliability, goes in any weather, has to meet more stringent safety and certification requirements. And finally enters a market that is fiercely competitive. China has really managed the rest but not this.

A difficulty with "successful commercial aircraft" is it's a moving target. It's no good being competitive with an a320 "ceo" or 737 ng when the a320 "neo" and 737 max are available

Think about the reliability aspect of repeated flight cycles. How many times does a spacecraft have to work 100% well to be trusted vs an Airbus crossing an ocean every day? The other part is Western airframes,avionics and engines are just amazingly reliable,mature tech.

I don't think this is surprising. Commercial aircraft are incredibly complex machines and they have to carry hundreds of people and operate hundreds of times a year.

Going to space is not that hard which is why SpaceX is doing much better than Tesla, X, etc. We went to the moon with 1960s technology.

119

Birch Bark Pantaloons

@Joeweekender

Oct 23

It's been pointed out that China is struggling to build a 737 & A320/321 competitor just as Airbus and Boeing are warming up to replace both. And with airplane lifecycles being so very long (the first 737 flew almost 60 years ago), China's chance of catching up is about zero.

It's not that flying is harder than going to space (it definitely isn't,) but that the expectations for safety and reliability are very, very different between government space-launch programs and commercial airliners.

Dolphus Raymond

@DolphusRaymond5

Oct 23

It is astonishingly hard. I'm an engineer on jet engines, and one of our graybeards used to work on the engines for the Space Shuttle. Guess which one is harder to build?

Malcolm Kass

@mkass

Oct 23

What makes Engineering *hard* is that the discipline revolves around problem solving under significant economic constraints. Relax those constraints, much easier.

Andrea Matranga

@andreamatranga

Oct 23

I keep saying rockets are simple. Squirty stuff goes backwards, pointy thing goes forward. That's why there's bottle rockets but no bottle trains.

well yeah, going to space is easy: you just build a rocket but an aircraft has a whole lot of regulatory tape to get through

Kind of amazing that of all the other countries to try, Brazil managed to be one of the most successful, though still using US engines.

Turbine engines are far more complicated than liquid rocket engines and the trade secrets of materials used for the blades are essential

Very obvious. I've always maintained that commercial aircraft are the top of the heap of mankind accomplishments. It's not hard to look around & ask: Can N. Korea build a large passenger aircraft? Could India build one, from scratch? Answer is no. Rockets? No problem!

Mack Crawford

@brickmack

Oct 23

Is it? Aircraft are held to a safety standard 3 or 4 orders of magnitude higher than rockets have historically been. "Acceptable" loss of crew for Commercial Crew is 1 in 270 flights, for passenger jets its under 1 in a million

For starters, commercial aircraft are reusable and have to last to make it worth the investment. And meet transportation and safety standards in the country(ies) where they operate . . .

Unknown

@Demosthenesxx

Oct 23

They tried to buy a Ukrainian jet engine manufacturer years ago, but EU & US stopped it

Wandering Hoo

@LibWanderer

Oct 23

There are more nuclear states than states capable of independently building turbofans.

mrok

@devnutmike

11h

If Boeing can do it I’m pretty sure China can. I mean it doesn’t have to be perfect right lol

Hey Dan, it's me!

@HeyDanitsme

Oct 23

Note: China may have great success in short range electric flight, 'cause it's easier.

Gonzalo

@GonZalocla

Oct 23

I guess it not comparing apples to apples If "works" means you can make it fly then surely China can construct planes that fly If "works" means that you can do it in an economically sustainable way without spending public money, then nobody managed to make space travel work

rocket engines are *MUCH* simpler by principle of operation than jet engines imo China is doing it wrong by shooting for parity on directly comparable metrics wonder why they don't try to be more different

Will

@WillErazo440

Oct 23

It has two airliners going into the market

Seelen

@notseelen

Oct 23

in a WAY, it kinda makes sense you can't jettison any components of a plane, so every single component has to have a 99.999% success rate (after accounting for redundancies) it can't just work 90% of the time and abandon launch the other 10%

Alex Taussig

@stoked_on_waves

Oct 23

Astronaut statistical fatality rate is >2%. Little high for commercial aviation!

126

Medium Boss - 70b_Float16.Q8.gguf

@PopeUrban

Oct 23

Building submersibles to explore the ocean is even harder than that

Ned Lukies

@cultofconfidenc

Oct 23

As evident by Boeing struggling to do both.

EMC

@Emc1105

And I don't know How Brazil can built so good comercial aircrafts

Piotr Sowiński GF

@PiotrSowinski23

Oct 23

What's more difficult? Going into air or into space or making a deep hole?

Fab, not hate

@QixOfMTF

Oct 23

The issue is that if you don't beat the current market leaders in efficiency, your customers can just buy from one of them instead, and there are network effects of compatible maintenance, no retraining, so on. Same reason game consoles haven't been taken down by cheap PC makers

Dru

@MrDruCartier

Oct 23

It is hard to make turbine blades. It is very very very hard and is a closely held secret. They haven’t found out yet

TomiTapio

@Tomi_Tapio

Oct 23

"ow ow turbulence bend metal!"

Danny

@SWolf712

Oct 23

Like tech trees in a Civ game.

b1b2

@b1b2ai

Oct 23

Michael Crichton called all this decades ago in the brilliant novel Airframe

Diego Aguirre

@DiegoAg95720619

15h

Consistency and reliability is the wheat from the chaff. To build a single-use crafts is relatively easy, have it be reusable, extremely hard (kudos SpaceX).

finánce

@racetrack275

Oct 23

It’s not astonishing at all. There are many many things harder than going to space. Going to space is not a crazy engineering problem. It’s primarily a lack of funding issue.

Same with India.

Now I want to understand why we don't have a spacecraft yet in Brasil. But Embraer is very successful making commercial aircraft.

Max

@m_a_x_w_u

It’s even harder to field a team that can score a goal at World Cup 🤷‍♂️

pat bahn

@patbahn

Oct 23

Boeing is rapidly unlearning how to build airplanes

MioMind

@Mio_Mind

21h

It’s basically Airbus and Boeing. But somehow Boeing is trying to go to space and fails. How?

Geriatric Millennial Attorney at Law

@Errorreporrt

Oct 23

It is the engine that is really a major problem.

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@MartinLone3

Oct 23

The Chinese space program is not known for its safety

@just0and

Oct 23

well I mean they steal US military secrets, so they probably can't do fighter jets very well either...but who knows

That is not correct.

Yep. The old adage that it is harder to build a jet engine than build an atomic bomb is true

esteban antonicelli

@eantonicelli

17h

it's not astonishing, it's reasonably expected, rocket science is not what the popular culture in the USA thinks it is, it's fairly simple compared with other sciences and technologies

blk014

@blk014

22h

There are just a few daring astronauts at risk.

Clive Gulch 2.0

@2Gulch

Oct 23

PRC Space Program has a single customer who just happens to have a shocking high tolerance for things blowing up spectacularly

AnotherPeacefulProtestor

interesting

If this were true, why can Boeing build a commercial aircraft but not a successful spacecraft (Starliner)?

Jim Worrisome

@ultradesign_be

22h

Boeing wrote this article, right?

arjun desai

@Areddy4493

23h

Same with India, we have half decent space program but our fighter jets suck

Lol

Well - Hughes Space and Loral Space sure helped China make its rockets (and ICBM’s - but then I repeat myself) far more reliable. So far neither Airbus or Boeing seem to be inclined to make the same catastrophic errors.

What s a Comac C919 and how come I flew in it 3 weeks ago?

a elite human capital

@canwepause

21h

Different copywrite laws in aviation?

Bryan de Paepe

@bdepaepe63

18h

Haste makes waste and building in higher volumes using automation shows this. Taking the time to inspect, measure each step ensures quality, precision and reliability.

Salinfin

@salinfin

Oct 23

Boeings and airbuses main error is that they were found to accidentally be using Chinese titanium. They never had a chance

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