[htlemur_bobby]

Hm I just read an article here recently that was saying that Americans had an edge in jet turbine blades production over china because Americans figured out how to make single crystal jet turbines using this same method. I wonder what the difference is.

[beambot]

The Veritasium video on how jet engine turbine blades are "grown" in an aligned crystalline structure for enhanced material properties (e.g. thermal performance) is absolutely fascinating & well worth a watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtxVdC7pBQM

[SV_BubbleTime]

So far as I know you could say Americans, but it is specifically Canada that most of the best engines are coming out of. Maybe Pratt and Whitney are using blades from USA, IDK, but anyone in jet aviation will be able to tell you the world would be fucked without Pratt.

[ezst]

An edge that dates back to the late 60's/early 70's? How soft is that edge by now?

[lstodd]

As hard as ever. US and USSR and EU has this tech, China, India and others still don't. When USSR tech was sold left and right in 1990s, China could not replicate it, although they surely got the documentation back then. Even now they can't build a reliable gas generator from 70s and are stuck at 1960s level with R-25 MiG-21-style engine replicas. They still try and fail to build AL-31 analogs (1978, Su-27 engine).

[ivell]

On the way it seems.

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/china-crystal-...

https://raksha-anirveda.com/indigenous-aerospace-leap-drdo-p...

[xkcd1963]

This is an American-Pro forum, you will only get dislikes promoting the idea that USSR had any technology or morality matching or exceeding Western superiority ;)

[NitpickLawyer]

> morality matching or exceeding Western

Not sure if troll or misguided, but you know there are people still alive today that can talk about that moral superiority from experience, right? Just ask them, read their stories, etc. If this is how we're talking about that part of the world in that time-frame, I shudder to think how it'll be talked about when there aren't any more people from that period around. We kinda can see that with the neo- movements...

[benj111]

There's a long and distinguished history of thinking your enemies tech is better than it is. See wehraboos and tankies.

In all fairness though, if your enemies are just Afghan tribemen of Vietnamese farmers with an AK you don't have much of an excuse for losing. But even then you can can the moral high ground because you value life more than them.

Yes, it's all propaganda. But they are distinct tools (approaches?). It's fine to say your enemy has better equipment though, because that gives you an excuse for more R&D and gives you an excuse if you didn't win, why the win took longer, why the win was 'honourable' despite the win seeming inevitable by every conventional metric.

To be slightly more kind. I suppose you could argue this helps the peace afterwards.

If you say the beaten adversary was a worthy opponent, they can help keep their heads high. The Allies are now friends with Germany and Japan. I'm sure some reframing comes along with that.

[lstodd]

I'm not here to avoid dislikes.

[p_l]

The basics are pretty distributed, further work involved increasing lifespan at high temperatures, but also some work towards switching at least some turbine stages from separated blades into "blisks" - entire turbine stage is one crystal, including the hub.

[kreelman]

I've heard it said that growing crystals in gravity is tricky... If we could do this in space, gravity free, we could get better crystals.

Is that correct? Pardon for asking a bit of a question to your comment. I don't know too much about growing crystals for things like jet engine blades.

[chicken-stew]

I, too, heard this but in a different context: pharma growing pure crystals for analysis by x-ray diffraction. There was a discussion a while back whether these lab-grown crystals were truly contributing to ISS’s reason to exist or an excuse to keep the lab going.

[zipy124]

This isn't exclusive to the Americans, do Rolls Royce in the UK not use similar methods?

[iamflimflam1]

They do indeed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12474148