Originally Posted by
Shagpile
This thread sounds like the board room of VW when Tesla came onto the scene.
To answer the Q about turbine blades: they have been onto this for years now. One of the first things they did was pour the super-alloy into casts using inert gas environment (instead of vacuum) and send it off for analysis to prove out the concept. They've since done loads of casting trials using wax moulds & machining down the result & sending off for analysis. I can't find the video where they announced successfully done to spec, but here's one from 5 months ago discussing it whilst it was a work in progress:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gvcZ9ncDPU
More on hot section manufacturing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD_Pv9sFWgo
Engine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3xplTpxXYk
Gears:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1bD5ttyA4c
Based on their ability to solve every problem encountered so far, I think it would be dumb to bet against this machine. As I've said before, I'm personally happy to wear some unknown unknown's to pop up & delay things here and there, and I think it'd be unrealistic to expect it to all go perfectly, but it's not 1950 any more trying to discover all this stuff for the first time, so none of this stuff is existential risk. You can hire the right grey hairs in who have done this before and solve each problem as they're encountered. He has about 1,300 orders now, so it doesn't really matter what the peanut gallery here think. The market has spoken - they want this, and they're prepared to pay up-front, and wait.
Great. How come they don't have a working engine yet?
Yes, this was meant as a direct poke at you. Hillivers tend to ignore the fact that almost no one said it won't ever fly, just that timeline, performance, price claimed is a bit out of touch with reality.
So far, we are correct on timeline. Price is so-so due to all the crap in the rest of the world. Performance remains to be seen.
So, your only measure of Hill's success is number of orders, not how many are flying trouble free? Dully noted.