> (Editor's note: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries paid for the author of this story to travel to Japan and spend several days visiting company facilities there.)
OK, so it's pretty much a PR piece. That should have been mentioned right at the beginning of the article, not as a footnote on the last page.
I guess you'll never know since it's a package that was paid for. The only way to guarantee a honest description is not to accept any kind of money from whoever you write about.
How about “News of Earth’s Third Largest Economic Power” instead?
I really don’t understand the knee-jerk reaction to brand anyone with an interest in Japan as some kind of deviant. It’s a pretty ugly character trait. Maybe you need to take a good long look in the mirror before you go on the attack.
It's not just Japan but also China, India, Russia, and the EU that each have ambitious space programs and have had them for quite some time. The US has historically been leading the pack as space programs have been very expensive. However, what we are seeing now is commoditization of technology and vast decreases in cost. SpaceX has quite effectively shown that you can out compete bigger players with a combination of modest availability of capital, talent and out of the box thinking. The level of their capital expenses is quite a lot more reasonable than what it took Nasa to get to the Moon or running the space shuttle program. It gets it down to the level where aspiring billionaires can get things done in reasonable time frames on reasonable budgets (Bezos, Musk, Branson, etc.). Likewise, any multinational or country with access to similar resources can hope to achieve similar results.
So, there is going to be a wave of countries, companies, and people trying to get to emulate SpaceX. Of course the military angle here is scary. Several of these countries are also nuclear powers and the nature of space rockets is that once you can get them to space, delivering payloads back anywhere on earth is relatively straightforward. That used to be the exclusive domain of the US and Russia. That's no longer true.
> SpaceX has quite effectively shown that you can out compete bigger players with a combination of modest availability of capital, talent and out of the box thinking.
But did that employing hordes of ex NASA, Lougheed, Raytheon, MDA engineers, and best and brightest at that.
SpaceX is as far from a ordinary SV startup as it can be.
I agree, they achieved a lot and they stood on the shoulders of giants. The point is that they proved it is possible to achieve these things now. Other companies are emulating what they do and are also getting results. I'm not trivializing their achievements at all.
NASA, Raytheon, etc did employ these same engineers, and had access to much thicker wads of cash. They did not produce a returnable, reusable rocket, though. They've produced the Space Shuttle.
With technology that is now about 40 years old. With the benefit of hindsight, the shuttle probably wasn't the ideal design--if only because it wasn't reusable as the designers hoped--but I think it's fair to say that the "right" design wouldn't be what can be built with a clean sheet of paper today.
(Arguably, existing heavy launch vehicles should just have been upgraded for man rating given that ULA's launch vehicles are pretty reliable today. But I'm not enough of an expert to know what the best alternatives to the Shuttle would have been.)
I don't reproach Shuttle designers. I just try to point at their different incentives. SpaceX has rather different goals than Raytheon or NASA, afaict. This is natural.
Yeah, it's not clear if a self-landing retrobooster would have been possible given the components available at the time of the space shuttle's design, not to mention the vast improvements in computer modeling and simulation that we're available to SpaceX.
But, of course, that's only part of the story. The space shuttle had additional political constraints, i.e. spreading the wealth to many congressional districts, that greatly increased the cost and complexity.
The Shuttle also had bonkers flight profile requirements (polar launch from Vandenburg and an immediate landing) from the Air Force that severely impacted its affordability.
It may have been a rather silly idea but it wasn't on the same level of impracticality as the Air Force's "launch into a polar orbit, capture a satellite, and land in one orbit" requirement. The first Shuttle-Centaur launch was scheduled for only a few months after the Challenger disaster occurred, so it was at least something that would have been used. On the other hand, the Air Force never even finished building a Shuttle launch complex at Vandenberg, let alone use the once-around capabilities.
I thought the cross range requirement came from the necessity of "Abort Once Around" in polar launches.
More deeply, the Air Force was blamed for adding requirements to the Shuttle, when the real problem was the Shuttle had such tenuous economic justification that it needed to pretend it had as many customers as it could. Never mind that much of the projected manifest (and projected flight rate) was an outright lie that the knew was BS as they were saying it.
This part was NASA's fault when it cancelled the heavy launcher program. The Shuttle was supposed to just be a way to ferry people into orbit. Heavy hauling was supposed to be done with a different rocket. Cancelling the heavy hauler put all of the burden on the Shuttle and forced it to be a jack of all trades. Ironically in the name of cost savings they made the most expensive system possible.
Minimum Cost Design expendable boosters would have been far better than the Shuttle. And they could have been designed in the 1960s, when Arthur Schnitt came out with the idea.
One can view the (expendable) F9 as an implementation of MCD.
> That used to be the exclusive domain of the US and Russia.
France detonated its first nuke in 1960, and put its first satellite (called Asterix) in space in 1965. So it has not been the exclusive domain of the US and Russia for more than half a century. Of course North Korea joining the club is a tad more scary...
France has a long history of invading all kinds of countries, including European ones (think Napoleonic 1812). They're not hesitating to do that today when we consider Africa.
Neither South nor North Korea has either commitment or capacity or historical precedent.
North Korea is a "fake it till you make it" media scarecrow. They would not go to agressive war and they never actually claimed they want to.
If you try to do "five whys" on "Why you should fear North Korea more than France" the topic will evaporate around the third "why".
You are thinking that Napoleon is a phenomenon on NK instead of being a phenomenon of France. This is based on some loud noises coming from the direction of NK and relative silence from French side. This is baseless.
France have access to ICBM, aaaand we know they are Napoleon-capable. I'm not saying they're in for a global conflict, just telling that political-military opinions are built upon sand.
South and North Korea certainly do have the capacity and recent historical precedent of waging a war against each other. The last attack of North Korea on South Korea was on November 23, 2010 [1]: "North Korean forces fired around 170 artillery shells and rockets at Yeonpyeong Island, hitting both military and civilian targets." That's less than 8 years ago. This is why North Korea acquiring nukes is scary: it's not completely unreasonable to imagine that the Korean War could resume.
I don't think in recent history France has engaged its army without either a mandate from the UN (Libya, Ivory Coast, etc.) [2], or being called for help by a local government according to a bilateral defense treaty (Mali). Maybe you have a counter example? Of course you can always go further in the past: France didn't become one of the largest European country by not waging expansionist wars... But I'm not sure it's entirely relevant to the world we are currently living in.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, on the situation in Libya, is a measure that was adopted on 17 March 2011. The Security Council resolution was proposed by France, Lebanon, and the United Kingdom.
Noam Chomsky has argued that the Western military intervention into Libya was a clear breach of UNSCR 1973 since it nullified the attempts for a ceasefire that were put forward by the resolution and welcomed by Gaddafi. As he puts it, "NATO powers (France and Britain in the lead and the United States following) violated the resolution, radically, and became the air force of the rebels. Nothing in the resolution justified that. It did call for "all necessary steps" to protect civilians, but there's a big difference between protecting civilians and being the air force for the rebels."
Definitely sounds like an agressive war to me. UN is a kind of self-indulgence here. Makes France more dangerous if anything, if they can pull things like this one through. They'll not only mess with you but make security council's members abstain when they plan the operation.
I am not particularly informed on European aerospace and I am not disputing your point. As a historical note France was very economically competitive mid-50s - 60s but had troubling competing after that.
On European aerospace: until SpaceX came with its cheap Falcon rockets, Ariane 5 was very competitive, especially for heavy GTO launches (think telco satellites). Ariane 5 is overpriced, as brilliantly demonstrated by SpaceX, but the competition was either even more outrageously overpriced American rockets, particularly unreliable Proton Russian rockets, or new unproven Japanese (Chinese, etc.) designs (not on the cheap side either). SpaceX technological success caught quite a few people by surprise...
Ariane 6 will bring down the cost somewhat in line with SpaceX, though it won't be quite enough to gain an edge. But there is already an ongoing effort to bring down the costs even more: Ariane NEXT. Research projects include the Prometheus engine [1] (which could be used on Ariane 6), Adeline [2] or Callisto [3]
I agree that their economy is a mess. However, they do enjoy a monopoly on transport to the ISS currently and that is due to them having better and cheaper rockets than Nasa. This is being fixed of course but that is after a rather embarrassingly long decade of being dependent on the Russians and their Soviet era rockets still being quite awesome. My understanding is that their engines are still quite competitive, even when compared to SpaceX and Blue Origin. So, I wouldn't discount them outright.
If through some uncharacteristic set of events manage to pull their heads out of their asses, they are still well positioned to do awesome stuff going forward. Of course, the current kleptocracy is hopelessly inept and unlikely to get much done on this front. That seems to be the tragedy of Russia.
Its not about their economy. Poor economy is the result of wide spread corruption and incompetence at all levels.
Sure they still enjoy the benefits of soviet era advances but that is slowly going away as well. Also Brain drain is real, anyone capable and who is not brainwashed left the country. THAT alone will continue to hit the country hard in the future on all fronts (and already is).
Have you looked at the things they've fielded recently?
Air launched hypersonic cruise missiles, possibly a working version of a nuclear powered hypersonic cruise missile, their ICBMs are the most advanced in the world...
Depending on how you mean "threaten other nations" your argument seems to be contradicted by basic facts. Here are three examples.
1. Within the realm of space flight, Russia has one of the most active launch programs in the world if not the most active. [1]
2. As far as overall military capacity Russia has by some accounts the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. [2]
3. With respect to current military strategy and tactics, Putin's campaign of disinformation using social media is a model of asymmetric warfare -- cheap to create and expensive to defend against.
Westerners discount Russia at their peril. They are worthy adversaries.
Is Russia really competitive anymore? It seems like they've fallen behind and outside of putting humans on the space station, and riding out the life of their existing rocket system (granted a highly reliable one) they're potentially doomed to keep lagging under the current kleptocracy.
As far as I know there are at least 3 private space companies in Russia with some ongoing projects. But state owned Roscomos definitely have some problems lately.
That is, again, riding on the coattails of Soviet designs; they're only providing one engine model abroad (the RD-180 for the American Atlas V), and that one is a two-decade-old relatively-slight modification (two-chamber instead of four-chamber) of a late-Soviet design.
In terms of actual new technology, there's just the Soyuz-2 (just coming into service now, and the first in the Soyuz family to use digital instead of analog control systems) and the new Angara rocket family.
Angara will be the real test of new Russian technology development. Payload and cost of the 1.2/A5 are in theory about the same as reusable Falcon 9/Heavy; operational launches are expected to start next year. If it manages to get good reliability and cadence, that will be the real proof that Russia is still competitive.
>SpaceX has quite effectively shown that you can out compete bigger players with a combination of modest availability of capital, talent and out of the box thinking.
Well, it's not like NASA (or the USSR equivalent) couldn't "think out of the box".
In fact they had to, several times, to get to space/moon.
All those newer challengers (no pun intended) also benefit from a long list of technologies and problems they've already solved for them.
Biggest problem at NASA, contractors are paid a percentage of cost
“We’ve got to change the way contracting is done,” Musk told the governors. “You can’t do these cost-plus, sole-source contracts because then the incentive structure is all messed up. As soon as you don’t have any competition, the sense of urgency goes away. And as soon as you make something a cost-plus contract, you’re incenting the contractor to maximize the cost of the program, because they get a percentage.”
Principal agent problem comes to bite us in the ass really hard in many industries where percentage of cost embedded somewhere within the incentive structure raises its head. Real estate, finance, insurance, the list of industries is long.
NASA only uses cost-plus on a small fraction of contracts. It's sometimes unavoidable for high risk work; if they insisted on fixed price contracts then suppliers just wouldn't bid at all.
NASA et al were true pioneers in uncharted territories with no prior guiding principles. Without them, a lot of current gen tech wouldn't even exist. Plus, remember they operated in times where you mostly used slide rules and hand calculations!
That's a large exaggeration. Russia deserves credit for what it did. It was not first for everything except the Moon.
NASA firsts: first meteorological satellite, first orbital navigation satellite, first private satellite launch, first interplanetary spacecraft and planetary flyby (Mariner 2), first spacecraft to scan another planet (Mariner 2), first geostationary satellite, first successful flyby and images of Mars (Mariner 4), first docking of two spacecraft (Gemini 8), first photos of Earth from the Moon, first spacecraft to orbit another planet (Mariner 9), first spacecraft to visit both Mercury and Venus (Mariner 10), first successful mission to the surface of Mars (Viking 1), numerous scientific firsts related to the Sun (Pioneer spacecraft), first spacecraft to cross the asteroid belt and fly beyond Mars (Pioneer 10), first spacecraft to flyby Jupiter (Pioneer 10), first spacecraft to flyby and study Saturn (Pioneer 11), first flyby of Uranus (Voyager 2), first to flyby Neptune (Voyager 2), first manned spacecraft to leave low Earth orbit, first manned mission to orbit the Moon, farthest away humans have ever traveled from Earth (Apollo 13), first manned mission to land on the Moon, first spacecraft to leave the solar system (Voyager 1), first spacecraft to flyby Pluto, first space telescope. The list continues...
Space launch and ICBM technology has actually drifted apart over time. The early ICBMs that were suitable for space launch were liquid-fueled, and this is actually a really bad choice for missiles; it can take hours to fuel a rocket and ready it for launch. Modern missiles are almost all solid-fueled, which lowers performance (bad for commercial launch) but lets you store the missiles fueled and ready for launch.
The only example I know of an operational launch vehicle with a lot of ICBM commonality is the Israeli Shavit, and that one is not commercially competitive; Israeli payloads (even military) are only launched on Shavit if they require a particular level of secrecy.
Well the us and Soviet space programs were more about building advanced ICBMs than going to the moon. The latter was a nice side effect for patriotic ends. If you can get a rocket into space without issues, you can slap a warhead on it and hit any target you please. The space race was a pissing contest over nuclear launch capability.
Japan has been a power ( relatively speaking ) in the aerospace industry for very a long time and it was never a secret and they certainly weren't quiet about it. What they have been quiet about is that their aerospace industry is also used to maintain a quasi military/icbm capability. Just like japan's is open about it's nuclear industry but quiet about the fact that their nuclear industry is used to maintain their latent/defacto nuclear power status. But then again, all aerospace industries and all nuclear industries are also linked to the military everywhere.
Japan has been the 2nd or 3rd largest economy in the world for 50 years. JAXA, after NASA and ESA, is probably the most technical advanced, well funded and respected space agencies in the world. A nation can't have such a large economy for this long without being a "power" ( relatively speaking ) in most sectors. Japan, despite its pacifist constitution, also has one of the best funded militaries as well.
Japan is considered a de-facto nuclear power because they do not need a covert nuclear weapons program right now. They're advanced enough and have the materials and infrastructure that if they ever decide to abandon current policy of "we do not want nukes being made or stationed in Japan" they can become an actual nuclear power within a year or so.
The main obstacle is cultural. Even contemplating the building of nuclear weapons is considered a deep disrespect to the memory of the people who died in the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There would be a lot of domestic opposition to any such project, and it might even be difficult to recruit people and companies to contribute to it, because involvement in that work could harm their reputation. But they definitely aren't lacking the technological, material, or financial ability.
(Source: lived in Japan and discussed this with various engineers there)
Japan, at the end of 2017, had a stockpile of 47.3 tons of reactor grade plutonium separated from spent LWR fuel. This material is not ideal for nuclear weapons, but it CAN be used to make them.
Japan has had all the pieces for a very long time - as an obvious capability to rapidly counter any threat from China if they had to go it alone. We (and France I believe) shipped them reprocessed plutonium in the 80's for "breeder research."
One of the Fukushima reactors held a lot of that store.
"Today, the plutonium stockpile has reached 47 tons, including 37 tons stored in Britain and France, which have been commissioned to reprocess spent fuel from Japan’s nuclear power plants."
Japan may be considered a "virtual" nuclear weapons state because it already has delivery systems, separated plutonium, and the industrial/technical capabilities to quickly weaponize that plutonium should it need to.
Japan's plutonium is reprocessed from commercial reactors and is not "weapons grade." This is a bit of a misnomer, however: weapons grade plutonium is really good for making weapons because it has a low concentration of the isotope plutonium 240. Pu-240 undergoes spontaneous fission frequently enough that it makes a pre-detonation "fizzle" (bomb blows itself too quickly to achieve useful yield) likely in a simple bomb design like that used during World War II. "Supergrade" plutonium, especially pure Pu-239, is also desirable for submarine-launched weapons because it reduces crew exposure to radiation from the stored warheads.
It is however technically feasible to make effective weapons from "reactor grade" plutonium containing more Pu-240 if the weapons designer invests in more sophisticated features like deuterium-tritium boosting of the fission device.
To quote Carey Sublette's excellent Nuclear Weapons FAQ,
"The fusion reaction rate typically becomes significant at 20-30 million degrees K. This temperature is reached at very low efficiencies, when less than 1% of the fissile material has fissioned (corresponding to a yield in the range of hundreds of tons). Since implosion weapons can be designed that will achieve yields in this range even if neutrons are present a the moment of criticality, fusion boosting allows the manufacture of efficient weapons that are immune to predetonation. Elimination of this hazard is a very important advantage in using boosting. It appears that every weapon now in the U.S. arsenal is a boosted design."
Japan could produce its own tritium by irradiation of natural lithium targets in commercial power reactors. It takes maybe 3 grams of tritium to make an efficient boosted weapon. Japan has enough plutonium for perhaps a thousand boosted-fission weapons in the 100 kiloton yield range, comparable in yield (if not efficiency) to France's latest submarine-launched warheads. I don't think it can produce tritium fast enough to supply a large number of weapons, given tritium's short half life and Japan's small number of operating reactors, but many reactors idled post-Fukushima are still in working condition and could be started up again in an emergency. Further, an opponent that does not consider dozens of nuclear weapons a rational deterrent is unlikely to be deterred by hundreds either, so Japan may not need many weapons to demonstrate a credible deterrent.
There's also for a long time been a tacit protectionist agreement with Boeing that as long as Japanese airliners buy a lot of jets Boeing will produce a lot of components in Japan.
Why do these people always spend the first 20% of the article talking about themselves. Its like they wanted to be a gonzo journalist but could only land a tech blog gig.
I think Japan can really make it a reliable streamlined technology. After reading about the setup of some of their production systems its not longer a surprise to me why they make some of the most reliable tech out there (automotive industry for example).
The title isn't fair to the established international role Japan plays in the aerospace industry or space.
The Boeing 'Dreamliner' is one-third made in Japan. Re-supply missions to the International Space Station have been completed without incident by Japanese craft. Even the largest module on the ISS is Japanese. Japan has been busy.
Before WW2 Japan was in possession of a remarkably large fleet of aircraft carriers with the planes to go with them. In the post WW2 years the electronic components for those planes bombing Korea had to come from somewhere and Japanese people were doing all the hard work making and packaging those avionic nuts and bolts, even if for Western customers in the defence sector. So it is a long history tied into global projects and multi-national companies, not some 'secret effort to get started now'. It is a tale of evolution, not some nationalist effort with no long term goals.
When the USA decided to put a man on the moon there were 400,000+ people working for NASA, directly or with a contractor. The trip to the moon was chosen just because it hadn't been done and it was unlikely that the Soviets were going to do it any time soon. There was no plan for a next step, once the goal had been achieved. Hence we ended up with low-earth-orbit projects and no effort to put a man on Mars or establish a lunar base for further exploration.
Japan has 'quietly' got on with the real projects that are needed when it comes to aerospace and space, there has been no grand-standing or opting out.
More importantly, the wings are manufactured by Mitsubishi Heavy. Historically Boeing kept the wings in house because they were considered the most important part.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries also has a commuter jet, and I still think it's just a matter of time until they build something bigger. At least by the time the Dreamliner is up for a replacement.
As someone intimately familiar with japanese manufacturing (I work as an engine mechanic at an auto repair chain in the midwest) this comes as no surprise to me.
remember when you first bought a new car? the manual said an oil change was required after 400-500 miles? thats due to a japanese invention called the self clearancing piston. a certain amount of piston wall is designed to wear off to develop the final piston clearance in the engine block. this cut manufacuring times drastically for some of the most critical components in the engine.
Japanese metallurgy is also miles ahead of what US steel is in my opinion. They are more willing to put exotic metal blends in their cars than their american counterparts. For example, a regular sedan from the US might contain a hardened borg warner gearset for all models. The japanese will adjust the transmissions for nearly every model based on what the car or truck is. turbocharged all wheel drive vehicles get 15% more nickel in their gears than their front wheel drive counterparts. This leads to a car with unreal longevity and durability.
They do this with motor assemblies too. Its not uncommon to see working sets of motors in japanese cars that are 30 years old where window motors and such would easily have failed in american sedans. potted, brushed high quality motors were a fixture on practically every japanese sedan in the 90s for even boring stuff like mirror adjustment.
I don't know how to word this without sounding condescending, but how did you end up on hacker news given your profession? I get the impression that the majority demographic here is involved with software in some fashion, so seeing someone with a "blue collar" job stuck out to me. I tend to spend my free time tinkering with engines, so my thought is that you may spend your free time tinkering with software? Anyways, glad to see non-software people here to make discussions a bit less homogenous.
That perspective was really valuable to me. It confirmed what I had long suspected: lots of Japanese manufacturing somehow still embodies a craftsmanship ethos. This seems lost in the large American brands (some smaller "Made in USA" brands like Norseman for drill bits still seem to embrace this ethos).
This ethos is increasingly rare in software as well, and I'm wondering if this is setting up those who have discarded the ethos for a long losing game with technical debt, or if they will be eventually vindicated as having correctly optimized for price over complexity management and quality.
Sorry, but does sound a bit elitist. Coding has become a somewhat skill set among some blue-collar workers, and have seen some good stuff come from electricians, plumbers, and mechanics.
I know many civil, mechanical, chemical, and electrical engineers that write good code to solve important problems. I know few programmers that know anything about circuit design, plumbing, carpentry, etc. But do believe that the programmers that frequent HN are probably more apt to be multi-skilled and a more renaissance-type of person.
I am a non-CS engineer - have a masters in Auto Systems - programming has always been part of all/most courses I took. Granted, I am probably pretty poor at things like JS and others as I never really used them, but we used a lot of things like MATLAB/ OCTAVE, Python and a few others in our coursework and work life. I have transitioned out of auto sector into consulting side (non-CS) of things, so now use a lot of data analytics and BI tools including Python, Tableau etc.
How is an engine mechanic more 'blue collar' than a sysadmin or a website 'mechanic'? And a lot of coding could be (and has been) compared to assembly-line work.
I think the only difference, in this respect, is that one technology has been around longer and the other is still the cool new thing. Someday, in a forum about whatever the new thing of that moment is, someone will ask the same thing about people who work in IT.
Not the person you asked, but I was a welder in a shipyard for years, and am a skilled mechanic. I currently work in tech.
No one would ever know unless I mention it, because I don't fit the ugly stereotype of tradework being the domain of the crude and uneducated. I used to talk about it more, but I got tired of the condescension. Tech in general is incredibly insular, and nowhere near as open-minded as the field thinks it is, so I just keep quiet unless something like this thread pops up.
There are a lot of us like this out there, and we tend to stay silent on the subject for similar reasons. I am happy to talk about engines or APIs. What I really don't like is the assumption that because I know about engines, anything more cerebral must be a hobby, because it would otherwise be beyond me as a profession.
Another blue collar reporting in. I did an apprenticeship in metal fabrication / welding after high school. I worked in IT briefly more recently but am back in my trade now doing fairly technical job of operating a laser cutter.
Interesting perspective! A good friend of mine is a supplier to Mitsubishi on the MRJ and other projects. I’m not comfortable sharing details but I can say that the excellence in engineering skill in the Nagoya area, with both Mitsubishi and Toyota and others having built on a long tradition of craftsmanship from that area, is very exciting to learn about. Did you know that it basically began with innovations in loom technologies around the turn of the last century?
On that note, the Toyota museum in Nagoya was the most amazing science/technology museum my wife and I have ever been to. We made a specific stop in Nagoya on our honeymoon to see it, and were not disappointed. The first half is an incredible tour of the history of textiles, with hundreds (literally) of working looms at all phases of development, and incredibly knowledgable staff. And that's all before you get to the equally-amazing car part! http://www.tcmit.org/english/
"They do this with motor assemblies too. Its not uncommon to see working sets of motors in japanese cars that are 30 years old where window motors and such would easily have failed in american sedans. potted, brushed high quality motors were a fixture on practically every japanese sedan in the 90s for even boring stuff like mirror adjustment."
I think a lot of that "over-engineering" gradually went away towards the 90s and beyond, as cost concerns and other aspects started to bite in. Plus, they also understood that people started to change cars more often than before, so why engineer something for such a long duration? A lot of that initial over-engineering was also because of the pressure on Japanese brands to try and establish themselves in markets like the U.S. and Europe, where there was a general feeling that these "puny" Japanese cars might not last long. In terms of over-engineering (I know, keep using this term), the true pinnacle for me was the first gen Lexus LS400 designed to compete with the Mercedes S-class. Now, that was something else.
Funnily enough, they have started lagging U.S. and European companies after the mid-2000s in terms of vehicle technologies like advanced transmissions, wider adoption of turbocharged engines, infotainment etc.
/just a few personal thoughts from my years working in the auto industry
Funnily enough, they have started lagging U.S. and European companies after the mid-2000s in terms of vehicle technologies like advanced transmissions
Scotty Kilmer is an almost half-century veteran of the car repair business. (He's become the new Car Talk of 20-teens YouTube.) His position on the automatic transmissions made by most car companies, in the current fleet of used cars, is that they're a bit crappy. As in, you're a bit lucky to get 100k out of most of them trouble free, and you're very lucky to get 200k trouble free. One of the few makers of automatic transmissions that gets it right is Aisin, which is the supplier to Toyota.
One way this might change, is the use of computers to operate what's essentially a manual transmission on behalf of the driver. However, even that might fall by the wayside, outside of particular niches, with electric vehicles.
I was talking about advanced tech like no. of gears, dual clutch (DCTs are essentially manual type trans - quick shifting - Europeans are leaders) etc.
There is a difference between durability (the Japanese are good at this) and innovativeness (U.S./EU are good at this) of transmissions. EU/US transmissions are mostly all 8+ gears (now 10) in torque converter type (conventional), EU lead in DCT (dual clutch transmission), Japanese are only just catching up to this.
Japanese are of course, market leaders in CVT (continuously variable trans), but these are not that well liked in EU/US markets because of the way they "feel," though getting better.
There is a difference between durability (the Japanese are good at this) and innovativeness (U.S./EU are good at this) of transmissions.
One way to think of that: The former can save you a lot of money over the long term. The latter is nifty, but you may well end up paying more money over the long term.
An example that comes to mind is that few think it's an accident that the most legendarily reliable automaker, Toyota, has almost completely stayed away from turbocharged engines (aka one of the flashiest "advances" in powertrains in recent years). As this newest generation of turbocharged engines reaches 100,000 miles, mechanics are seeing a lot of failures and performance issues. Some innovations compromise reliability.
Different approaches. Toyota has been taking the non-turbo + electric assist (hybrid) route, while others which aren't that heavily invested in hybrids have been taking the "let's put turbos across all our engines" route.
Gradually they are converging towards similar solutions.
I agree that Japanese auto manufacturers use excellent steel and were quicker to put, say, higher-nickel steel into parts.
nimbius says> " Its not uncommon to see working sets of motors in japanese cars that are 30 years old where window motors and such would easily have failed in american sedans."
Too far: it's uncommon to see a 30-year old Japanese car (built in 1988 or before) that runs at all, much less that has working power windows!
Is it fair to compare US car manufacturing standards to overall US manufacturing standards? The US car industry is notorious for poor engineering standards and quality, largely driven by profit incentives. Yet, we have our own sophisticated manufacturing base. It just doesn't care about cars.
"The US car industry is notorious for poor engineering standards and quality,"
Engineering standards are * very broadly* similar, worldwide, as auto companies do have to design and sell a vehicle for multiple markets. What was lacking in the U.S. is the actual execution of the build quality. You can engineer something to be really good, but if you don't build it well, there's no point.
A very good example of this is the year 2000 Ford Focus. It was winning car of the year/ best quality awards in Europe, while it was noted for having the most amount of recalls in the U.S for a Ford. Broadly the same product with some localized differences, built separately in EU and the U.S. - completely different execution/ build quality.
My overall point was, it seems silly to use one manufacturing sector to make a determination about the entire industry. The US is home to some really cutting edge technology/manufacturing companies.
I'm not convinced that there was a huge difference in Ford Focus build quality between American versus European factories. I experienced both as rental cars and they seemed equivalent. On average European drivers make shorter trips at lower speeds on smoother roads, and they're more forgiving about NVH problems.
Oh yes, there was! I am not talking about simple things like NVH or other minor issues. I am talking about safety recalls like the wheel bearing failures which can cause your damn tires to fall off kind of variety!
I was a summer intern at Ford in 06/07 and they were still dealing with issues from the 2000-2003/04 cars.
A sample for you:
"2000-10-24 (Published by NHTSA on 2000-10-24)
Recall Summary: VEHICLE DESCRIPTION: PASSENGER VEHICLES. THE REAR WHEEL HUB RETAINING NUTS CAN LOOSEN AND ALLOW THE LEFT REAR WHEEL AND BRAKE DRUM ASSEMBLY TO SEPARATE FROM THE VEHICLE.
Hazard: THIS CONDITION COULD RESULT IN A VEHICLE CRASH."
Knock yourself out. And this doesn't include dealer fixes (called technical service bulletins -TSBs) which are not actual recalls.
> The US car industry is notorious for poor engineering standards and quality, largely driven by profit incentives.
That certainly used to be the case, 20+ years ago. US auto makers have dramatically improved since the mid 1990s.
On reliability today Buick outranks BMW, Infiniti, Toyota and Mercedes. Chevrolet outranks Toyota, Audi, Honda, Hyundai and BMW. Ford & GMC are better than Subaru and Acura, comparable to Mercedes, and slightly better than Volkswagen. Lincoln is better than Honda, Nissan and Audi.
Purely anecdotal, but as someone in the space I'd attribute those improvements largely to better manufacturing technology rather than better management. Servos, feedback control, reliability testing, etc. have improved a lot since the 90s. But American management still tends to be rather Taylorist.
With electronic components being more popular you're seeing quality issues crop back up from T1/T2 suppliers because the focus is on technology instead of process. But the AOI/ICT I've seen in the automotive space are fairly crude compared to the number of potential failures you can have with electronic components. Playing whack-a-mole doesn't work. You need people close to the process who care enough to notice when something is not quite right, and are empowered to do something about it.
Kaizen is to manufacturing what Agile/Scrum is to software development. As soon as management hears "improved efficiency" they tend to focus on the dollar signs rather than the message about people and process.
This sounded quite interesting and surprising as a result. I could not access the results so I did some quick googling.
The source is JD Power and they are claimed to have bad methodology. From what I read they don't weigh issues, so an infotainment issue is on the same level as a more severe mechanical issue.
There's a ranking from Consumer Reports but it requires a subscription as well, and it is probably somewhat biased since to my understanding one needs to be a subscriber to answer the questions in the first place.
A better method would be to pool data from several insurance companies, but I could not find such a thing.
I could imagine that publishing this data would be of great interest to insurance companies. That way, they could steer people into using cars which are cheaper to the insurance companies.
An objective study would certainly be of interest to someone who needs a car to move around. It's costly and not to mention frustrating when a car breaks down.
There is no way gm has better reliability than honda. They had dangerous problems with their cars for years. Things like steering wheels popping off while you are on the interstate. JD power is dubious; look at consumer reports.
Most manufacturers no longer recommend an oil change at 500 miles for their new cars.
Japanese brands have also had their share of problems. For example Honda automatic transmissions were notoriously unreliable for several years leading to multiple recalls and class action lawsuits.
Another Mitsubishi company, Mitsubishi Electric, builds the satellites that Mitsubishi Heavy Industries launches. They are independent companies; just yesterday, a Mitsubishi Electric-built satellite was launched on a Space-X rocket from Cape Canaveral:
https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/11/15/spacex-launches-qatars...
Slightly related, during that launch it was funny how the video from the fairing rocket cut out while it's still in space, and a minute later video from the landing boat shows the rocket on the launch pad like nothing happened.
In addition to boosters, Japan is the only nation to have launched a practical solar sail spacecraft[1]. They've also got another spacecraft[2] orbiting an asteroid with the intent of returning a sample from it.
Referring to someone by family name is standard Western journalistic practice; the specification of form of address for Miyanaga is only amusing to me because it's specifically called out.
Ogasawara has the added (and rather shocking, from a Japanese perspective) twist of insisting on being addressed by first name, which the journalist does after mentioning this.
Good article. The most hopeful thing in it is their response to the development of reusable rockets "We feel a strong sense of crisis."
Good. They should. It's an innovation that is changing the industry with extreme rapidity. Almost universally, the established players in the sector -- both domestically and internationally -- have been in a state of extreme denial about this, making increasingly tortured arguments for why reusability isn't worthwhile or even possible to do. The longer they remain in this state, the more they undermine their future. Nice to see that Japan is confronting this head-on (even if there is still a bit of denial evident).
The end of the article, talking about women's participation in the workforce, isn't just political correctness. Japan has a big problem here, and it will impair their ability to innovate.
This isn't just about having women in senior leadership positions (although that's not unimportant). Watch the SpaceX webcast and you'll see that their crowds of (often very young) engineers are thronging with women, minorities, people who've dialed their queerness up to 11, etc. What's going on here? I don't think that SpaceX's hiring practices involve much affirmative action; from everything I've heard, intelligence, passion, and commitment are the qualities they hire for. But, critically: they give zero points for fitting into the culture of old grey company men. This differentiates SpaceX from the establishment and gives them an abundance of bright young things that are clearly fuel innovation.
The culture of old grey company men is something that Japan has bad. They do have some traditions which act to counteract this -- a practically spiritual commitment to quality of service & craftsmanship has driven Japanese innovation for centuries -- but that's not going to be enough to compete.
I've known some folks who've worked for SpaceX, and more who'v interviewed. My sense is that the webcasts are fairly representative of the youthfulness and diversity of the company.
(Context: I started getting involved in space activism as a teenager in the early 1990s. The first conference I went to was a bunch of mostly-veteran Apollo and Shuttle engineers. I remember looking around the room and noting that I was the youngest person in the room by 2 or 3 decades, and also that there wasn't a single woman or non-white face present. Nothing against these guys at all -- they were great! -- but demographics like that will lead any movement to extinction. So I find it enormously satisfying to see how those demographics have changed.)
You're absolutely right that Japan's biggest challenge is its collapsing population. However, excluding half your population from meaningful participation in the workforce -- at the same time as your population is collapsing -- makes a bad problem significantly worse. In fact both problems have pretty much the same solution, starting with changing the culture such that it doesn't force Japanese women to choose between between being a mother and having a career.
Thing it is a choice all women have to make. US or Japan. As you go past late 20s the clock is ticking. You basically need 2-3 years per kid to write off your career(so about 6 years for replacement rate). Unless you are making enough to hire full time help or have your parent works as that full time help for free. Since me and wife neither of the two applied(well we could hire help but we both kinda want kids to grow up raised by a parent instead of a nanny)
Japan is at the point where half measures like subsidized daycare are long past. They need to literally pay people to have kids at this point. Give massive tax credits for kids etc.
Workforce itself is not that big deal. Japan unlike US is VERY easy to bring qualified people to work. Trivial really none of the US tech visa nonsense. Hire a guy, he is in the office month later. We have people from Netherland, Uruguay, Canada, Belgium etc. Tokyo is now trivial to live in with zero Japanese language ability or to find work as a qualified person. The pay is low by US standards though.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 256 ms ] threadOK, so it's pretty much a PR piece. That should have been mentioned right at the beginning of the article, not as a footnote on the last page.
I really don’t understand the knee-jerk reaction to brand anyone with an interest in Japan as some kind of deviant. It’s a pretty ugly character trait. Maybe you need to take a good long look in the mirror before you go on the attack.
So, there is going to be a wave of countries, companies, and people trying to get to emulate SpaceX. Of course the military angle here is scary. Several of these countries are also nuclear powers and the nature of space rockets is that once you can get them to space, delivering payloads back anywhere on earth is relatively straightforward. That used to be the exclusive domain of the US and Russia. That's no longer true.
But did that employing hordes of ex NASA, Lougheed, Raytheon, MDA engineers, and best and brightest at that.
SpaceX is as far from a ordinary SV startup as it can be.
I suppose Shuttle's goals were heavily skewed by the military. It was a much more reasonable project in the beginning.
(Arguably, existing heavy launch vehicles should just have been upgraded for man rating given that ULA's launch vehicles are pretty reliable today. But I'm not enough of an expert to know what the best alternatives to the Shuttle would have been.)
But, of course, that's only part of the story. The space shuttle had additional political constraints, i.e. spreading the wealth to many congressional districts, that greatly increased the cost and complexity.
Thank you for explicating it.
More deeply, the Air Force was blamed for adding requirements to the Shuttle, when the real problem was the Shuttle had such tenuous economic justification that it needed to pretend it had as many customers as it could. Never mind that much of the projected manifest (and projected flight rate) was an outright lie that the knew was BS as they were saying it.
One can view the (expendable) F9 as an implementation of MCD.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_dumb_booster
France detonated its first nuke in 1960, and put its first satellite (called Asterix) in space in 1965. So it has not been the exclusive domain of the US and Russia for more than half a century. Of course North Korea joining the club is a tad more scary...
Neither South nor North Korea has either commitment or capacity or historical precedent.
North Korea is a "fake it till you make it" media scarecrow. They would not go to agressive war and they never actually claimed they want to.
If you try to do "five whys" on "Why you should fear North Korea more than France" the topic will evaporate around the third "why".
France have access to ICBM, aaaand we know they are Napoleon-capable. I'm not saying they're in for a global conflict, just telling that political-military opinions are built upon sand.
Edit: it was sold (? or given) to France this year, from the Republic of Genoa.
The Korea war doesn't count?
I don't think in recent history France has engaged its army without either a mandate from the UN (Libya, Ivory Coast, etc.) [2], or being called for help by a local government according to a bilateral defense treaty (Mali). Maybe you have a counter example? Of course you can always go further in the past: France didn't become one of the largest European country by not waging expansionist wars... But I'm not sure it's entirely relevant to the world we are currently living in.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Yeonpyeong
[2] Of course it doesn't mean that the result is always good: Libya is a giant cluster fuck now.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, on the situation in Libya, is a measure that was adopted on 17 March 2011. The Security Council resolution was proposed by France, Lebanon, and the United Kingdom.
Noam Chomsky has argued that the Western military intervention into Libya was a clear breach of UNSCR 1973 since it nullified the attempts for a ceasefire that were put forward by the resolution and welcomed by Gaddafi. As he puts it, "NATO powers (France and Britain in the lead and the United States following) violated the resolution, radically, and became the air force of the rebels. Nothing in the resolution justified that. It did call for "all necessary steps" to protect civilians, but there's a big difference between protecting civilians and being the air force for the rebels."
Definitely sounds like an agressive war to me. UN is a kind of self-indulgence here. Makes France more dangerous if anything, if they can pull things like this one through. They'll not only mess with you but make security council's members abstain when they plan the operation.
Ariane 6 will bring down the cost somewhat in line with SpaceX, though it won't be quite enough to gain an edge. But there is already an ongoing effort to bring down the costs even more: Ariane NEXT. Research projects include the Prometheus engine [1] (which could be used on Ariane 6), Adeline [2] or Callisto [3]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_(rocket_engine)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adeline_(rocket_stage)
[3] https://spacenews.com/ariane-6-is-nearing-completion-but-eur...
If through some uncharacteristic set of events manage to pull their heads out of their asses, they are still well positioned to do awesome stuff going forward. Of course, the current kleptocracy is hopelessly inept and unlikely to get much done on this front. That seems to be the tragedy of Russia.
Sure they still enjoy the benefits of soviet era advances but that is slowly going away as well. Also Brain drain is real, anyone capable and who is not brainwashed left the country. THAT alone will continue to hit the country hard in the future on all fronts (and already is).
1. Within the realm of space flight, Russia has one of the most active launch programs in the world if not the most active. [1]
2. As far as overall military capacity Russia has by some accounts the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. [2]
3. With respect to current military strategy and tactics, Putin's campaign of disinformation using social media is a model of asymmetric warfare -- cheap to create and expensive to defend against.
Westerners discount Russia at their peril. They are worthy adversaries.
[1] https://spaceflightnow.com/launch-schedule/
[2] https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohasw...
In terms of actual new technology, there's just the Soyuz-2 (just coming into service now, and the first in the Soyuz family to use digital instead of analog control systems) and the new Angara rocket family.
Angara will be the real test of new Russian technology development. Payload and cost of the 1.2/A5 are in theory about the same as reusable Falcon 9/Heavy; operational launches are expected to start next year. If it manages to get good reliability and cadence, that will be the real proof that Russia is still competitive.
Well, it's not like NASA (or the USSR equivalent) couldn't "think out of the box".
In fact they had to, several times, to get to space/moon.
All those newer challengers (no pun intended) also benefit from a long list of technologies and problems they've already solved for them.
“We’ve got to change the way contracting is done,” Musk told the governors. “You can’t do these cost-plus, sole-source contracts because then the incentive structure is all messed up. As soon as you don’t have any competition, the sense of urgency goes away. And as soon as you make something a cost-plus contract, you’re incenting the contractor to maximize the cost of the program, because they get a percentage.”
From https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/07/elon-musk-knows-what...
Principal agent problem comes to bite us in the ass really hard in many industries where percentage of cost embedded somewhere within the incentive structure raises its head. Real estate, finance, insurance, the list of industries is long.
NASA firsts: first meteorological satellite, first orbital navigation satellite, first private satellite launch, first interplanetary spacecraft and planetary flyby (Mariner 2), first spacecraft to scan another planet (Mariner 2), first geostationary satellite, first successful flyby and images of Mars (Mariner 4), first docking of two spacecraft (Gemini 8), first photos of Earth from the Moon, first spacecraft to orbit another planet (Mariner 9), first spacecraft to visit both Mercury and Venus (Mariner 10), first successful mission to the surface of Mars (Viking 1), numerous scientific firsts related to the Sun (Pioneer spacecraft), first spacecraft to cross the asteroid belt and fly beyond Mars (Pioneer 10), first spacecraft to flyby Jupiter (Pioneer 10), first spacecraft to flyby and study Saturn (Pioneer 11), first flyby of Uranus (Voyager 2), first to flyby Neptune (Voyager 2), first manned spacecraft to leave low Earth orbit, first manned mission to orbit the Moon, farthest away humans have ever traveled from Earth (Apollo 13), first manned mission to land on the Moon, first spacecraft to leave the solar system (Voyager 1), first spacecraft to flyby Pluto, first space telescope. The list continues...
The only example I know of an operational launch vehicle with a lot of ICBM commonality is the Israeli Shavit, and that one is not commercially competitive; Israeli payloads (even military) are only launched on Shavit if they require a particular level of secrecy.
Japan has been the 2nd or 3rd largest economy in the world for 50 years. JAXA, after NASA and ESA, is probably the most technical advanced, well funded and respected space agencies in the world. A nation can't have such a large economy for this long without being a "power" ( relatively speaking ) in most sectors. Japan, despite its pacifist constitution, also has one of the best funded militaries as well.
(Source: lived in Japan and discussed this with various engineers there)
One of the Fukushima reactors held a lot of that store.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2018/07/07/editorials/r...
"Today, the plutonium stockpile has reached 47 tons, including 37 tons stored in Britain and France, which have been commissioned to reprocess spent fuel from Japan’s nuclear power plants."
Japan's plutonium is reprocessed from commercial reactors and is not "weapons grade." This is a bit of a misnomer, however: weapons grade plutonium is really good for making weapons because it has a low concentration of the isotope plutonium 240. Pu-240 undergoes spontaneous fission frequently enough that it makes a pre-detonation "fizzle" (bomb blows itself too quickly to achieve useful yield) likely in a simple bomb design like that used during World War II. "Supergrade" plutonium, especially pure Pu-239, is also desirable for submarine-launched weapons because it reduces crew exposure to radiation from the stored warheads.
It is however technically feasible to make effective weapons from "reactor grade" plutonium containing more Pu-240 if the weapons designer invests in more sophisticated features like deuterium-tritium boosting of the fission device.
To quote Carey Sublette's excellent Nuclear Weapons FAQ,
"The fusion reaction rate typically becomes significant at 20-30 million degrees K. This temperature is reached at very low efficiencies, when less than 1% of the fissile material has fissioned (corresponding to a yield in the range of hundreds of tons). Since implosion weapons can be designed that will achieve yields in this range even if neutrons are present a the moment of criticality, fusion boosting allows the manufacture of efficient weapons that are immune to predetonation. Elimination of this hazard is a very important advantage in using boosting. It appears that every weapon now in the U.S. arsenal is a boosted design."
(My emphasis.)
https://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq4-3.html
Japan could produce its own tritium by irradiation of natural lithium targets in commercial power reactors. It takes maybe 3 grams of tritium to make an efficient boosted weapon. Japan has enough plutonium for perhaps a thousand boosted-fission weapons in the 100 kiloton yield range, comparable in yield (if not efficiency) to France's latest submarine-launched warheads. I don't think it can produce tritium fast enough to supply a large number of weapons, given tritium's short half life and Japan's small number of operating reactors, but many reactors idled post-Fukushima are still in working condition and could be started up again in an emergency. Further, an opponent that does not consider dozens of nuclear weapons a rational deterrent is unlikely to be deterred by hundreds either, so Japan may not need many weapons to demonstrate a credible deterrent.
The Boeing 'Dreamliner' is one-third made in Japan. Re-supply missions to the International Space Station have been completed without incident by Japanese craft. Even the largest module on the ISS is Japanese. Japan has been busy.
Before WW2 Japan was in possession of a remarkably large fleet of aircraft carriers with the planes to go with them. In the post WW2 years the electronic components for those planes bombing Korea had to come from somewhere and Japanese people were doing all the hard work making and packaging those avionic nuts and bolts, even if for Western customers in the defence sector. So it is a long history tied into global projects and multi-national companies, not some 'secret effort to get started now'. It is a tale of evolution, not some nationalist effort with no long term goals.
When the USA decided to put a man on the moon there were 400,000+ people working for NASA, directly or with a contractor. The trip to the moon was chosen just because it hadn't been done and it was unlikely that the Soviets were going to do it any time soon. There was no plan for a next step, once the goal had been achieved. Hence we ended up with low-earth-orbit projects and no effort to put a man on Mars or establish a lunar base for further exploration.
Japan has 'quietly' got on with the real projects that are needed when it comes to aerospace and space, there has been no grand-standing or opting out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayabusa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayabusa2
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries also has a commuter jet, and I still think it's just a matter of time until they build something bigger. At least by the time the Dreamliner is up for a replacement.
remember when you first bought a new car? the manual said an oil change was required after 400-500 miles? thats due to a japanese invention called the self clearancing piston. a certain amount of piston wall is designed to wear off to develop the final piston clearance in the engine block. this cut manufacuring times drastically for some of the most critical components in the engine.
Japanese metallurgy is also miles ahead of what US steel is in my opinion. They are more willing to put exotic metal blends in their cars than their american counterparts. For example, a regular sedan from the US might contain a hardened borg warner gearset for all models. The japanese will adjust the transmissions for nearly every model based on what the car or truck is. turbocharged all wheel drive vehicles get 15% more nickel in their gears than their front wheel drive counterparts. This leads to a car with unreal longevity and durability.
They do this with motor assemblies too. Its not uncommon to see working sets of motors in japanese cars that are 30 years old where window motors and such would easily have failed in american sedans. potted, brushed high quality motors were a fixture on practically every japanese sedan in the 90s for even boring stuff like mirror adjustment.
This ethos is increasingly rare in software as well, and I'm wondering if this is setting up those who have discarded the ethos for a long losing game with technical debt, or if they will be eventually vindicated as having correctly optimized for price over complexity management and quality.
I know many civil, mechanical, chemical, and electrical engineers that write good code to solve important problems. I know few programmers that know anything about circuit design, plumbing, carpentry, etc. But do believe that the programmers that frequent HN are probably more apt to be multi-skilled and a more renaissance-type of person.
I think the only difference, in this respect, is that one technology has been around longer and the other is still the cool new thing. Someday, in a forum about whatever the new thing of that moment is, someone will ask the same thing about people who work in IT.
No one would ever know unless I mention it, because I don't fit the ugly stereotype of tradework being the domain of the crude and uneducated. I used to talk about it more, but I got tired of the condescension. Tech in general is incredibly insular, and nowhere near as open-minded as the field thinks it is, so I just keep quiet unless something like this thread pops up.
There are a lot of us like this out there, and we tend to stay silent on the subject for similar reasons. I am happy to talk about engines or APIs. What I really don't like is the assumption that because I know about engines, anything more cerebral must be a hobby, because it would otherwise be beyond me as a profession.
I think a lot of that "over-engineering" gradually went away towards the 90s and beyond, as cost concerns and other aspects started to bite in. Plus, they also understood that people started to change cars more often than before, so why engineer something for such a long duration? A lot of that initial over-engineering was also because of the pressure on Japanese brands to try and establish themselves in markets like the U.S. and Europe, where there was a general feeling that these "puny" Japanese cars might not last long. In terms of over-engineering (I know, keep using this term), the true pinnacle for me was the first gen Lexus LS400 designed to compete with the Mercedes S-class. Now, that was something else.
Funnily enough, they have started lagging U.S. and European companies after the mid-2000s in terms of vehicle technologies like advanced transmissions, wider adoption of turbocharged engines, infotainment etc.
/just a few personal thoughts from my years working in the auto industry
Scotty Kilmer is an almost half-century veteran of the car repair business. (He's become the new Car Talk of 20-teens YouTube.) His position on the automatic transmissions made by most car companies, in the current fleet of used cars, is that they're a bit crappy. As in, you're a bit lucky to get 100k out of most of them trouble free, and you're very lucky to get 200k trouble free. One of the few makers of automatic transmissions that gets it right is Aisin, which is the supplier to Toyota.
One way this might change, is the use of computers to operate what's essentially a manual transmission on behalf of the driver. However, even that might fall by the wayside, outside of particular niches, with electric vehicles.
There is a difference between durability (the Japanese are good at this) and innovativeness (U.S./EU are good at this) of transmissions. EU/US transmissions are mostly all 8+ gears (now 10) in torque converter type (conventional), EU lead in DCT (dual clutch transmission), Japanese are only just catching up to this.
Japanese are of course, market leaders in CVT (continuously variable trans), but these are not that well liked in EU/US markets because of the way they "feel," though getting better.
One way to think of that: The former can save you a lot of money over the long term. The latter is nifty, but you may well end up paying more money over the long term.
Gradually they are converging towards similar solutions.
People 'change cars more often then before', but they don't do it by hauling their three year old SUV to the junkyard.
The car gets re-sold to someone else. Most cars end their life by being driven into the ground.
1UZ-FE, 1JZ, 2JZ are legendary engines. You can still buy overbuild cars today, but you will pay serious premium for it (Land Cruiser)
Never heard of it! What you're describing is commonly known as "break-in" and has been part of auto care from day two until now:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Break-in_%28mechanical_run-in%...
I agree that Japanese auto manufacturers use excellent steel and were quicker to put, say, higher-nickel steel into parts.
nimbius says> " Its not uncommon to see working sets of motors in japanese cars that are 30 years old where window motors and such would easily have failed in american sedans."
Too far: it's uncommon to see a 30-year old Japanese car (built in 1988 or before) that runs at all, much less that has working power windows!
Camry V30s are pretty bulletproof
"Killing a Toyota Part 1 | Top Gear | BBC" : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xnWKz7Cthkk
Engineering standards are * very broadly* similar, worldwide, as auto companies do have to design and sell a vehicle for multiple markets. What was lacking in the U.S. is the actual execution of the build quality. You can engineer something to be really good, but if you don't build it well, there's no point.
A very good example of this is the year 2000 Ford Focus. It was winning car of the year/ best quality awards in Europe, while it was noted for having the most amount of recalls in the U.S for a Ford. Broadly the same product with some localized differences, built separately in EU and the U.S. - completely different execution/ build quality.
I was a summer intern at Ford in 06/07 and they were still dealing with issues from the 2000-2003/04 cars.
A sample for you:
"2000-10-24 (Published by NHTSA on 2000-10-24) Recall Summary: VEHICLE DESCRIPTION: PASSENGER VEHICLES. THE REAR WHEEL HUB RETAINING NUTS CAN LOOSEN AND ALLOW THE LEFT REAR WHEEL AND BRAKE DRUM ASSEMBLY TO SEPARATE FROM THE VEHICLE. Hazard: THIS CONDITION COULD RESULT IN A VEHICLE CRASH."
Knock yourself out. And this doesn't include dealer fixes (called technical service bulletins -TSBs) which are not actual recalls.
https://www.autosafety.org/fords-trouble-prone-focus-hit-saf...
http://wemakeitsafer.com/vehicle-recall/Ford-Focus-Recall-50...
That certainly used to be the case, 20+ years ago. US auto makers have dramatically improved since the mid 1990s.
On reliability today Buick outranks BMW, Infiniti, Toyota and Mercedes. Chevrolet outranks Toyota, Audi, Honda, Hyundai and BMW. Ford & GMC are better than Subaru and Acura, comparable to Mercedes, and slightly better than Volkswagen. Lincoln is better than Honda, Nissan and Audi.
https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/jd-power-201...
With electronic components being more popular you're seeing quality issues crop back up from T1/T2 suppliers because the focus is on technology instead of process. But the AOI/ICT I've seen in the automotive space are fairly crude compared to the number of potential failures you can have with electronic components. Playing whack-a-mole doesn't work. You need people close to the process who care enough to notice when something is not quite right, and are empowered to do something about it.
Kaizen is to manufacturing what Agile/Scrum is to software development. As soon as management hears "improved efficiency" they tend to focus on the dollar signs rather than the message about people and process.
The source is JD Power and they are claimed to have bad methodology. From what I read they don't weigh issues, so an infotainment issue is on the same level as a more severe mechanical issue.
There's a ranking from Consumer Reports but it requires a subscription as well, and it is probably somewhat biased since to my understanding one needs to be a subscriber to answer the questions in the first place.
A better method would be to pool data from several insurance companies, but I could not find such a thing.
I could imagine that publishing this data would be of great interest to insurance companies. That way, they could steer people into using cars which are cheaper to the insurance companies.
An objective study would certainly be of interest to someone who needs a car to move around. It's costly and not to mention frustrating when a car breaks down.
Japanese brands have also had their share of problems. For example Honda automatic transmissions were notoriously unreliable for several years leading to multiple recalls and class action lawsuits.
Japan, US, China, India, Russia, EU, maintain aerospace industry for strategic purposes. Civilian and military aerospace are tightly linked.
Slightly related, during that launch it was funny how the video from the fairing rocket cut out while it's still in space, and a minute later video from the landing boat shows the rocket on the launch pad like nothing happened.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKAROS
[2]http://www.hayabusa2.jaxa.jp/en/
That's how everyone in Japan is addressed: $FAMILYNAME-san.
>> If Japan has an internationally known rocket personality, it is Ogasawara
He is introduced without honorific, no doubt because company insiders did so. But the reporter as an outsider is not entitled to do that.
Ogasawara has the added (and rather shocking, from a Japanese perspective) twist of insisting on being addressed by first name, which the journalist does after mentioning this.
Good. They should. It's an innovation that is changing the industry with extreme rapidity. Almost universally, the established players in the sector -- both domestically and internationally -- have been in a state of extreme denial about this, making increasingly tortured arguments for why reusability isn't worthwhile or even possible to do. The longer they remain in this state, the more they undermine their future. Nice to see that Japan is confronting this head-on (even if there is still a bit of denial evident).
The end of the article, talking about women's participation in the workforce, isn't just political correctness. Japan has a big problem here, and it will impair their ability to innovate.
This isn't just about having women in senior leadership positions (although that's not unimportant). Watch the SpaceX webcast and you'll see that their crowds of (often very young) engineers are thronging with women, minorities, people who've dialed their queerness up to 11, etc. What's going on here? I don't think that SpaceX's hiring practices involve much affirmative action; from everything I've heard, intelligence, passion, and commitment are the qualities they hire for. But, critically: they give zero points for fitting into the culture of old grey company men. This differentiates SpaceX from the establishment and gives them an abundance of bright young things that are clearly fuel innovation.
The culture of old grey company men is something that Japan has bad. They do have some traditions which act to counteract this -- a practically spiritual commitment to quality of service & craftsmanship has driven Japanese innovation for centuries -- but that's not going to be enough to compete.
Japan biggest challenge is collapsing population.
Honestly Space or NK for that matter are tiny problems for Japan. Debt and birth rate is what they need to face. That is real crisis.
(Context: I started getting involved in space activism as a teenager in the early 1990s. The first conference I went to was a bunch of mostly-veteran Apollo and Shuttle engineers. I remember looking around the room and noting that I was the youngest person in the room by 2 or 3 decades, and also that there wasn't a single woman or non-white face present. Nothing against these guys at all -- they were great! -- but demographics like that will lead any movement to extinction. So I find it enormously satisfying to see how those demographics have changed.)
You're absolutely right that Japan's biggest challenge is its collapsing population. However, excluding half your population from meaningful participation in the workforce -- at the same time as your population is collapsing -- makes a bad problem significantly worse. In fact both problems have pretty much the same solution, starting with changing the culture such that it doesn't force Japanese women to choose between between being a mother and having a career.
Japan is at the point where half measures like subsidized daycare are long past. They need to literally pay people to have kids at this point. Give massive tax credits for kids etc.
Workforce itself is not that big deal. Japan unlike US is VERY easy to bring qualified people to work. Trivial really none of the US tech visa nonsense. Hire a guy, he is in the office month later. We have people from Netherland, Uruguay, Canada, Belgium etc. Tokyo is now trivial to live in with zero Japanese language ability or to find work as a qualified person. The pay is low by US standards though.