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Comment by giardini | Hacker News Reader

That's always been part of the trade-off. but the EM units were never reliable, probably never will be (b/c too many structurally weak and electrically unreliable components and connectors in a very harsh physical environment). And merely that something is "half built" is no reason to keep throwing money at it: the current EM design is a lost cause.

It looks like General Atomics is padding the project to make big bucks. The gvmt should hit them in the economic balls, kick the EEs to the curb, call in some railroad engineers to consider upgrading the steam system to work also for lighter aircraft. Or better, revert to the current steam system and supplement it with something like JATO as necessary.

Really, this nonsense has gone on for decades!

https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=ste...

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Counterpoint is that Chinese are integrating EM catapults into their carriers without bothering with steam.

Since when did the Chinese set the mechanical engineering standards for US aircraft carrier design?

How many aircraft carriers do the Chinese have in the field today? How many does USA have?

My favorite:

What percentage of the Chinese navy can swim 100 yards unassisted? What percentage of the USN can swim 100 yards unassisted?

In toto there's no "counterpoint" there! EM catapult on a USA carrier is a bad idea. It doesn't work well, it isn't reliable and it needs a total redesign. But let's try improving the steam catapult first. And I don't think General Atomics is the company to do it - they've vested too much in their EM failure.

You are pretty cathartic, the reality is that EM catapults are the future. US Navy knows that, Chinese Navy knows that. The elements for EM catapults are not reliable enough yet, bot so weren't LCD screens in their beginning especially CCFL tubes. But hey is somebody using heavy CRT monitors nowdays? Nobody.

Furthermore EM catapults will likely become cheap, then you can use them outside of ships - i.e. have EM catapult on the military airport. Imagine that you can just toss plane into a flight with a minimal runway. Imagine having such runway in front of a every stand. Then bombing of airports will get much harder because you won't catch planes lining up on takeoff, they will be all catapulted in the air within seconds.

Also EM catapults scale. You can make catapult long enough to accelerate a rocket so you don't have to use first stage booster.

general1465 says "You are pretty cathartic..."

Well, you apparently needed the purge. But you need more:

EM catapults may someday, somewhere be a future but first they must work reliably and predictably. The salt-water environment of naval carriers is an extremely hostile environment for electronics/electrics. The steam system works reliably now. I don't know of any reliable EMALS system anywhere in the world today. It's been BS for so long that people think it works well.

But launching planes is not an option for a carrier. W/o aircraft it is defenseless. Carriers can't wait for EM catapults to "become cheap" or become better. And there is no requirement here for using them "outside of ships" - we're talking about aircraft carriers.

The real solution - Kill the Project:

Accept that the aircraft carrier is near end-of-life as a naval weapon:

https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/goodbye-aircraft-carrier...

Shitcan ("purge"?) the unfinished ship (a cost boondoggle anyway). End the steam-EMALS debate, lay off the EMALS gnurds who designed it, kill the USS Doris Miller contract and spend the money moving to newer naval/alternative craft.

General Atomics is undoubtedly delighted with the cost overruns the debate and delay has/will caused. Any money spent would be better spent elsewhere.

If we're lucky, we might be able to sell the unfinished hull to China: they can use it to build an aircraft carrier with their supposedly-working EMALS system. Or perhaps a floating casino that launches PRC bigwigs in gliding seaplanes. We can remove the nuclear components and the Chinese can retrofit it with their coal-powered locomotive steam engines and use it to burn all that coal they're digging out of the countryside.

Wouldn't that be a sight to see: the Chinese "Doris Miller" pouring black smoke into the clouds over a beautiful Pacific Ocean sunset!

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