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Comment by wongarsu | Hacker News Reader

So in short the US only builds a tiny number of them once every two to three decades, so nobody has any experience. And letting someone with experience build them is out of the question because then it wouldn't be built in the US.

This seems like a reoccurring story when talking about anything vaguely infrastructure related in the US.

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Seems so, TSMC had issues with keeping costs under control while building their fab in Arizona. The military is having trouble building submarines and ships at the same rate as China is capable of. Nuclear plants are being built way over cost.

I'm reminded of this article which explains why elevators cost so much more here in the USA than the rest of the world:

https://archive.is/u7Bp9

> And plumbing codes in America require an entire network of ventilation piping that has been deemed largely unnecessary in much of the world.

There’s a lot of surprising info in that article. This one section that I actually have passing knowledge of is just blatantly false. The majority of US states use and heavily contribute to the international plumbing code which allows for single stack ventilation as described in their linked article. My house from 1958 has single stack ventilation…

Sections like that with easily verifiable falsehoods bring the rest of the facts presented by the article into question for me.

This seems to be endemic to civilization period. Nobody pays attention until the last one breaks, and by then nobody knows how it's done anymore. I'm reminded of the fleet of ships that repairs undersea data cables, which are looking at aging staffing issues.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40075402 https://www.theverge.com/c/24070570/internet-cables-undersea...

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