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A comment on Keeping Rotary Alive: Mazda's Rotary Engine in the Age of the Electric Car. Parent comment

Re:Keeping Rotary Alive: Mazda's Rotary Engine in the Age of... by newsclues on Saturday March 30, 2024 @08:51AM (#39874374)
It’s hard to tell if you can improve technology until it’s good enough (jet engines) or if it’s a futile dead end.

Kelly Johnson of Skunkworks had a keen mind for differentiating between them.

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Re:Keeping Rotary Alive: Mazda's Rotary Engine in the Age of... by class3shock on Saturday March 30, 2024 @05:45PM (#39878983)
It is indeed and sometimes it can go either way depending on the time point. A good example is what eventually became the PW GTF, the PW8000, discussed here:

https://cornponepapers.blogspot.com/2006/04/short-life-and-u...

Just a little bit to early but when they came back to the idea they ended up with a technology that they use on all their new (big) commercial engines.

For anyone that doesn't know the name Kelly Johnson I recommend "Kelly: More Than My Share of It All". A rare person who combined technical genius with an ability to get large scale things done.

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