<story><title>Audi abandons combustion engine development</title><url>https://www.electrive.com/2021/03/16/audi-abandons-combustion-engine-development/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kashprime</author><text>ICE’s have over a century of development behind them now. I’m not going to miss them, but I wonder if there’s a way to ‘archive’ this kind of specialist mechanical engineering knowledge. It may come in handy one day.&lt;p&gt;It’s depressing to read about engineers having to go to the Smithsonian to study the lunar lander to relearn some of the innovations and improvisations made at the time.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>akamaka</author><text>It seems inevitable that much of the practical knowledge is lost.  Look at how few old sailing ships survive, despite that being the most advanced transportation technology for centuries.  The schematics of the engines will survive, but future generations who study them will struggle to understand the design choices that went into them.&lt;p&gt;I’m happy that might change in the world of software, since so much collaboration is done online, and future historians will have troves of JIRA tickets to dig through.</text></comment>
<story><title>Audi abandons combustion engine development</title><url>https://www.electrive.com/2021/03/16/audi-abandons-combustion-engine-development/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kashprime</author><text>ICE’s have over a century of development behind them now. I’m not going to miss them, but I wonder if there’s a way to ‘archive’ this kind of specialist mechanical engineering knowledge. It may come in handy one day.&lt;p&gt;It’s depressing to read about engineers having to go to the Smithsonian to study the lunar lander to relearn some of the innovations and improvisations made at the time.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>devoutsalsa</author><text>I don’t remember the lunar lander, but I do recall reading how each rocket engine on the Saturn V was one of a kind, because the engineers had to assemble each one by hand, and each acted slightly differently.  So there’s no way to reproduce a specific Saturn V engine now, but there also never was back when the Saturn V was still flying.</text></comment>