Imagine you’re spending billions to try to make Inconel and other nickel superalloys. Imagine you consider this to be absolutely essential for the continued independence and prosperity of your country. So, imagine that one of the most important things to your country is to produce a reliable jet engine for fighter aircraft, fifth generation and beyond. This is not something that you can do instantly, no matter how much money you have. At the same time, it requires training, procedures and the dissemination of best practices. From all of the world’s businesses, there are only precious few that can design and make the latest generation of aero engines.Ī fantastic set of challenges awaits anyone who attempts to conquer the aero engine challenge. Usually whole cities or ecosystems of hundreds of companies come together to produce engines. Similar experience and knowledge is required for all of the materials and processes that you will use. Every component requires excellence, which means that not only do you have to have good CNC operators, materials, and procedures, but also excellent CNC equipment and knowledge. Tribal knowledge coupled with exacting standards, procedures, practices, training, and facilities are needed to do so. A considerable institutional knowledge is needed in order to do so. I could give you the plans for the latest aero engines and you could not manufacture these plans. A quality issue, a materials issue, an assembly issue-they can all lead to one error and one error is enough for a fatal failure. Then, for thousands of flights, while being subject to temperatures over 1500° C, the resulting item has to reliably work every single time. The design would have to be manufactured with the most exacting requirements, specifications, standards, and excellence in order to work.

So, why is it so hard to make a jet engine? This is probably the most extreme example of a physics- and materials-driven product that needs many materials, many processes, a lot of software, and a lot of candle power to combine into a highly specific design.

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