In 1941, the National Academy of Sciences appointed a committee to assess the use of gas turbine engines — which use heat released during fuel combustion to produce thrust for propulsion — in aviation. The group of luminaries concluded that due to the temperature limitations of existing materials, gas turbines did not have much of a future in propelling airplanes. However, “Unknown to the committee, the first jet engine was already successfully run in Germany in 1940: the Junkers Jumo,” says Professor Zoltán Spakovszky, director of the MIT Gas Turbine…
