FROM THE PREFACE: This book celebrates the wonderful projects on which we worked at Pratt & Whitney during the almost magical quarter century bounded by World War II and the competition to develop the Space Shuttle engine. Some of the work has never been described until this book because of stringent security classifications that are now lifted. This book is about the almost unbelievable engines and the dedicated group of people who made the engines real. Most of these unique projects were not the daily 'bread and butter' for Pratt & Whitney and thus were free from much of the survival pressure that typically surrounds that work. Instead, they were driven by the challenge of attempting things that had never been done. Two lasting discoveries that came from the work of the group were the RL10 hydrogen rocket engine, which has been used to launch most large satellites over the past half-century, and the development of the technology for the high-pressure staged combustion rocket engine used in the Space Shuttle.CONTENTS INCLUDE: Ramjets - The Early Days at the Research Laboratory; T57 - The Largest Turboprop; Liquid Hydrogen and the 304 Engine - Suntan; RL10 - My Only Moneymaker; High-Pressure Rockets - A Decade and One-Half Billion Dollars; Boost Glide and the XLR129-Mach 20 at 200,000 Feet; XLD-1 Gas Dynamic Laser; The Space Shuttle Engine; A Cry for Help.

CSIS's The Future of Military Engines looks at the state of the U.S. military engine industrial base and the choices confronting policymakers at the Department of Defense (DoD). The military engine industrial base is closely tied to the industrial base for commercial engines. U.S. engine providers use many of the same facilities and largely the same supply chain for military and commercial engines. The ability to leverage commercial supply chains is critical because supply chain quality underlies the performance advantage of U.S. military engines, both for individual aircraft and military aircraft fleets. International competitors such as Russia and China are seeking to overtake the U.S. in engines. However, the current U.S. advantage is sustainable if it is treated as a national priority. Many military aircraft, especially fighters, require engines with important differences from commercial aircraft. They fly different flight profiles and perform different jobs. These differences mean that while DoD can leverage the commercial engine industrial base, it must also make investments to sustain the industrial base’s unique military components. In the next few years, DoD investment in military engines is projected to decrease significantly, particularly for R&D. This presents a challenge as military-unique engineering skills are highly perishable. Four major policy choices confront DoD as it formulates its investment approach to military engines going forward: 1) Priority, 2) Resources, 3) Business Model, and 4) Competition. The DoD is at an inflection point for engine investment, and the time for choosing on these four key policy questions will come in the next few years.

The Engines of Pratt & Whitney: A Technical History recounts the role played by Pratt & Whitney (P&W) in the evolution of aircraft engines from 1925 to the present timefor the most part as told by the engineers who made the history. A technical reference of all P&W engines and their applications, the book describes the evolution of piston engines and gas turbines, and offers young engineers a wealth of insights about design, development, marketing, and product support efforts for customers at home and abroad. The first three chapters introduce the contributions of Frederick Rentschler, George Mead, and Leonard Hobbs, with stories of how each new piston engine came into being. From 19401945 P&W committed its engineering efforts to winning World War II, but when the war was over, P&W found itself on the outside of the gas turbine market, which was capably being served by General Electric and Westinghouse. How P&W emerged from being five years behind the competition in 1945 to a positio