Why don’t jet engines melt? Veritasium takes you inside the roaring heart of a jet engine—from how compressors and turbines extract power to the record-sized fans that shove air at supersonic speeds. We trace the evolution from the first jet engine to modern marvels at Rolls-Royce’s precision‐casting plant, where engineers sculpt single-crystal nickel superalloy blades.
These superalloys, thanks to their gamma-prime microstructure, clever grain orientations and internal cooling channels coated with thermal barriers, can withstand combustion gases hotter than 2,000 °C without melting. By controlling crystal growth, minimizing edge dislocations and using advanced coatings, turbine blades stay cool long enough to keep our planes flying safely through scorching conditions.
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