In the gas turbine world, it is essential for all industry sectors to learn from each other. Despite how expensive reinventing the wheel might be, this does not happen enough or sufficiently.

The extent to which it does happen however, is owed largely to the inception of the aeroderivative gas turbine engine. In part fostered by the offshore industry's need for a lighter-than-industrial-engine-frame, OEMs (original engine manufacturers) took specific aircraft engines and placed them on a light, strong, and flexible base. Some of industry's largest fleets are aeroderivative. The land based Rolls Royce RB211, Trent, and Avon all had mothers who fly (or flew). A General Electric CF6-80C2 eventually "produced" an LM2500 on the ground. In fact the metallurgy of contemporary General Electric Frame 7 and 9 engines is quite similar to that used for the CF6 mature models. The Rolls Royce Olympus and Spey that are used so effectively in marine, offshore, and conventional land based applications have aero roots.

The logic for the panel that I discussed in the Preface continues. When the General Electric first released their F404 engine triple redundancy architecture was relatively new to industrial users. It is now commonplace in modern power plants.

The concept of a cycle of gas turbine life used versus a calendar hour evolved from realizing that the leader of an aerobatics squadron might only develop one twentieth of the wear on his engines, as compared with the engines of his followers who have to "hunt and follow" a specific...