The good news: "This is potentially a multi-billion-dollar business," he says. The bad: He can't break into the market.
Since the 1940s, jet engines have revolutionized military, airline, and corporate flying. But somehow, the jet revolution never trickled down to personal flying. A practical, affordable, jet-powered light airplane for private pilots—a Cessna Skyhawk, say, without the propeller—has for decades been only a dream. Five- or six-seat, $1.5 million to $3 million very light jets (VLJs) are just now on the market, but the vision of a single- or double-seat jet with the price tag of a propeller aircraft—one-eighth the cost of a VLJ—has never become more real than three-view drawings taped to the office walls of dreamers everywhere.
But Merrill stands apart from the rest; he probably knows more than anyone about small jet engines. A propulsion industry lifer who has worked on everything from torpedoes to funny-car dragsters, he's had a hand in the design of some 80 jet engines, ranging from the General Electric J79, used in U.S. fighters and bombers in the 1950s and 1960s, to the Teledyne CAE J402, used in today's air-to-surface and cruise missiles. But for more than 40 years, his abiding passion has been the idea of a small jet engine for light aircraft. He has spent most of that time bouncing back and forth between manufacturers, who weren't willing to bet the store on an engine that was not certified, and investors, who wouldn't put up the money for certification because the light-airplane market was too
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