AMAA 2026: NASA Turns Rocket Alloys Into Flight Ready Hardware Through Iterative Post Processing

• A combustion chamber with undetected flaws, or a nozzle with clogged internal channels observed during a hot fire test, can set a rocket programme back months. At NASA‘s Marshall Space Flight Center, that risk has pushed engineers to treat additive manufacturing in aerospace as an integrated chain of design, build and post processing steps, where…

A combustion chamber with undetected flaws, or a nozzle with clogged internal channels observed during a hot fire test, can set a rocket programme back months. At NASA‘s Marshall Space Flight Center, that risk has pushed engineers to treat additive manufacturing in aerospace as an integrated chain of design, build and post processing steps, where weak links anywhere along that chain can mean scrapped parts and lost months. Dr. Paul Gradl, principal engineer at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, laid out that view of metal additive manufacturing (AM) in a session titled “Pushing the Envelope: NASA’s Frontline Applications of Metal Additive Manufacturing” at our online event Additive Manufacturing Advantage: Aerospace, Space and Defense 2025. Dr. Gradl returns for AMAA 2026 this week, regi