Cool Things About Aerospace Engineering

The first important thing you should know is that aerospace engineering is the area of engineering that is linked to the design, development, and manufacturing of spacecraft and aircraft. 

There are some other branches that will overlap like astronautical and aeronautical engineering.

What does an Aerospace engineer do?

An aerospace engineer will design aircraft, spacecraft, missiles, and other airborne items. They will also create prototypes of these, and testing them. There will also be the opportunity to see the design and prototypes of other people’s work and evaluate it. They are also going to be working to meet and beat specific criteria – environmentally, safety, and ethically. There are, of course, many deadlines that need to be met, so they will work with the company and an aerospace shipping service to get everything exactly where it is meant to be. 

Career 

The BLS (bureau of labor statistics) has said that a profession of aerospace engineering is a high demand area. And the average salary is somewhere in the $100+ region. More people are flying every year, but they are also looking for a way to fly greener. So professionals are in high demand to design and manufacture newer, greener airplanes. 

Education

Many careers can be based entirely on experience gained on the job. Aerospace engineers will always need a bachelor’s degree at minimum. Many universities offer a 5-year program that will allow the student to take both the bacherlo’s degree and a master’s. And all aerospace engineer courses need to be accredited by ABET. The further up the career ladder you go, the more likely it will be that the demands on qualifications will change. To land a managerial role, you will need a lot of experience and shadowing a senior. 

Confusion

Many people make the mistake of assuming that avionics and aerospace are the same. However, they are, in fact, two unique concepts. Avionics is tied into the electrical segment of aerospace engineering. There are some similarities, but for the most part, they are very different areas. 

Parts

If you consider the typical car. It has somewhere in the region of 30,000 parts – which is a lot right? That total includes the screws and bolts, by the way. So now imagine the number of components a 747- 400 passenger aircraft needs. It a shocking huge 6 million parts! That is including all of those fasteners, which make up almost half of that number. 

Aerospace

Is an umbrella term that covers all of the different aspects of aerospace engineering. It incorporates mathematics, material science, avionics, software, noise control, aeroacoustics, electrotechnology, astrodynamics and more. 

Experts

After they are initially qualified, an aerospace engineer will likely go on to specialize in an area. Here are a few of those areas:

• Small satellites
• Space Environment modeling
• Micro Air Vehicles
• Optimization Techniques for Aerospace Systems
• Aeronautic

There are, of course, many more areas, as aerospace engineering is such a diverse landscape to work in. 

And the final cool thing to know about aerospace engineering is that is wasn’t a thing until the 1950s. In fact, it was 1958 when the term ‘aerospace engineering’ happened. And it was the year that NASA was formed. They say that good things come in pairs!