Aerospace Engineering

Edwards Finance > General Engineering

Q. First, I would like to thank all the ppl who have been replying to my post, the latest being the question about an NASA YF-23. If anyone has further info on it, I'll be most grateful if you email it to me. Im about to finish secondary school, and ill be going to college next year. My first option is aerospace engineering but since it is a fairly new job here I dont have much of an idea on what an aerospace engineer does. I would appreciate it if you could give me some words on this subject, since i cant seem to find such around here.

A. -here are my credentials, I got me BS in AE in 95 from USC and am now working on my MS in CS. With that in the open let me tell you my experiences. We are the jack of all trades. You got to know your fluid mechanics and thermal dynamics like any other ME, you need a fair background in statics and dynamics just like the Civs, and then you have to do your time with control theory and stability like the EE freaks and of course a strong knowledge in math and physics not to mention good programing skills in Fortran and C/C++. So like I said earlier, we are the jack of all trades. I work for Boeing North American, formerly known as Rockwell International and I work on the entry flight controls for the Space Shuttle program. I personally loved doing the school stuff with aerospace, especially if your school has a strong program with good facilities and personel. But keep in mind that you don't have to be an aerospace engineer to work in the industry, however, it's harder to get a job outside of the industry with an AE degree even though we have gone through equivalent training. Oh, and just from experience, I've found that AE grads are usually the better programers out of college....just my observation. And one last thing, if you ever get that chance, orbital mechanics is the way to go. Oh yeah and one more last thing, don't ever over specialize, it's the easiest way to become obsolete. -Let me recommend a few web sites. First, the Aero (and Ocean) Engineering department at my old university (Virginia Tech) -- by looking at the courses that they offer and the research that they are doing, you can get a good idea of what they are about. http://www.aoe.vt.edu Second, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics -- AIAA for short. Their home page is http://www.aiaa.org, and I expect that if you browse through it you will find a lot of information and resources. They should have a page on "what is aeronautical engineering" somewhere, but I didn't see it ... nonetheless, there is lots of good stuff on their web page. Basically, aerospace engineering (as a college major) is a combination of all the different kinds of engineering subjects that are related to how a plane flys. You will first learn basic engineering -- how to think about something that you are designing, and how to think about physical laws of nature in a very applied way. Then, you will learn how to design structural stuff like wings that will hold up under load -- basically, the same idea as bridge-building. You will learn a _lot_ of fluid mechanics -- how does air behave, how can you calculate it (Hint: Lots of calculus), how can you model it on a computer, and how can you make it do what you want it to do. Also, you will learn a good bit of control theory -- how can you make the autopilot keep the airplane on course even if it's windy, for instance.

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