Hopeful Future Aerospace Engineer

[CommieAme]

Hello, I'm wanting to become an aerospace engineer but I have no clue where to start. It's hard for me to find ways to stay focused on things I should and I always feel like I'm not able to do anything. Does anyone here know of ways to stay focused on learning and where to learn about aerospace engineering?

[Ke8ort]

Hello! I'm pretty fresh working as an aerospace engineer, but I figured I could share my experience growing up and how I cultivated and grew my passion in aerospace engineering. I'm very much not experienced in the field, but I'll give it my best shot.

First: read, watch, or attend anything related to aerospace. You don't have to do all of these things, but you'll want to do at least one of them. Gaining information and knowledge about any field you might be interested in is paramount. It doesn't even have to be purely aerospace related. It could be programming, robotics, cars, plants, biology, literature, or even politics. Anything that keeps you engaged in the subject. The important thing is to think out of the box when you read or watch something. Try and think how what you learn could be applied to aerospace. Ask yourselves questions. Try and explain to yourself what you just read/watched/heard about and research any gaps that you don't know. When I was in middle school, I spent a lot of time reading Wikipedia articles and watching YouTube videos about anything related to aerospace. As I grew up, I found better and better sources of information, but Wikipedia and YouTube were my starting points (and still are, albeit a lot less than before).

Two: Talk to someone or visit something. I know this step is a little hard, and may not be feasible, but I wouldn't be where I am today if it wasn't for this one. There's so many people that have spent their entire lives fascinated by aerospace. These people don't have to be aerospace engineers either, they just need to have an interest in aerospace and be willing to talk to you about it. Focus on understanding the story, ask questions, try and get the big picture. Another thing if you have the chance is to visit something. Whether it be a museum (I grew up in Dayton, so the USAF museum was one of my favorite places to learn) or a research facility, or a manufacturing plant. I know those last two sound a little hard to do, but if you're a student, and are interested, asking can go a long way to visit some amazing places. Giving people tours is one of the favorite parts of my work since I get to show off all the cool work we get to do to people who are interested. "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you".

Three: don't discount the history. This works very well with the first two points. Depending on how you were taught history in school, you may have developed a sense of hatred towards learning history, but with aerospace, there's so much interesting and cool history to learn. Like I mentioned previously, I spent a lot of time reading Wikipedia articles or YouTube videos. The history will not only give you an understanding of how quickly we as humans have moved in the past 120 years, but also it will inform you about some engineering stuff too. I've heard countless times that the SR-71 had gaps in it's skin to account for the thermal expansion caused by aerodynamic heating at Mach 3, and as a result would leak fuel on the ground. This simple fact is a lesson in a couple of things: 1) objects expand when heated, 2) heating occurs when flying at several times the speed of sound, 3) accounting for thermal expansion can be challenging, 4) sometimes engineering tradeoffs may sound ridiculous, but if it makes it work, it's a valid solution to the problem. All this proved to be very valuable baseline information to have when I started working on hypersonics in college.

Four: do something. Join a club. If you're in high school or middle school, see if there is anything engineering related near you or even at your school. For me, I gained tons and tons of engineering knowledge from participating in FIRST robotics in high school. Look for amateur rocketry clubs near you. Get hands on experience in anything even remotely related to engineering. It's never too early to do an internship either. I did my first internship in the summer after 10th grade. That first internship was working in a machine shop, I didn't design any aerospace components, but I got hands on knowledge in a field that is critical to the development of aerospace technologies.

Hopefully that helps a little bit or at least gives you some ideas to think about. Right now is an amazing time to be in aerospace, especially spaceflight. I grew up in the 2000s and the 2010s, where spaceflight just seemed so boring and dead to younger me. Space shuttle was gone, constellation was dead on arrival, and there just wasn't anything interesting going on. And then I kept hearing about this company called SpaceX and how they were building rockets that could land themselves. I started reading about them and learning more and more. I learned about other companies trying to follow along in their footsteps. Commercial crew capsules were being developed, new lunar exploration programs came about, and rockets bigger than Saturn V were being built. Things are moving fast, so this is a perfect time to be getting started. Best of luck!

[meekGee]

Hello, I'm wanting to become an aerospace engineer but I have no clue where to start. It's hard for me to find ways to stay focused on things I should and I always feel like I'm not able to do anything. Does anyone here know of ways to stay focused on learning and where to learn about aerospace engineering?

How old are you? 

EDIT:  Oh, I see, 17.

My Spiel:

Aerospace is an industry.  It employs many types of engineers - mechanical, electrical, chemical...  you have controls people, you have thermodynamics people, physicists...  even software people, though I have a hard time calling them engineers...  There's also a ton of non-engineers still doing technical work - operations, technicians, etc.

So the question is - how do you envision yourself in aerospace?  What tickles you?  If you have a clearer picture of that, it'll be easier to figure out how to go about it.

Me, I'm a mechanical engineer at heart.  But I'm also kinda adventurous.  If I was 17 today, I'd be thinking about Mars with the intent to go, since that's what tickles me.  So I'd study chemistry and geology and material science. People who truly understand the basic principles of those will be super useful on Mars. But also aim to be as hands-on as possible.

If you're studying for mechanical engineering, make sure you understand fabrication and have shop experience and know how to weld.

If you're a geologist, make sure you're comfortable operating a back-hoe.

If you have any farming experience, consider learning about indoor food growing.

And have fun no matter what.  Once you do, focus and all that will not be a problem.

[gtae07]

As an AE with 20 years in the field... I would strongly consider a mechanical or electrical engineering major in college.  You can still find plenty of employment in the aerospace industry, but you will have other "backup" avenues of employment should the need arise.  Many potential employers in other fields/industries will happily employ MEs/EEs but if they see "aerospace" on your resume it goes straight to the shredder, because "we don't do airplanes".  Doesn't matter if you were doing an ME's or EE's job at the aerospace employer, or even doing the exact same thing the non-aerospace employer is hiring for. 

This is a problem because outside of SoCal, Wichita, Seattle, or the Space Coast, there aren't many other viable employers for someone living there.  If you lose your job, you're moving; if you want to live somewhere specific, there may only be one or two places that will hire you. 

Maybe I'm too grumpy/jaded/angry right now, but due to family reasons we need to relocate to Atlanta and there are only a couple of viable stable aerospace employers up there (I'm not counting startups because I need stability/job  security for family, and frankly I'm too old for that ****).  Had I been a "regular" ME, or even had I taken my FE exam (which all the AEs were told "don't bother you don't need it") I'd have more options.

Also, watch out that you don't get pigeonholed too early.  The aerospace field especially seems to track people into specific roles/specialties early; when hiring for more senior positions companies seem to look for people who are those deep specialists (like someone who's just done hydraulics for 20 years).  I left R&D for the in-service support side 10 years ago to avoid being stuck as "test rig designer" for the next 30 years, and to get out of the rat-race that is new program development.  I may have inadvertently pigeonholed myself even further, since I'm now a systems generalist but I don't do new development.  And when hiring, almost everyone looks for "we want someone with X level of experience doing exactly the thing we are hiring for".  Let's not even get into HR and computer screening...




I chose aerospace because I was fascinated from an early age, wanted to be a pilot like my dad, and just sort of fell into it.   I'm now wishing I'd chosen civil or mechanical engineering, or even (shudder) some sort of CS/IT sort of job, because then I'd have options and not be stuck where I am.  And I could still fly airplanes on the side.