This paper provides an overview of aerospace engineering as a profession, examining what engineers do on a daily basis, how they collaborate with specialists in other engineering disciplines, and how a university degree prepares graduates for entry into the field. It also addresses salary expectations, geographic job distribution, and the ongoing skills development required throughout an aerospace engineer's career. The paper argues that aerospace engineering is a forward-looking profession demanding creativity, technical breadth, and adaptability, and that success in the field depends as much on continuous learning and teamwork as on foundational academic training.
Aerospace engineering as a profession is a career of the future, dealing with everything from missile weapons systems to aircraft and spacecraft. The career depends on education, collaboration with engineers in other disciplines, and skills gained through on-the-job knowledge and discovery. A well-paying field, aerospace engineering offers the opportunity to make great strides in designing and building the air transportation of the future, and can lead to a literal career among the stars.
This paper introduces aerospace engineering as a profession and discusses the contributions of other principal engineering disciplines to the field. Aerospace engineering can lead to a career designing weapons systems, large or small aircraft, or spacecraft. Each specialty requires particular knowledge and education, and choosing a specialty means understanding the necessary designs and assessing whether they align with one's personal interests and goals. Aerospace engineering is a career about the future, with the potential to innovate and develop pioneering ideas in air and space travel.
Depending on the area of concentration chosen within aerospace engineering, an engineer could expect to work on a variety of tasks in a given day, week, or month. Much of an engineer's time is spent working with a team to design, analyze, examine, produce, and perhaps even fit components within an aerospace project. The Princeton Review notes, "An aerospace engineer plays some part on one of the teams, spending more of her/his time (roughly 70 percent) in a lab, at a computer, and assembling reports than doing anything else. Not being able to see the 'big picture' frustrates some professionals" (Editors). This is because most aerospace engineers work on only small fractions of a project — they specialize in one area of the overall design, such as communications, structural design, guidance, navigation, or instrumentation — and may further specialize in just one component of those areas, building a deep body of knowledge and expertise as their career unfolds.
Aerospace engineers can also choose to specialize in guidance and control systems, aerodynamics, celestial mechanics, thermodynamics, propulsion systems, or acoustics. They may even work in industries beyond aviation or aerospace; some aerospace engineers have been employed by automobile manufacturers to develop more aerodynamic vehicle designs. Engineers use a wide range of complex machines and software to create their schematics and drawings, from computers and CAD (Computer-Aided Drafting) programs to electronics, optics, lasers, and robotics. Engineers must also be flexible, as they will often be deeply involved in one project only to be reassigned to another at short notice. While teamwork is central to the job, the ability to work independently and in isolation is equally important.
Aerospace projects are extraordinarily complex, making input from engineers across multiple disciplines essential. In aviation engineering, structural design, aerodynamics, instrumentation, communications, fuel systems, load and weight analysis, and guidance systems all require dedicated engineering effort — as does the aircraft interior, from cargo areas to passenger lounges and seating. In rocketry, propulsion, aerodynamics, fuel systems, guidance, controls, and instrumentation must all be engineered. In broader aerospace work, everything from instrumentation and propulsion to communications and guidance comes into play.
Depending on their specialty, aerospace engineers may collaborate with dozens of colleagues across various disciplines to develop workable solutions to complex design challenges. This means an aerospace engineer must not only work well with others, but must also understand the purpose of the component being designed and how it fits within the overall system. While engineers may not know every engineering detail of every element that goes into an aircraft, rocket, or spacecraft, they will understand precisely how their piece fits into the larger equation — and, critically, what it must interface with directly. As a result, engineers typically develop close working relationships with colleagues whose specialties are most closely linked to their own.
"University coursework and career readiness"
"Salary data and job market geography"
"Skill gaps, internships, and advanced degrees"
The aerospace engineer faces an interesting, challenging, and exciting future. We are on the brink of real space travel for the general public, flying faster and farther, and reaching out farther into space than ever thought possible. It is an exciting time in aerospace, even as the industry faces significant pressures from a global economic downturn and rising fuel costs. To meet these challenges, aerospace engineers of the future will need to be innovative, creative, and passionate about their work — qualities that will carry the industry forward into the heart of the 21st century.
You’re 53% through this paper. Sign up to read the remaining 3 sections.
Sign Up Now — Instant Access Already a member? Log inAlways verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.