Expert: Paul Soderman - 10/17/2008

Question
To Sir:

I am a student in Brooklyn Technical High School and I am doing a project about aeronautical engineering. One objective of the project is to interview a person that has experience in this field. I have some questions that I want to ask you about your job. Please do your best in answering them.

1. What are the objectives/what do you do in this career?

2. What are some of your daily jobs?

3. What schooling/college courses did you take to prepare for this type of engineering?

4.What are some skills needed for this job?

5. What do you like about doing this job?

6. What don't you like about doing this job?

7. How long have you been working in this field?

8. Are there any benefits to you job? (range of salary, health care, holidays/ vacations, etc.)

9. How are your working conditions? (ex. cleanliness of your workplace)

10. Can you describe your working conditions?

11. How does your field of engineering affect people's everyday lives?

Answer
C, I get this question often. I have a canned answer that may or may not answer all your questions as follows:


Generally, aeronautical engineers design and develop aerospace devices such as aircraft, missiles, race cars, jet engines, etc.  I was in research at NASA Ames Research Center for 37+ years where I was responsible for planning and executing wind tunnel studies aimed at improving our understanding of aeronautics and related technologies. I am now retired.

A normal day involved examination of scientific literature, planning experiments, writing code for data analysis, analyzing experimental results, meeting with my peers, requesting support from management, writing reports, etc.  I traveled 4 to 6 times a year to various laboratories or scientific conferences.

The quality of work was high.  The pay was good, not exceptional, but government employees have good benefits such as excellent vacation time, sick leave and pensions.  Hours were good, we had the option of working 9 nine hour days and getting a three-day weekend every other weekend.  Job locations in aerospace are limited by the few number of organizations in the field, but jobs do exist all over the country.

Research is never boring, not counting the occasional meetings on team morale, budgetary process, or time efficiency that we had to attend.

I often worked with engineers with different expertise such as electronics engineers, mechanical designers, software programmers, system control engineers, mathematicians, etc.

The projects I worked on can be found in engineering libraries or on line - search on my name.  One project I was proud of was the investigation of the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica led by a Harvard team of scientists.  I did the aero design of the gas-sampler instrument.  It was a tough problem, but we found what causes the hole, which led to the worldwide banning of fluoro-hydrocarbons.

For this job you must be expert in math and physics as well as computer programming, electronics, and so on.

Working conditions were very good.  Research labs are always changing and improving depending on the research project of the month.  At NASA we had the best computer systems and instrumentation available.

I knew in high school I wanted to be an engineer, either to build bridges or aircraft.  I chose aircraft and am glad.

High school students should take all the math and science they can get, especially physics.

I chose U. of Washington engineering school for my aero studies, undergraduate and graduate, but also studied at Oregon State U. and Stanford U.  They are all good schools, there are many across the country.

Starting salaries depend on academic achievement, experience, skill set, location, and more but generally begin at $60,000 per year plus or minus.
Paul