Expert: Paul Soderman - 9/15/2008

Question
Hello Mr. Soderman, My name is Natily and I am currently a 10th grader at Manor New Tech in Manor, Texas. I would like to ask you a few questions for a project I am doing in school on engineering.

1. What is the expected salary ranges for an Aeronautical Engineer?

2. What are the duties and responsibilities of an Aeronautical Engineer?

3. What type of places might an Aeronautical Engineer be able to find employment?

4. What kinds of courses would one take in High School to be well on the way to entering this career field?

5. What types of College courses would one take for a degree with Aeronautical Engineering as a Major.

6. What Areas of Specialization are in this career field?

7. Please give a brief description of this career field.

Thank you dear Sir for your help with this class project.  

Answer
Natily
I get so many of these type questions that I have a canned response I hope will suffice:

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 where I was responsible for planning and executing wind tunnel studies aimed at improving our understanding of aeronautics and related technologies.  

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 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, etc.

The projects I worked on can be found in engineering libraries - search on my name.  One project I was proud of was the investigation of the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica.  I did the aero design the gas sample instrument.  We found was causes the hole, which led to the worldwide banning of fluro-hydrocarbons.

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

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.

Starting salary depends on many factors such as academic performance, skill set, experience, location, and more.  Usually, one starts at $60,000 per year plus or minus $10,000.
Paul