The other day, someone contacted me that specializes in CADCAM design, in fact, they have an upper division degree on the topic, have done instruction, and helped in the design of many innovations.
Later, I got to thinking about some of the challenges that human aircraft and aerospace designers will face in the future, in that they may be doing a lot less designing than once thought.
Now then, I'd like to talk to you about this for a few minutes if I might.
You see, we've been told that there is a shortage of aerospace engineers.
In fact a few years ago there was a very interesting article in Aviation Week and Space Technology which explained that the average aerospace engineer and technical designer was at age 58.
Now then, that was three years ago, and today they are actually past retirement age.
The best ones are still working, because there is work, and it's hard to find and train new folks to do this job.
As Steve Jobs noted when talking with the Obama Administration there is also a challenge of keeping international engineers and designers in this country after they've completed their schooling and got their degrees.
In Apple's case it has to do with computer engineers, the same challenge today we are dealing with in aerospace as well.
I can remember a five or six years ago everyone was complaining that there was a shortage of nurses, and all the schools ramped up with new degree programs for nurses to fill that future gap.
Today, there are more nurses than needed, the gap has been filled, and folks graduating with nursing degrees are not guaranteed a job as they were before.
Will we see the same thing with aerospace designers? And what about all those kids that went to the top aerospace design schools, what happens to them when they get out? Will they be needed? One of the reasons I ask this, is because artificial intelligent software seems to be coming up with new designs.
These new programs have all of the data from all the wind tunnel tests, of all the prototypes ever created previously.
Someone can take a design that they sketched out, put it into the software, and it will make changes, corrections, and account for airflow, left, parasite drag, and induced drag.
It can fix stability problems, and do all the math needed simultaneously.
So why do we need aerospace engineers in the future? These machines programmed with artificial intelligence will most likely be able to do it all for us.
Indeed I ask you to please consider all this and think on.
Later, I got to thinking about some of the challenges that human aircraft and aerospace designers will face in the future, in that they may be doing a lot less designing than once thought.
Now then, I'd like to talk to you about this for a few minutes if I might.
You see, we've been told that there is a shortage of aerospace engineers.
In fact a few years ago there was a very interesting article in Aviation Week and Space Technology which explained that the average aerospace engineer and technical designer was at age 58.
Now then, that was three years ago, and today they are actually past retirement age.
The best ones are still working, because there is work, and it's hard to find and train new folks to do this job.
As Steve Jobs noted when talking with the Obama Administration there is also a challenge of keeping international engineers and designers in this country after they've completed their schooling and got their degrees.
In Apple's case it has to do with computer engineers, the same challenge today we are dealing with in aerospace as well.
I can remember a five or six years ago everyone was complaining that there was a shortage of nurses, and all the schools ramped up with new degree programs for nurses to fill that future gap.
Today, there are more nurses than needed, the gap has been filled, and folks graduating with nursing degrees are not guaranteed a job as they were before.
Will we see the same thing with aerospace designers? And what about all those kids that went to the top aerospace design schools, what happens to them when they get out? Will they be needed? One of the reasons I ask this, is because artificial intelligent software seems to be coming up with new designs.
These new programs have all of the data from all the wind tunnel tests, of all the prototypes ever created previously.
Someone can take a design that they sketched out, put it into the software, and it will make changes, corrections, and account for airflow, left, parasite drag, and induced drag.
It can fix stability problems, and do all the math needed simultaneously.
So why do we need aerospace engineers in the future? These machines programmed with artificial intelligence will most likely be able to do it all for us.
Indeed I ask you to please consider all this and think on.