Not literally every nut and bolt, but be responsible for the major design decisions in the same sense that Kelly Johnson was responsible for the SR-71.

Of course I now understand that's not how it's supposed to be done and it takes a team even in Kelly Johnson's days. But the idea that I could point to a cool looking plane on the tarmac and be like "I designed that" was a major source of motivation for me.

I can't be the only one, surely?

Hey guys! It's the noob who asks questions from work again. This time I'm really out of my depth and the guy who we pay, who also has the answers, is dealing with something else for us at the moment. So I'm hoping I can get something from here.

I have recently come into this topic of flight testing with load cells. I have started my research and have found that the industry usually use load cell instrumentation to find what I understand to be internal loads in structures. There are different instrument setups for measuring shear and tensile/compression loads. There are mathematical models used to correlate (calibrate) the strain gauge outputs to internal loads (forgot the method's name, some guy who worked on the space program back in the 60s, eastern European name). That's all well and good, and I assume you would use the internal loads to find stresses.

However, if my goal is just to compare stresses I calculated in a static analysis to stresses from the same assumed flight regime, can I just simply measure strain directly and figure out stresses from there? Is that too simplistic?

Edit: I know I said load cell in the title but I meant strain gauges.

I just watched this video about the X-44 MANTA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzCKinzfzPM While very exciting, the video left out a few details...

1. I understand thrust vectoring, but at no point was any mention made about what kind of engine the aircraft has. Or its fuel source.

2. Since Elon believes the era of the fighter aircraft is over, what is the specific mission of this plane? It was mentioned in the video that it does carry missiles.

3. Due to some comments at the beginning of the video, I was left wondering if this plane can leave the atmosphere and "fly in space." That could be desirable for a number of reasons.

4. Finally, how fast is this plane? Is it hypersonic, and if so does it exceed Mach 5?

Thanks.

I know turboshaft engines aren’t really 100% propulsion and are used for mechanical output, but would these be replaced with something else within the next couple centuries?

Hi all,

My daughter (now in 9th grade) is considering aerospace engineering. How is the field for women? Is it as sexist as I imagine it to be or has it changed over time? Serious answers only please.

Hi everyone! I'm a high school student with no "official" competences in the field (looking forward to university though), except for some physics and a strong passion for programming, aviation and engineering in general. For the past year I've been thinking about building a remote controlled replica of a Boeing 737-800, which should turn out 1.50m in length and 1.35m in wingspan when completed. I'm posting this here on purpose, since my objective isn't that of creating a simple RC model with standard controls (which would fit r/RCPlanes ) but rather the one of engineering my scaled aircraft with as many functional details as I can manage.

As per now, I've started collecting as much data regarding the B738 as I can, and I've created a list with all of the measurements I could find scaled down by the factor I need. I've also found AutoCAD drawings of it on Boeing's website, even though they are intended for airport clearances and not for super-detailed referencing, and I'm trying to recreate a basic 3D model in FreeCAD that'll help me get started with sculpting the fuselage, wings and other structural elements.

Speaking about materials, I was thinking of using mainly XPS foam panels for wings and fuselage, in order to keep everything lightweight without sacrificing the already low strength I'm expecting from my design. For control surfaces (ailerons, elevators, rudder, flaps and slats) I could use plywood or thin metal foils (e.g. 1mm in thickness) that I'll shape as needed, but I'm still very undecided about it so I'm open to suggestions.

What I tried to study from the very first moments are the flight systems, which I think will be quite fun to implement once I'll get a design that's actually capable of soaring the air. My idea is to get some Arduinos to do the hard work (probably MEGAs since I'll need quite a handful of pins), for example by using one as a remote controller and another as an on-board processing unit to process data (both sent with the transmitter and retrieved from sensors on the aircraft); if this concept turns out inefficient, I could think of splitting the on-board unit into more parts: a "receiving/dispatching" unit for other Arduinos (perhaps Micros) which will process specific data regarding the system they control. For what concerns the wireless connection between the controller and the aircraft (I'm totally new to such things) the first thing that came to my mind was to use LoRa transceivers, so that I can design my own data packet with everything I need instead of using a limited number of channels and so that my model is able to send back data to the controller. Let me know if this kind of connection sounds inappropriate for such a project, I'm really keen on understanding any possible flaws! To give an idea of what kinds of systems I'm aiming to reproduce, these could be some some hints: trim controls (on top of control surfaces' handling, obviously), speed/altitude/attitude reading/displaying, lights (beacon, strobe, taxi, landing etc.), traffic advisory (in other words a radar to detect obstacles), GPWS calls and (maybe) a basic autopilot.

Another great challenge is designing the power plant: since I'm basically ignorant about this, will a small fan (around 6cm in diameter) ever be able to generate 6-7N of thrust if designed properly? Will shaping it like the CFM56-7B's front fan help its efficiency or do the complete opposite? If it ever works out, I'll probably put two batteries in the model, one for the motors and one for the rest of the systems, so that I'll still be able to handle the plane in case my engines were to completely drain their battery's charge.

To conclude, I know this project is waaaaaay to ambitious for my non-existent skills. I want you to know my goal isn't to complete it as fast as I can at all, but rather to take some time to fully understand the work behind such a model. I probably have thought of more details than I have stated here, so ask me anything and maybe I'll have some sketch among my notes for that! Feel free to suggest anything or completely roast me (that'd still be helpful :) ), I really hope some of you will find this concept interesting or worth spending time for.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading! Have a good day!

Hello!
I'm coming from a background in electronics engineering so please bear with, I'm building a new 6m~ glider with goals of flying for multiple days, as part of this I'm attempting to wrap my head around aerofoil design and specifically how to chose a foil based off graphs simulated in Flow5 (I'm really just using it as an Xfloil wrapper).

I have settled on two semi custom foils that have the following graphs:

Cl/Cd vs alpha

Cm vs Alpha

Cl vs Xtr top

I'm trying to maximise Cl/Cd vs Alpha to give me the most efficient flight possible but I'm worried I'm sacrificing stability to do this, as you can see aerofoil A in green (its a customised GOE448) has better Cl/Cd but it also has far worse Cm / Alpha, I under stand that Cm is effectively a foils tendency to rotate around its roll axis at a given alpha, the question is.. how much is too much?
given its going to by flown by an autopilot can this just compensate for any amount? or do i still need to be mindful of how much its wanting to roll? if so how much?

another question is Cl vs Xtr top, as I under stand it, Xtr top is effectively where along a foil the flow separates and thus having a higher number is generally better, how do i go about comparing these foils given the results?

the foil shown in green also exabits jagged characteristics at low Reynolds , is this catastrophically bad?

Sorry, I appreciate this is a big question and the answer will almost certainly be "go away and leave this to the professionals" but as engineers you know how problem solving is fun, and this is fun for me :)

Note: the 3 lines are at 100k, 150k and 200k Re

The video is about the relationship between the Schrödinger wave equation and the aether. It explains in detail how the Schrödinger wave equation can provide evidence for the existence of the aether. According to the video, ether was considered as an ideal gas medium.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STrL5cTmMCI

I’m considering aerospace engineering as my future path, but before I dive into it, I wanted to hear from those who’ve already walked this road.

I’ve always been fascinated by planes, rockets, and space exploration, but I also know every field has its reality checks. So, for all the aerospace engineers out there (or those who left the field):

1. Do you regret choosing aerospace engineering? If you could go back, would you pick something else?
2. Compared to friends or colleagues in tech or management, how do you feel about your career growth, work-life balance, and salary?
3. What are the biggest pros and cons of this field that someone like me should know before jumping in?

From the outside, it seems like an amazing field—cutting-edge projects, a chance to work on things that literally fly, and the prestige of being in aerospace. But I also hear about things like limited job opportunities, intense workloads, and less pay compared to tech.

So, what’s the truth? Is it a dream come true, or are there things you wish you’d known before starting?

I’d love to hear your honest opinions—whether you’re thriving in aerospace, struggling to make it work, or even transitioning out of the field. Your insights could make a huge difference for me (and others trying to decide)!

Thanks in advance, and looking forward to your stories! ✈️

This is our senior capstone project. It's a twin-spool low-bypass afterburning turbofan based on the GE F404 engine. We started from a simple thermodynamic cycle analysis and worked our way up from there. One thing I'm particularly proud of are the blades, which are unique to each stage. I still need to make an afterburner and a nozzle but that'll be later on the focus was on the turbomachinery aspect of it all.

https://reddit.com/link/1h30gew/video/uyuuk5ftqx3e1/player

I’m currently working on a side project and am in need of a CAD file related to either an aircraft or a ship. Examples of what I’m looking for include a Jayhawk helicopter, UH-60, Boeing Chinook, or even something like a John Deere-powered vessel. Ideally, I’m interested in components such as landing gear or other parts that require repeatable maintenance.

If you have any files or resources you could share, I’d greatly appreciate it!

First class I got to know him, and to my surprise is a very good English speaker. Usually even other students with degrees in engineering, make many grammatical mistakes, such as using present/past tense words incorrectly even though they can read and write perfectly. This student however makes absolutely no mistakes, and it’s very clear he’s far more intelligent than me. I discovered he would just like to have some conversation classes. I think we had a great first class and he was eager to return tomorrow. He seems like someone who enjoys what he does, and he likes explaining his job.

He talked about how his job is to overview maintenance for 10 specific airbus models, and work accordingly with their flight cycles. The 5 catagories of the maintenance review is: Airframe, Engine, Software, Cabin and Structure.

Each category has their own specific set of engineers. Every week he he does a presentation I believe in preparation of the upcoming flights.

So my question to other aerospace engineers is, what are some interesting discussions and topics I can bring up in our next class? The class flows very naturally, and time seemed to have flew by rather fast. Though I have a general idea of what we will be discussing next class, I would like to know what are some topics that aerospace engineers are very interested in. And more importantly what are topics I should NOT discuss. I considered bringing up some past Ethiopian airline incidents but I don’t know if these are on the “do not discuss list”

Hi all,

The title says it all. For Aerospace industry, which one is better or more widely used? I’m trying to decide that so I can focus studying it. May be do a boot camp or getting a professional certificate. Would love to hear everyone opinions!

Title, dealing with basically spacecraft attitude kinematics/dynamics, determination, stabilization, and control mainly. I have a few texts here, but wanted second opinions on which one y'all think delivers the best on it. Any others apart from those here?

1. Anton. H.J. De Ruiter, Christopher J. Damaren, James R. Forbes, Spacecraft Dynamics and

Control: An Introduction, John Wiley & Sons, West Sussex, UK, 2013.

2. F.L. Markley & J.L. Crassidis, Fundamentals of Spacecraft Attitude Determination and Control, Springer, 2014.

3. M.J. Sidi, Spacecraft Dynamics and Control, Cambridge University Press, 1997.

4. B. Wie, Space Vehicle Dynamics and Control, 2nd ed. AIAA, 2008.

5. H. D. Curtis, Orbital Mechanics for Engineering Students (3rd Ed.), Butterworth-Heinemann, 2014

6. H.L. Hallock, G. Welter, D.G. Simpson, and C. Rouff, ACS Without an Attitude, Springer-Verlag,

London, 2017.

I'm working on a 2d video game involving orbital mechanics calculations. I need to compute the orbit after applying delta v and the time expression of the orbit position and speed with respect to time. While the code generally works well, I've encountered an issue with near-circular orbits. Specifically, when the eccentricity vector is very small, large numerical errors arise when I use it to compute the argument of periapsis.

This becomes particularly problematic because the argument of periapsis affects the time calculation via Kepler's equation. When I compute the new orbit after applied a DV, the argument of periapsis computed by the eccentric vector is affected by the float number error.

I wonder what approaches or alternative methods? Thanks in advance!

Hi folks,

Just had a generic question regarding wing tip fuel tanks on light aircraft… Besides aesthetics and potentially ease of access why do barely any high wing light aircraft have tip tanks?

Thanks!

Hi everyone,
I am a relatively new structural analyst in the aerospace industry and I'd love to hear and learn from fellow engineers! Please share your experiences and interesting stories while working in aerospace, whether related to career choices, interesting problems you faced, or even silly stuffs that happened at the workplace :D

I will start by sharing a bit of my story.

After graduating, I joined a local startup company that designs and manufactures fixed-wing drones for cargo. It was a great experience, because I got to explore many aspects of aircraft analysis on smaller scale, which carried less risk. There were only a handful of people on the team, so I got involved in everything--from design, to weight & loading, FE analysis, and even testing (we already had a working prototype). The only downside was that we didn't have real experts on the team, so I often found myself figuring out things on my own, diving into resources, and questioning whether my approach was right. I realized that I made a lot of mistakes when I presented my analysis to the regulators. It was embarrassing, but I learned a lot!

After a year, I moved into a larger, foreign-government-owned aerospace company, which had just opened a branch office in my country. Right after joining, they sent me abroad for training, but it turned out they just expected me to jump straight into work. As a junior, I didn't have many skills, so they had me doing hand calculations for cable brackets and tons of meshing. It took another year before I was trusted with FEM analysis. While I worked on a more complex project (aircraft, not drones), the tasks I was doing felt less significant, repetitive, and boring, and the opportunity to learn advanced topics came slowly. That's why I am hoping to hear from others--looking for motivation and insight from fellow engineers :)

Hi everyone, I’m a philosophy student, and my boyfriend just started his first year of a graduate program in Aerospace Engineering. He plans to pursue a PhD in Astrobiology afterward.

The degree is super tough, and I want to support him in any way I can. For Christmas, I’d like to get him a device for taking notes, but I’m torn between two options: an iPad or a graphics tablet. My understanding is that graphics tablets are primarily for note-taking, while iPads offer additional functionality.

Which option would be better for taking notes? Are there any apps (beyond just note-taking) that would make the iPad a better choice? If so, what apps should I consider?

I’d appreciate any insights. Thank you so much for your help!

Edit: You guys are the best! It sounds like the same setup I use for philosophy will work perfectly. Here’s what I plan to order: the iPad 10th Gen, a third-party pencil (in case he loses it), and a paper-like screen protector!

I am a junior in high school and I am going to compete in a science fair this upcoming April, and have been struggling to find very many good ideas for what research and experiment I should do, I want it to be complex enough to where the judges find my topic interesting and complex, I also want the experiment to be able to have a real world impact that can benefit the population. I have access to 3D printers and a classroom wind tunnel. Along with that I have some coding skills and a raspberry pi. Edit: Please make sure it is related to aerospace engineering in some way.

Hi r/aerospaceengineering,

I’m not an aerospace engineer, but I’ve been wondering about the design choices of Lilium aerospace and wanted to hear your opinions on their approach. They stand out as one of the only companies using ducted fans, and I’ve been wondering about the rationale and potential drawbacks of this choice.

Some specific questions:

1. Why ducted fans? What are the advantages that might make it worth investing in designing such a system from scratch? Are they inherently better for something like efficiency?
2. Efficiency concerns: You need significantly less thrust during horizontal flight compared to vertical lift-off. Does having 30 small engines with fixed-pitch blades make this inefficient? Since the pitch of the blades can’t be adjusted, do they have to power all of them during cruise? How does this compare to the efficiency of using open propellers?
3. General thoughts: Are there engineering challenges with scaling this type of design (e.g., weight, power distribution, or heat management) compared to traditional open-propeller eVTOL designs?

I’d love to hear your perspectives—both on why they might have chosen this design and the potential trade-offs they face. Thanks!

Assuming majority of an aircraft's wing planform area is within a propeller's diameter, would placing the propellers higher than the wings noticeably increase lift?

I'm hoping that high speed prop-wash over the upper surface of the wings would create enough of a pressure difference to allow an aircraft to perform short takeoffs.

Im currently building a jet engine from a turbocharger and wanted to ask something about the ignition system

Im using a car spark plug as an ignition source, i know you can power jt manually with a 9v battery and an ignition coil but what would the timing be like, can i just manually give it 1 spark to set it off and no more or does it need multiple/ongoing charges from the plug to keep it going, if so what would the timing be like for that and how could it set up a system to spark on those timings

Is this a bad idea

For example, if I 3D printed a 1:18 scale model of my car with an added airfoil for downforce, and tested it in a small wind tunnel, would I be able to apply the results to 1:1 scale aerodynamics?

I am not an engineer, just an automotive hobbyist.

Wondering if anyone knows of a CAD software to design Turbo Jet engines and run it through a fluid simulation. Tried using blender but that seems to be more animation instead of fluid physics