<p>Awesome enough that I still regret not studying it 30 years ago. But then I’m the guy who loves aviation…</p>
<p>My beef with AE today is that 30-50 years ago we built stuff the hard way that was not very expensive, was totally seat-of-the-pants engineering, lasted decades, and did far more than it was expected to do. Today, everything costs an extra zero or two, there’s too many engineers and computer geeks and what nots involved, and true geniuses like Kelly Johnson or Paul MacCready are far and few. </p>
<p>The best part is that AE’s today have skills that other industries need, mostly structural (vehicles), propulsion (commercial aviation, energy), materials, and the like. When the fellow posters say broad, they mean broad. </p>
<p>I feel bad when I visit another aircraft museum and wonder about how we did this all those years ago and today nothing gets solved unless we pour billions into anything…</p>