What kind of degree should I get if I want to design lighter-than-air craft?

Is there a field of study that I can major in that specializes in things like hot air balloons, blimps, etc.? Avionics and aerospace engineering is all about airplanes and spaceships, right? What do I do if I want to design hot air balloons?

You probably just take up sewing since there isn’t a whole lot of actual design to a hot air balloon other than making them cool colors and shapes. There are always some neat ones at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.

Kidding aside, it would still be aerospace engineering that designs things like airships. Lockheed was recently working on a blimp-like design of some sort. I don’t remember all of the details but it will still be aerospace engineers doing the aerodynamics of that sort of thing. I can’t imagine there is enough of that work going around to make an entire career out of it though, as the same engineers doing the fluid simulations and experiments with that are also doing them for planes.

JPL is working on ideas for lighter than “air” vehicles for places with atmospheres like Venus and Titan. They have a variety of different types of engineers.

Depends on what aspect of the blimp you want to work on. The Lockheed design for example (if its the one I know some about), had a partial internal frame to hold some of the heavier components like the propulsion system. So you could be an aerodynamics engineer, a structural engineer, a materials engineer, a controls engineer and probably more specialties that I haven’t thought about.

Do realize that for all the big projects a new engineer will not be the primary design person. You haven’t proved yourself to the point that a company is will to risk that much money in you yet. It also takes a team to do these big designs and so you will part of that team. As you do gain experience, you will get more and more responsibility.

Smaller companies will give younger engineers more responsibility sooner in their careers. But the smaller company usually comes with a founder/boss that came up with the original idea and is therefore the chief designer as well. You are still part of a team.

Find what you do well in and study that area. Enjoy the ride. Engineering can be fun as well as financially rewarding, just need to be realistic about your expectations.

Thanks for the answers!

@boneh3ad , I know you were joking, but what you suggested really is a thing, sortof -
https://textiles.ncsu.edu/

We’ll call it a half joke.