randomguy wrote: ↑Sat Jan 22, 2022 2:09 pm
FireProof wrote: ↑Sat Jan 22, 2022 12:12 pm
I'm certainly no expert on the subject, but it does seem to have at least some versatility. A friend of mine has loved planes since he was a kid and studied aerospace engineering. Unfortunately, he wasn't really able to work in the field due to being a non-US citizen. However, he was able to get an engineering job at Tesla, no planes or space ships involved!
Of course. Every car maker has been hiring aerospace engineers for 50+ years to work on the aerodynamics of their cars. A body moving through a fluid is a body moving through a fluid. Driving a rover on mars isn't that different than driving car around LA:). The kid needs to think about what type of engineer they enjoy (rather study the flow of fluids through pipes or if a bridge will break when a truck goes over it) and then figure out what major matches that best.
As far as the value of being a pilot, I am sure a degree helps. But it is a vastly different career path. If your goal is to fly planes, figure out how to do that. A lot of engineers would much rather sit in front of the computer and figure out how to make that plane .01% more efficient...
If one wants to be a pilot, my *guess* is that you either:
- attend a military academy & become a pilot (I believe that's what the best Annapolis grads seek to do). US Army presumably only helicopters. One constraint is that more and more of the "pilot" jobs in US Military will be flying UAVs (drones)-- better to risk a $30m drone on a mission than a $200m+ manned airplane. Lots of people who signed on to fly, wind up sitting in a trailer in the Nevada desert, flying drones. There are quite a few books and articles about this trend and the psychological effects on the pilots.
- take commercial lessons and become a pilot. As I understand it, it's all about the hours and the air frames, and the sooner you get those hours, the sooner you can enter into the profession
(One thing I had heard is that as the cockpit becomes more automated, the role of a pilot is deskilled. You are just a super well trained machine minder, if you fly commercial aviation & routes. That's happening in lots of professions and is something to be wary of).
I am not sure that an engineering degree makes much difference in becoming a pilot? Just loses you precious years off your flying career?
If car design then my *guess* is mechanical engineering is a better choice. Subject to the really radical change that is going on in cars right now, which makes them more a Systems Engineering/ Electronics problem ie the movement to EVs, which is global, and has become unstoppable.