Aerospace Engineer: A Typical Day

[Abraham]

I know there's a similar thread on mechanical engineers, but what's a typical day in the life of an aerospace engineer like?

 

[D H]

Today won't be a typical day for me because I am going on vacation tomorrow. I am leading the effort to rewrite (from the ground up, yeehaw!) NASA Johnson's space environment and orbital dynamics package. This package forms the core of many simulations at Johnson and elsewhere. This afternoon we have a four hour architecture review meeting. I have been doing too much real work on the task (requirements, design, prototyping, even some hairy math) and have let the vugraph engineering part of the effort slide. I have a lot of vugraph engineering to do this morning in preparation for the meeting. I also have to update the coding standards, at least to the extent that the other team members won't create a mess while I am off.

Our effort is stress-testing the simulation engine we use as the basis for our package. (For example, I had to rewrite some of the simulation engine's memory management capabilities to make it work with C++.) I have some follow-up work with the developers of the simulation engine regarding the issues uncovered.

I also coordinate company's work on yet another project; I have to pick someone to fill in while I'm gone. Finally, I recently wrangled a new task for our company, and the first meeting is at 11. Squeezing in this meeting between everything else I have to do today is going to be a challenge. Squeezing in lunch is going to be an even bigger challenge.

 

[mgiddy911]

Aerospace Eng. is a sort of broad occupation. I'm not sure there's one answer for the a "typical" day in the life. some folks, as above, work with programming and simulation, others with actual design of aircraft, and others even with all sorts of types of work from managing a project through the actual final production of the design, all of which could be considered jobs in aerospace engineering