Challenges and Opportunities in the Next Two Decades of Aerospace Engineering

Abstract

Over the next two decades, aerospace engineers face a remarkable set of new challenges involving applications of technology in airborne and spaceborne systems to meet demands that society is placing on this field. At the same time, aerospace engineering will see an equally remarkable set of exciting opportunities for providing entirely new systems and capabilities to society that most today cannot yet envision. Throughout its history, this field has undergone a continuing series of such transformations, each enabled by major technology advances that have often involved an extraordinarily close coupling of military and commercial developments. This chapter presents a summary of some of the key challenges and opportunities in aerospace engineering over the next two decades. As the field continues to evolve during this time to meet these challenges and develop these opportunities, it will continue its history of using technologically-rooted advances to transform our society in ways that have, over time, consistently served to inspire the most innovative minds of successive generations.