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May 17,2019,Philippines—At the forefront of technology and the whole global manufacturing industry is aerospace engineering that is concerned with the science, design, and construction of all machines that fly. It was originally referred to as aeronautical engineering, but in order to include the new and advanced flight technologies that were able to produce crafts that fly beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, the broader term “aerospace engineering” was coined and used instead.

Today, aerospace engineering has two major branches: aeronautical engineering which deals with crafts that fly within the Earth’s atmosphere, and the newer astronautical engineering which specifically works with crafts that operate in outer space. Informally, aerospace engineering, especially the astronautics branch, is often referred to as “rocket science.”

Beginnings

The earliest attempts of flight can be dated back to more than two thousand years ago with tower jumpings, kite flyings, and creation of non-steerable hot air balloons. However, the formal origins of aerospace engineering can only be dated back to the late 18th century with the first rigorous study of the physics of flight done by English engineer, inventor, and aviator Sir George Cayley.

In 1799, he exhibited a plan for a glider which he later flew as a model in 1804. Over the next five decades, he also discovered most of the basics of aerodynamics, and introduced the separate forces of lift and drag.

History

Sir Cayley’s discoveries were followed by more pioneering attempts including the innovation and flight of the first steerable steam-powered airship by French engineer and inventor Jules Henri Giffard in 1852, and the flight of La France, which is the first airship to return to its starting point, piloted by Arthur Constantin Krebs in collaboration with engineer Charles Renard in 1884.

58 years after the first steerable flight, the Wright brothers, Wilbur and Orville, achieved the first powered, sustained, and controlled airplane flight with the Wright Flyer by incorporating the four forces of flight and the three-axis control of roll, pitch, and yaw in 1903. By the 1910s, the aeronautical engineering saw development through the design of World War I military aircraft, and the commercial aviation grew rapidly after World War II with the transport of people and cargo through the use of mostly ex-military aircraft.

After several successful flights within the Earth’s atmosphere, the aerospace industry pushed its limits beyond the space starting from the 1950s. The USSR launched the first artificial satellite Sputnik 1 to space in 1957, and was followed by Explorer 1 by the U.S. in 1958. These pioneer satellite launches gave way to the first definition of the then newly coined term aerospace engineering which considered the Earth’s atmosphere and the outer space as a single realm, thereby encompassing both aircraft (aero) and spacecraft (space) under the same field.

Then, the aerospace engineering industry made a leap into the future with one of its biggest and most famous feats: the moon landing of Apollo 11 in 1969.

Component areas

From the two main branches of aeronautical and astronautical, the study and work of aerospace engineering is further divided into several component areas.

There is aeroelasticity which is concerned with the interaction of aerodynamic forces and structural flexibility, and aircraft structures which is the design of the craft’s body that is required to withstand several forces encountered during flight. Aerospace engineering also studies astrodynamics which deals with orbital mechanics including prediction of orbital elements and electrotechnology which is electronics within engineering.

In alphabetical order, other component areas of aerospace engineering include:

• Avionics
• Control engineering
• Flight test
• Fluid mechanics
• Materials science
• Mathematics
• Noise control
• Populsion
• Risk and reliability
• Solid mechanics
• Statistics and Dynamics

Although one of newest branches of engineering, many thinks aerospace engineering as the most advanced and most involved one in designing the future. Considering the unstoppable advancement of manufacturing engineering, aerospace engineering might really just be the key to a door of new possibilities for the global manufacturing industry and the future.