Number 20 - Innovation in aersopace

Aerospace engineering culture

Growing up I had the impression that aerospace engineering was synonymous to the cutting edge. All the news about the International Space Station, stealth aircraft and the associated space exploration movies gave me the impression that this industry is all about innovation. It turns out I was wrong.

In practice, the aerospace industry (as with most human centered industries like healthcare, civil engineering etc.) has a characteristic that is slowing down innovation: it's safety culture. This safety culture permeates throughout all aerospace from research to engineering and services.

Arguably the impact of the safety culture is mostly felt at development, where aerospace engineers simply cannot just go ahead and develop a solution to a problem as they see fit. It is very important to have explainable and traceable design, so always very specific processes have to be followed and documented. This documentation always comes handy at the qualification and certification phases, which boil down to proving to the authorities that the developed solutions are safe and will work under all expected conditions (pressure, humidity, intense vibrations, sudden temperature changes, structural damage etc.) and throughout their expected lifetime.

The certification phase can even take up more time than the design of a new aircraft. It is a top priority to all involved parties to guarantee passenger safety and foster a culture of trust to the sector. This is why the requirements are usually extremely stringent. For instance the flight controls are expected to work 99.9999999% of the time - a quite extreme figure. Naturally, this incentivizes aircraft designers to pick reliable and tested technologies for their next project so that they can prove this reliability level quicker and get the aircraft in the air as soon as possible.

So next time your are taking a flight somewhere or are stuck in an airport, just take a minute of your time and consider the monumental effort that so many men and women have put it to make sure you and your loved ones have a safe flight. It takes sacrifices to be the safest mode of transport and if the sacrifice is to lose the fast tempo of Big Tech and consumer electronics, so be it!

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