actually there was a rocket scientist on the reality tv program king of the jungle recently my colleagues and i were all rooting for him but he was voted off quite early he just wasn't good at things like fishing and building a waterproof shelter at one point someone said to him with great relish it's not rocket science mind you if they had asked him about aero elasticity the interaction of aerodynamic forces and structural flexibility that can potentially cause flutter and divergence he would have been very useful so what does a rocket scientist actually do well it varies i'll give you a brief overview of the profession and then tell you a bit about what i do rocket science is the popular name given to aerospace engineering which is engineering concerned with the science and technology of aircraft and spacecraft research design development and construction you'll notice i'm talking about engineering here rather than science strictly speaking the use of the word science in rocket science is a misnomer since science is about the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment while engineering is about using scientific and engineering principles to solve problems and develop new technology which is what we do i'm an engineer the media and public tend to use science and engineering as synonyms which is incorrect so
aerospace engineering is divided into two major branches aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering aeronautics deals with aircraft that operate in the earth's atmosphere and astronautics deals with spacecraft that operate outside the earth's atmosphere as you can imagine the two fields overlap someone the engineering demands on flight vehicles are very challenging the vehicles are subjected to changes in atmospheric pressure and temperature with enormous structural loads applied upon vehicle components the development and manufacture of a modern flight vehicle demands careful balance among the desired flight capabilities available technology and costs the complexity of the vehicle's successful functioning means that various technological and engineering disciplines including aerodynamics propulsion avionics material science structural analysis and manufacturing work together under the umbrella known as aerospace engineering my part in all this is structural analysis i'm overseeing a major experiment at the moment in which we are subjecting a military jet airplane to stress by continuously shaking sections of it in mechanical vices to duplicate both long term normal flight stress and short term high stress loads we're also testing some carbon composite patches this experimentation is producing a lot of data and we're running it against the various predictions we've made so to be brief my day at the office typically involves looking at a lot of data and talking to other engineers about that data my key role is ensuring the quality of the testing it might sound a bit dry but it's really fascinating