You Could Design the Airplanes of the Future: Inspiration for the Next Generation of Aerospace Engineers

Description

When most people go to the airport, they may notice that every airplane looks the same, and the way that airplanes look - and what they can do - hasn't really changed since the 1950s. A natural conclusion is that designing airplanes is not very interesting and does not require much creativity. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Around the world, engineers and scientists and academics - and inventors in their garages - are creating airplanes that implement bold new concepts that will shape the airplanes of the future. A book for kids of all ages, showing the latest, most creative, and most innovative ideas in the field of airplane design. The book is full of large, exciting pictures of exotic, unusual, and futuristic airplanes. The innovative technologies in each airplane is explained in simple language. The concepts shown in this book are currently being tested and figured out. If the reader becomes an engineer in 10 or 20 years, they will use these new ideas - and their creativity! - to make the airplanes of the future better than those of today. The goal of the book is to get kids interested in an area of STEM that is growing very quickly: Every year, new designs are unveiled for drones, reusable spacecraft, "flying cars", electric or solar aircraft, futuristic airliners, and airplanes that can fly at extreme speeds and altitudes - or that can hover, and take off and land straight up and down like a helicopter. Younger kids will enjoy the pictures while having the text read to them. Older kids can use the book as a springboard for research into the many other innovative aircraft mentioned along the ones shown in the photos, to learn some of the fundamentals of aeronautical engineering. The book was written by a Boeing airplane designer who consulted with many people involved in unusual and innovative aircraft: The experts developing a Mach 5 airliner that can fly at the edge of space, the engineers who designed the world's most fuel-efficient helicopter (which can fly for 24 hours nonstop), the leaders of the organization that created one of the fastest jets in history, NASA researchers who work on the next generation of electric airplanes, flight instructors whose airplanes are the first to include amazing new safety features, and inventors who build futuristic airplanes in their garages and then fly them! The book illustrates these concepts by showing and explaining patents by Boeing and Airbus, futuristic concepts by NASA and Lockheed, record-breaking airplanes by Scaled Composites, research projects at universities, and photos of the latest experimental proof-of-concept airplanes doing things that no other airplane had ever done before!

Bernardo Malfitano works at Boeing Commercial Airplanes - specifically, at the Product Strategy & Future Airplane Development organization, in the Airplane Configuration & Integration group. He performs analyses, studies, and sometimes tests, on proposed features and configurations for future airplanes. The results determine the optimal shapes, materials, locations, and manufacturing processes for new airplane parts, so as to minimize drag, weight, cost, and risk. In short; he's an airplane designer. For the previous eleven years, Bernardo worked as a structures engineer / researcher, specializing in fatigue testing, analysis models, and maintenance planning. Bernardo is ?one of Boeing's experts on airplane aging issues, and has taught hundreds of Boeing engineers how to do fatigue analysis and how to plan airplane maintenance: in other words, how to design parts that last, and how to catch any form of deterioration before it impacts the safety of flight. Bernardo designed, ran, and documented fatigue tests on new parts for the 787-9, 767 Tanker, 737MAX, and 777X while those airplanes were being designed, and on technologies and materials that have not yet been implemented on commercial airplane structure, such as next-generation composites and new kinds of 3D-printed titanium. Bernardo earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Stanford University and a Master of Science degree from Columbia University, both in Mechanical Engineering. Most of his academic career focused on aerodynamics and propulsion: He has spent many hours designing and running experiments in the wind tunnel and in the engines lab. He also has academic and professional experience designing and testing control systems for UAVs and spacecraft. In his spare time, Bernardo is a private pilot, co-owns an RV-6 (which he has flown to EAA Oshkosh multiple times) and enjoys flying aerobatics. He also occasionally works as an aviation journalist, and has been interviewed on TV shows as an aeronautics expert. Bernardo has built and flown all kinds of model aircraft including rockets, gliders, quadcopters, and flying wings. Bernardo is originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He lives in Seattle.