Aerospace engineers examine, analyze, design, produce, and occasionally install components that make up aircraft, spacecraft, high-altitude vehicles, and high-altitude delivery systems missiles. Satisfaction with the romantic image of rocket building can buoy many engineers through the highly anonymous work environments that many of them face. Individuals don"t assemble rockets; teams do, dozens of teams working in highly supervised coordination. An aerospace engineer plays some part on one of the teams, spending more of her time roughly 70 percent in a lab, at a computer, and assembling reports than doing anything else. Not being able to see the "big picture" frustrates...
to adequate financing. Those who become project and personnel managers have significant input on the direction of research, but little contact with the actual day-to-day functioning of these research and development teams. Budgeting, oversight, and intra-company contacts all become important parts of the ten-year survivor"s life. Hours remain about the same and satisfaction tends to level off; salary increases occur, but after this point, without equity interest in smaller, private companies, administrators can only expect cost-of-living salary increases. The abrasion rate has slowed, but those who leave from this point go back into academia, training programs, or private consulting.