‘Intellectual Disarmament?’

Jim Albaugh, President and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, warned the National Aeronautics Association on July 13th in an address that the nation risked intellectual disarmament in the aerospace industry if participating companies couldn’t continue to attract engineering talent.  He noted that with the end of programs like the space shuttle and slashed budgets, engineering talent would continue to diminish.  To make matters worse, much of the current engineering talent is approaching retirement age in the next couple of years.  “I fear we are in danger of falling into a downward, self-perpetuating spiral.  Without enough capable scientists, engineers and technologists, our nation won’t be able to maintain its position as the world’s aerospace and technology leader,” Albaugh told the group.”

  

He went on to say that watching the final shuttle landing on July 8th was “one of the most devastating days of my professional career, thinking that for the first time since 1962, we no longer have access to space…just another country hitchhiking a ride to low Earth orbit” on a Russian spacecraft.  It’s actually gotten much worse since Albaugh’s speech; the Russian space program is on hold until further notice following the failure of the Progress M-12M on August 24th.  The unmanned resupply freighter failed to reach orbital velocity and crashed to the ground shortly after launch.

  

So here we are in the fall of 2011 and not only does the United States have no manned space program, neither does anyone else.  It’s been 50 years since we could say that.  While that is tragic in and of itself, it speaks to the problem that aerospace industry has in attracting new talent.  Informal discussions with current and former NASA employees uncover a large number who have never seen a program come to fruition.  That is, these employees have worked on one program after another which was cancelled and never built.  Can you imagine spending your entire career working on programs that were cancelled?  Can you imagine never seeing one of your projects completed?  What a demoralizing prospect.  

  

This sort of start and stop has become second nature at NASA.  It has become a hot potato being tossed from project to project as the political whims of Washington D.C. politicians change every other year.  Is it any wonder that the best and brightest scientists and engineers choose other careers?  Not since the von Braun days of Apollo have we had a national excitement about our space program.  In those days, the best and brightest were drawn by edge of the envelope work to space centers at Marshall, Johnson and Kennedy, knowing that the fate of human lives and national prestige were on the line.  That’s the sort of environment that draws the best talent.

  

I fear, like Jim Albaugh, that we will be unable to attract excellent talent to the aerospace industry in the future.  But, I also fear that the world-class talent that is there now will leave for other industries, other opportunities, other jobs.  And in these days, any job is a good job.  And once they are gone, I’m afraid we’ll never be able to replace them.