Aerospace and mechanical engineering are both concerned with the design of machines to solve real-world motion problems. During the Industrial Revolution, the field grew in popularity, and it is now found throughout human civilization. An aerospace or mechanical engineer can manipulate materials and energy using physics principles to achieve certain human goals that require mechanized systems. Aerospace generally refers to planes, helicopters, and atmospheric rockets, but it can also refer to spacecraft. Aerospace engineering is a branch of mechanical engineering that deals with systems that interact with moving fluids like air or water.
Since classical antiquity, a number of inventors have experimented with mechanical systems. Mechanical engineering gained a more solid foundation during the Industrial Revolution, which saw the most dramatic changes during the nineteenth century. Machines that could extract energy from coal and petroleum were in high demand very quickly. American inventors Orville and Wilbur Wright are widely credited with being the first to build a working airplane in 1903. Since then, aerospace and mechanical engineering have had a significant impact on most societies.
Mechanical engineering is concerned with the behavior of matter and energy in everyday situations. It is based on physics, but rather than discovering natural laws, its goal is to solve practical problems. Mechanical engineers create everyday objects and tools with motion-related functions, such as cars, drills, and factory machines. Aerospace engineering is a branch of mechanical engineering that covers a wide range of applications.
Aeronautical engineering is a term used to describe aerospace and mechanical engineering that is limited to operations within the Earth’s atmosphere. Both manned and unmanned aircraft are designed aeronautical engineers. Manned airplanes and helicopters have very strict safety requirements, and it takes a lot of aeronautical engineering work to make these systems safe. Missiles, military drones, and weather balloons are examples of unmanned aircraft that are often more experimental. Engineers working on these systems frequently combine their expertise in aerospace and mechanical engineering to achieve new goals in space.
Aerospace and mechanical engineering are sometimes used to describe manned and unmanned systems that operate outside of the atmosphere. These engineering activities are sometimes referred to as astronautical engineering. Because all artificial objects in space passed through the atmosphere on rockets, astronautical engineering is linked to aeronautical engineering. Similarly, any machine that traveled to space and returned safely to Earth had to navigate through the atmosphere like an airplane. Even though the environments in question are vastly different, much of the underlying physics and technology in aeronautical engineering and mechanical engineering are often shared.