Aerospace Engineer: WHO Designs Helicopters?

What if a flying machine could land without a runway? Stop mid-air like hitting a pause button. And then transform into an airplane? That doesn't just happen. Someone had to take an idea like, could it fly? And turn it into something that actually works in the real world. So who does that? Welcome to JobTastic, the show where we explore epic jobs and discover who makes it work. I'm Serena and joining me is my AI co-host, Joby. Hello listeners, Joby here. Missing, learn about different jobs and discover where an AI like Joby could be useful. Joby stands for JobTastic Operator of Brainy Insights. Joby breaks down big ideas, translates tricky words, and keeps track of what we learn. You can use the epic jobs tracker at jobtastic.org to track jobs too. Mission note, track job, add doodle, repeat. Today's question comes from 13 year-old Aromeo. So what's your who question? Hi, Serena. I want to know who designs helicopters because I think helicopters are cool. Let's meet an aerospace engineer, someone who designs things that fly. Like helicopters, airplanes, drones, and even spacecraft. My name is Al Brand and I work for Bell Textron, a helicopter manufacturer. And I am their senior technical fellow and director for flight technology. Translation, aerospace engineer, expert level. Dr. Brand, you design helicopters. What makes them special? Helicopters go everywhere airplanes can't go and the missions they do are very unique, you know, mountain rescues, emergency medical services. And helicopters will go into harm's way to save lives to rescue people. What's their secret? Well, it all amounts to hover. Hover means a helicopter can stop in mid-air and stay there, just like a hummingbird. Wow, how does it do that? The helicopter gets its lift by spinning the rotor, turning the rotor so the blades have the speed while the helicopter's standing still. The rotor is the set of spinning blades on top. The helicopters' wings never stop moving. Imagine a fidget spinner on the roof. Engineers call that kind of flying vertical flight. Helicopters can fly straight up and down, hover, and then land almost anywhere. It's Dr. Brand's specialty. No runway, no problem. Does this make helicopters harder to design? There's probably only six companies in the world that are capable of building a modern helicopter. Only six? Wow, how do you even start designing something like that? And so you kind of have to do some homework before you set off. Who do we want to sell these helicopters to? That means talking to people like rescue crews, doctors, even oil rig workers, and asking what they need. Go farther, faster, or have more cup holders. A project like doing a new helicopter design hits an expensive task can be upwards of a billion dollars to develop a machine like that. So can I get a million dollars? Me too, Romeo. Me too. My company, we're developing two new aircraft. We call it a clean sheet. You start from scratch. You try to take all your lessons learned from previous things and you put those ideas into a brand new design. And that doesn't come along very often in a career. The coolest projects start from nothing. No old design, no instructions. Honestly, I think that's where you learn the most. We do anything to kick off ideas. Maybe one of my favorite things in my office is I have a whiteboard, a big whiteboard. So sometimes it gets pretty cluttered. I do have some helicopter models. Sometimes we actually like to look at models. We might come up with a modification. I have a blob of clay that I can manipulate and say this is what the feature would look like if we wanted to do this. Drawing, toy and clay. That sounds awesome. I'm guessing this isn't a one person job. We form these big teams. It can be a couple hundred people and nobody knows everything about the machine. This sounds like the biggest group project ever. Once you've got the design, what do you use to bring it to life? Super glue, duct tape or something a little more high-tech? Well, on the engineering side, most of our tools are going to be computers. They use computers to draw the designs, build 3D models and run big number tests before anything gets built for real. Kids will be intimidated by math. You should understand what it means to multiply numbers, but you shouldn't ever think that because you're not fast at doing it for a homework problem, that would impede you to be an engineer. We have massive computers to do, our calculations. Fact, engineers are not human calculators. They are problem solvers. Okay, but once the design is ready, how do you know it actually works? Ultimately, we do have to show that the design is good and then we go to testing. We will take critical components on the helicopter and put those components in the lab. We also do flight testing, so the pilots get involved and that can actually be years of testing. Like what? You don't want to have a bird hit the pilot. It's bad. We have to do lightning strike. We have a lightning chamber. We can't even do the testing just in one place. We'll have to go to the mountains to show hover capability at high altitude. We will go close to the Arctic Circle to get cold weather testing. Testing in the Arctic? I hope they let you bring hot cocoa. Note, marshmallows can increase fun by 214.6%, verification pending. So what happens when the design isn't working? Nothing's ever perfect the first time it comes out. It's going to have problems, could be a vibration appeared or some issue. And what we will try to do is get a little team together to fix this problem on the side and then when we're ready, we will say, OK, we have a fix. Go test this. Where does that problem solving mindset come from? My father was a brick mason. I would work with my dad in the summers to in mainly fireplaces, chimneys on Long Island. I know how to handle a cement mixer, shovels, hammers. Some parts of the year it was so cold we had to put salt into the mix so that the cement wouldn't freeze. And you're out there on the last piece of the top of the chimney. You might be freezing cold. And I still remember we'd get that job done. Take those skills, you know, perseverance. Be enabled to get a job done anywhere. Warning. New skill detected. Probability of confidence increase. Hi. Jobtastic isn't just about epic jobs. Each episode packs a skill you can use right now. Today's skill, how to solve a problem like an aerospace engineer. So imagine your toy drone won't lift off. It's just sitting there on the sidewalk doing nothing. First thought, why? Is it the batteries? The controller is something bent. You try one fix, then another, and another. And finally your super awesome drone takes off into the big blue sky. For about three seconds before flying into your neighbor's tree. That's basically what engineers do. It's called the engineering design process. It's a cycle, test an idea, learn what doesn't work, and improve until it does. Tip works for figuring out why your bike is making a weird noise, keeping your pet chin chilla from escaping its cage, or building a pillow fort that can touch the ceiling. Want to learn how to use the engineering design process? Head to jobtastic.org and check out the free skillsheet. Skill acquired, added to epic jobs tracker, snack break authorized. Helicopters are pretty amazing. So what are engineers working on next? Well, I know that this company will be working on a tilt rotor for the Army. A tilt what now? Picture an airplane with two big rotors on it. its wings, they point up to take off like a helicopter, then tilt forward to fly like a plane. What the tilt rotor brings is a technology that can be twice as fast and you can go twice as far. Speed is important, it can do it with a lot less fuel, and the other thing is it's super quiet. It's like a helicopter leveled up. Does that mean goodbye helicopters? There's some simple math that proves the helicopter will never be replaced because if hover is your main mission it's going to be more practical for certain missions where you don't have to be so fast. Is there a way we can also play around with vertical flight? Well there's a lot of opportunity today with drones, they're fairly low cost that would give you a chance to explore a vertical flight. Play around with it and see what it can do and you'll probably crash it a few times, but it's an easy way to see what these machines can do. Assignment, acquire drone, conduct many many crash tests, bonus points for style. Okay Dr. Brand, time for an aircraft design challenge. All throughout some wild ideas and you tell us if it could work or not and why. Ready? I'll try. First one, a school bus with helicopter rotors on the roof. For recess in the sky of course. No, too expensive. Aerospace can't afford to use a structure like that. It's dead weight. Update, recess in the sky cancelled. Next, a one person tilt rotor shaped like a jellyfish. Maybe? Well, there wouldn't be a tilt rotor. It's possible. I don't know of jellyfish that's just aerodynamic shaping or something. Maybe if it operates in water. Ew, a jellyfish helicopter? No. Jellyfish are not cleared for air travel. Okay, last one. Could you design a helicopter that could land safely even without engine power? 100% yes. Every helicopter has to show the FAA that you can lose all your engines and still get to the ground safely and the way the helicopter does that is turns the rotor into a windmill and now it descends at a steady thrust to the ground and you can land safely. Finally, a winner. Okay, now it's time for the Job Tastic Challenge. At the end of every episode we'll give you one challenge. It's not a contest or an assignment just an easy way to try this job in your own life. Think of it as a mini mission. In your life, there's probably something that annoys you. Just doesn't work quite right or it makes you think there has got to be an easier way to do this. Don't fix it just yet. Think about it. Then start playing with ideas. What could you do to make it better or easier? If you want you can sketch your ideas, make a small tweak somewhere or even build a simple model to see how it would look. Need help? Grab a grown-up to give you a hand. But even just noticing the problem? That's exactly where engineering starts. I always think of it as engineer-solve problems and they make problems go away or they make a problem never happen. I've been at this company 36 years and I learned something new every day. I've got a few ideas to try out but if they crash, which is called that a test flight. Epic jobs tracker update. Aerospace engineer logged. First entry complete. That's it for JobTastic today. Huge thanks to Dr. Al Brand from Bell Textron for giving us an insider's look into his job. And Romeo, thank you for kicking off our very first episode with Who Designs Helicopters. Before we go, I want to leave you with this. The world needs all kinds of people to make it work. So who do you want to be?