The spacecraft designs involve flight-tests and construction of spacecrafts. Nevertheless, this branch of science is widely supported by strong aerospace research activities. Areas of focus include research, development, assembly, testing, and maintenance of missiles and aircraft and their parts. The subfields also cover the effects that the aircraft has on the immediate environment, possible dangers of specified aircrafts, fuel consumption, and system efficiency.
Aerospace engineering is one of the core branches of engineering that is believed to be quite difficult to study and practice. It requires a lot of commitment, discipline and knowledge to become a competent aerospace engineer. Generally, aerospace engineering can be defined as the branch of engineering that involves all the activities and processing pertaining aircraft and spacecrafts. According to Newman (2002), the discipline basically deals with the research, design, development, construction and testing of aircrafts and spacecrafts. In general, aerospace engineering is concerned with the science and technology of spacecrafts and aircrafts. The discipline is quite sophisticated and is normally offered in limited universities worldwide.
Aerospace engineering is further divided into major sub- branches namely the astronautical engineering and aeronautical engineering. Aeronautical engineering is normally concerned with the aircrafts that are run within the earth's atmosphere. On the other hand, astronautical engineering is concerned with spacecrafts that operate outside the earth's atmosphere. However, it is worth noting that the two sub-branches of aerospace engineering are not very distinct and are sometimes explained as one thing. The two sub-branches deal with aircrafts, spacecrafts, rockets and fly crafts. Aerospace engineering normally concentrates with the design, construction, technology and physical properties of aircrafts and spacecrafts.
