Exploration Is a Fundamental
Human Pursuit

We yearn to reach the stars and sky and have developed the means to get there. Since the first sustained heavier-than-air powered flight by the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk on the 17th of December 1903, the aerospace profession has been creating vehicles that go faster, higher, farther, and fly for longer. In the past century, we have developed vehicles that have connected the globe to democratize and expedite human travel, sustain commerce, and connect societies. We have also sent humans and robots beyond our atmosphere to help uncover fundamental concepts about how we got here. Perhaps more than any other engineering field, we embody the aspirational human qualities of curiosity and exploration.

The next century brings new and difficult challenges and requirements to the technological developments at the center of our profession. Climate change poses an existential threat, and we must reduce and eliminate the emissions that our vehicles produce.

Similarly, our cities are becoming congested, sprawling, and over-crowded; new local air transportation mechanisms are needed to support more efficient transport of people and goods within our urban centers. We must leverage the rapidly emerging information revolution to enable faster and more efficient end-to-end design of new systems to avoid the inefficiencies of developing advanced systems that cost too much and take too long to get into service. We must also embrace that space is on the verge of becoming more readily accessible to humans and machines, and determine how we can develop more sustainable and lasting space systems that benefit everyone. Moreover, as an academic institution, we must prepare our students to understand and address all these challenges.