• Question: Do you need to be good with your hands to be a engineer?

    Asked by Oisin Boii to Dominic, James, Jenny, Kevin, Norah on 7 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Kevin Hayes

      Kevin Hayes answered on 7 Mar 2017:

      In Airbus all the hands on work is done by the technicians who manufacture the parts and assemble the spacecraft. If you are interested in getting your hands on space hardware the road to becoming a technician is by taking an apprenticeship where experienced technicians teach you all the skills you need.
      Engineers in Airbus don’t need to be good with their hands but do need to go to university to learn the skills they need for design.
      While this is the set up in Airbus it may be different where Dominic, James, Jenny and Norah work 🙂

    • Photo: Dominic Doyle

      Dominic Doyle answered on 8 Mar 2017:

      At ESA we need both types of skills.
      Both analytical – to analyse problems and make designs
      and hands-on – when we have to test and measure things.
      In my opinion it is very important for an engineer who is involved in space hardware to have some hands on skills.
      It’s also a good balance with and more fun than just doing analysis on a computer all day ;-))

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