Aeronautics and Astronautics

The University of Southampton

Scottish Advanced Highers: Maths, Physics, Maths of Mechanics, Chemistry [AAAA].

Scottish Highers: Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Graphic Communication, Computing Science [AAAAA].

I’ve always wanted to build rockets and other spacecraft, and this degree is the best path towards doing that. A mechanical engineering degree would also cover most of the same skills, but being able to have all of your projects be related to aircraft and spacecraft can be really useful for standing out from other engineers when applying to aerospace companies. It also fits really well with my strongest subjects which are maths and physics.

Contact hours are fairly low in later years, so usually about 3-5 hours of lectures per day. However especially for engineering the workload for coursework and problem sheets can be very high, especially during winter and pre easter coursework handins, so most of the rest of the daytime is spent in the library doing problem sheets, or in the university workshops manufacturing components for group projects. Wednesday afternoons are spent having a team meeting with the rest of the rocketry society to check progress with the design. For me evenings are usually climbing at the local bouldering wall, meeting up with friends, continuing design work on the rocket, or catching up on work for any incoming deadlines. Weekends for me are often away in the Lake District/Snowdownia climbing with the mountaineering society.

Often it’s the practical projects we do such as designing and building a wing which got flown on a small fixed wing UAV. These are definitely some of the most stressful parts of the course, since they can take a lot of time and carry a lot of risk of something braking during the assessment, but they’re easily the most rewarding and worthwhile parts of the course.

Time management. It’s a tricky course to balance with enjoying your time at university. It’s definitely possible, but you’ve got to be very careful not to let it take away all of your free time when deadlines get close.

A role working as an engineer building rockets, ideally working on the propulsion but mainly I’m just keen to help push the UK/European space launch sector forwards.

For engineering really you just need to know your maths very well, you’ve got to know it so well that it’s almost boring. The physics at university is very complicated, and understanding it is gonna take so much of your time that the maths has to be easy to let you get through questions quickly enough. Thankfully though once you do get past it, you need very little maths when you’re actually working in the industry.