Shaping the Future of Aerospace
Dan Dumbacher, executive director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) visited the FH JOANNEUM on the 14th of June and held a motivational speech about “Shaping the Future of Aerospace”. The AIAA organises the annual “Design-Build-Fly” in which the FH Joanneum is participating for 5 years now. This year’s team made the 3rd place.
We started in the morning with a few presentations about the FH Joanneum and the aviation institute, the joanneum Aeronautics in general, the DBF Team and Team Drone Tech. Later, we had a tour through our laboratory and he tried out the flight simulator.
Shortly past noon Dan held his speech. It was a pleasure to get an insight into space engineering from an insider and to get tips from someone who was involved in projects by the NASA and with so much experience in the space sector. Dan amazed us with his impressive talk and intriguing answers to the questions from the students.
Dan is now executive director of AIAA. Before that he was three decades at NASA, where he managed the DC-XA vertical landing rocket; served as deputy manager of the X-33 program; and was director of engineering at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. Dan capped his NASA career as the deputy associate administrator in charge of the Space Launch System, Orion crew capsule and related ground systems. Astronauts presented Dan with their Silver Snoopy Award in 2014 for his contributions to spaceflight safety. He joined AIAA in 2018 from Purdue University in Indiana, where he was a professor of engineering practice.
