Humans of Galipatia - Soumo Dutta

I decided to grab Soumo Dutta, one of my fellow Aerospace Engineers and another mentor with Galileo, to ask him a few questions.

Why did you decide to major in Aerospace Engineering?

Childhood fascination. The Udvar-Hazy Air and Space museum annex was a place I visited as a kid. At the time the Concorde was one of the biggest attractions there. It just looked completely different from everything else, and its overall design intrigued me. I thought that the fact that it still worked as well as it did despite that unique appearance was fascinating, and I thought its huge speed was incredible. It was capable of travelling from New York to London in only three hours, and no other passenger aircraft since could even hold a candle to that kind of speed. That experience drove me to learn more about how it worked, and that led to me choosing a degree in Aerospace Engineering.

What do you think is the most interesting trend/technology that's up-and-coming in your field right now?

It's not necessarily a trend, but the Boeing A380s are on the decline, and the Boeing 737 Max is on the rise. Despite the recent failures, it seems like the technology behind the GPS system is becoming way more advanced, and allows for much more detailed responses with regard to the aircraft's autopilot systems. Some people speculated that there was a conflict between the new hardware and the pilots' experience, but further investigation revealed that the aircraft only had about 200-ish hours on it, while the pilot and crew had about 22,000 miles under their belts.

Beyond commercial aircraft, the developments going on in the private space industry - especially with SpaceX - are fascinating. The kind of sensors and telemetry involved in tracking those kinds of spacecraft are fascinating to me, and I think there's a lot of potential in this field.

Why did you decide to join Galileo?

Studio 1. That's the biggest reason, really.