Dedicated students, distinguished colleagues and dear friends,

Happy Friday! Happy National Amelia Earhart Day!

For more than 120 years, aviation has helped connect the world by ensuring that aeronautic innovations earn the public’s trust in flight-capable machines. While millions around the world travel by air each day, few know the remarkable story of flight that has quietly shaped modern aviation. From aeronautical engineers to courageous aviators who braved the impossible, men and women of science and practice of flight have changed the world in previously unimaginable ways.

Powered flight’s origins trace back to the earliest days of the 20th century when the Wright brothers designed, built and flew their powered and controlled machine for 12 seconds of sustained flight, covering all of 37 meters! Inspired by their modest, yet transformational success, they and an entire community of thinkers, tinkerers and innovators began to revolutionize the world of powered flight.

As flying machines progressed, so did the dream of air travel and transportation. Ordinary but brave men and women demanded more power, endurance and reliability from the flying machines, and took their machines to places and traces where no human had been before. Well-known and well-sung heroes of early flight include Jules Vedrines, the Wright brothers, Alexander Graham Bell, Harriet Quimby, Glenn Curtiss, Louis Bleriot, Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, Jimmy Doolittle, Chuck Yeager, and the list goes on.

And then there are the unsung heroes who contributed just as much, if not more, to the advancement of aviation and flight. Charles Taylor, the engineer known as the “unsung hero of Kitty Hawk,” built the 180-lb, 12-horsepower engine that enabled the Wrights’ first flight. Or the remarkable Neta Snook Southern, “Snooky,” the pioneer aviator with her own long list of aviation firsts. Snooky was the consummate airframe and powerplant mechanic. She bought, rebuilt and flew a wrecked Curtiss JN Jenny and used it to teach other women, including Amelia Earhart. Fair to say, I think, that without Charles Taylor there wouldn’t be the Wright Flyer and without Snooky Southern there very well might not have been Amelia Earhart. 

From the first flight to today’s transcontinental and interplanetary flights, engineering science, education and research everywhere remain committed to a core mission: ensuring safe aeronautics through science, research, innovation and trusted manufacturing techniques. 

Here at S&T, our mechanical and aerospace engineering research is helping ensure that tomorrow’s inventions are as safe as they will be transformative. Ever more complex air and space vehicle designs require extreme engineering, where materials and systems are tested under structural and thermal loads well beyond ordinary earthbound machines. To highlight just a few, consider the work of Dr. Serhat Hosder and his able team at the Aerospace Simulation Laboratory, where harsh hypersonic flow and flight are numerically modeled to simulate and mitigate potential adverse conditions. Dr. Hosder’s team are recipients of many national and international awards, including, interestingly, Amelia Earhart Fellowship awards. Or our Aerodynamics Research Laboratory, where Dr. Davide Viganò and his team of researchers and graduate students focus on “fundamental investigations of mixing in supersonic flows, vortex dynamics, compressible turbulence, and applications to hypersonic air-breathing propulsion.” Did you get that? Well, I learned that it means experimental and mathematical studies here on Earth of the adverse, extreme conditions a vehicle will experience during high-speed atmospheric reentry.

It is interesting to note that the first powered flight in 1903 and the first supersonic flight in 1947 occurred well within the career span of a pilot! Further, three of the most remarkable aeronautical milestones: the maiden flight of the Boeing 747, the first supersonic flight of the Concorde, and NASA’s moon landing were all achieved in one year, 1969.

So today, on Earhart’s birthday, it behooves us to contemplate the future of aviation and aeronautical engineering. How will that future be defined in the face of technological advancements, environmental pressures and ever-increasing global travel demands?

Here is a glimpse into the bright future of aviation. The pioneers would be proud!

Warmly,

-Mo.
 
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Check out the latest news from S&T:

• U.S. Department of Commerce awards $38 million to Missouri S&T’s critical minerals Tech Hub
• S&T researchers earn DOE Genesis Mission award
• Missouri S&T, SEMO establish engineering partnership 

Mohammad Dehghani, PhD
Chancellor
mo@mst.edu | 573-341-4116

206 Parker Hall, 300 West 13th Street, Rolla, MO 65409-0910
chancellor.mst.edu