hi, it‘s time to wake up i‘m ben, 21 years old and a dual-study aeronautics student at @airbus i’ve been sleeping for way too long on what’s still waiting to be built in aerospace so follow me here as i share my projects and what i’m learning

after FCAS collapsed i was honestly disappointed, but @airbusdefence just gave me some hope again looks like both german and spanish industry will continue their 6th gen fighter development i‘ve seen the eurofighter assembly lines in madrid, so i know the capability is there

listened to him at a conference today even got the chance to talk afterwards and ask a few questions in person definitely gave me a lot to think about

placed 3rd in @zoodotdev’s makeathon with my foldable drone rotor this was my first contest of this kind, so being recognized among more than 60 other incredible entries really means a lot now i’m already thinking about what to make first with my new 3d printer

having a role model is underrated when i decided to double down on this career, i looked up people who followed a similar path i found @hanskoenigsmann, who first studied in germany, then moved to the us and eventually became the 4th engineer at @spacex personally, i‘m aiming for a move like that too, to develop myself in the us during my aerospace master’s and gain valuable experience of course it‘s important to go your own way and not fully copy someone else’s life but having a role model helps show you what paths are possible and how all that hard work could potentially pay off in the future

today Jon Reijneveld the chief engineer and co-founder of The Exploration Company (TEC) held a lecture at my uni it was planned for an hour, but it lasted more than two and a half and honestly, it was one of the most insightful engineering talks I’ve attended so far he didn’t just talk about Nyx, their cargo capsule, but also about what it takes to build a space startup how to start small, test early, fail fast and turn every lesson into the next better version of your product left the room with even more ambition for aerospace

currently creating an aircraft model in simulink for the dlr design challenge i’m participating in the goal is to validate the preliminary sizing of our demonstrator definitely harder than i expected, but it feels good to refresh my old matlab skills again

student engineering teams are genuinely incredible they’re literally launching rockets into space, @uscrpl for example got closer to the amateur rocketry limit than anyone else has aiming to join one during my masters

next lab today: wing profile in a wind tunnel we ran some basic lift and drag tests to compare different naca airfoils practical experience like that is unbeatable

i built a foldable drone rotor using @zoodotdev for their #zoomakeathon, i wanted to build something aeronautical that others could still remix and build on the integrated ai agent "zookeeper" made it pretty easy to take a hybrid approach, giving the design some direction by hand and then letting it help to complete the vision i also wanted to see how far i could push the model, especially with the aerodynamics of the rotor blades and some of the smaller details in the end, i’m really satisfied with how it turned out, the late nighters were definitely worth it if you like what you see as well, feel free to give it a like on zoo’s aquarium page: zoo.dev/aquarium/bf30d917-db…

working on my @zoodotdev makeathon entry… but no matter how advanced the design process gets, somehow you always end up sketching it out by hand got a good feeling about this one

we destroyed some aerospace materials in the lab today as you can see, we ran tensile tests on aluminium and cfrp specimens the small cfrp strip withstood over 50kN of force insane to think about

just watched project hail mary for the 2nd time the way it gives such an optimistic, hopeful outlook on our future in space and makes you feel like we really can overcome any existential challenge loved every bit of it

signed up for the @zoodotdev design makeathon always wanted to try agent supported cad work and this feels like the perfect excuse to finally do it the prizes are extra juicy too, with 3d printers and unlimited access plans being up for grabs looking forward to the competition

just because a problem is solved doesn’t mean it can’t be solved better that’s what I realized over the last couple of days while researching wingtip devices for the dlr design challenge because the winglets we know from today’s aircrafts already solve the problem of vortices, but what if there’s an even better solution? the @tubraunschweig for example analyzed adaptive wingtips, which could enable even more functionalities such as load alleviation and advanced flight control would be sick if we see something like this flying on aircrafts a couple of generations from now

artemis II gave kids a dream again. absolutely love seeing all the excitement from younger generations and i’m so glad I chose this industry for my career. couldn’t be happier.

europe has a mindset problem. from a young age, kids who tried to be ambitious got laughed at. i remember a friend from high school who wanted to start his own clothing brand and instead of people respecting that he was willing to take a risk, they just made fun of him. we got conditioned to get the degree and find the “safe” job. the crazy part is that this promise of job security is a lie anyway. then in europe you add regulatory complexity on top, which creates an even higher hurdle for anyone who actually wants to build something here. it’s good that eu inc is trying to fix part of that. but until there’s an actual mindset shift in the heads of europeans, i think it’ll still take a while.

i used to think that everything had already been invented and that from here on out technologies could only be refined. boy, was I wrong. in recent years, entirely new branches of innovation have opened up and the space industry is just one of them.

this is where germany‘s future aerospace talents show what they are capable of i‘m taking part in the @dlr_en design challenge 2026, a nationwide engineering competition for student teams to compete in our objective is to develop a demonstrator aircraft that tests technologies for the next generation of commercial aviation we‘ll focus on new propulsion architectures using hydrogen and electric power, as well as additional technologies that, for example, aim to improve aerodynamic efficiency i‘ll take you along with our team and share a bit of the process here

there’s so much innovation happening in aerospace that it should genuinely get you excited nasa is returning to the moon, propulsion is reinventing itself with hydrogen and super sonic flight is coming back and those are just the most prominent topics what a time to be alive

i stayed up late to watch the artemis II launch live and it was absolutely worth it need to get up again in 4 hours, but we’re finally entering a new era of space exploration