Editor’s Note: Over the next two years, we’ll be hosting a series of GoFly Master Lectures where industry experts share advice, insights, and answer questions from anyone interested in participating in the GoFly Prize.
For the latest in our series of “Master Lectures,” we welcome Dan Newman, a Senior Technical Fellow of Boeing in aircraft configuration design and development. He serves as the Chief Engineer for vertical lift aircraft research and development, and supports Commercial Airplane Product Development. He previously served as a Program Manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), as the Technical Director of the AHS International vertical flight technical society, and as an Adjunct Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.
Watch the full lecture above to hear Newman discuss the intricacies of vertical flight aircraft configuration design. He reminds us that the challenge of solid aircraft design is finding a technically feasible solution that meets the objective. “Sketching is not just cartooning,” Newman says. “It is, in fact, innovating.”
If you have follow-up questions, check out current discussions on the GoFly forum or start your own thread!
