Today’s start definitely had some turbulence in the beginning of the day but as the journey went on we made it into clear skies. Our entire room woke up at 8:35 in the morning and we had to be ready by 8:45. So that was bit of a struggle in waking up; however, we persevered and got up and ready to make it on time to our meeting place. Our visit for the entire day was a university located in Deflt, Netherlands which is only a 10 minute train ride from Rotterdam where we were staying. The university, InHolland, specializes in STEM fields, especially engineering and we got a look into the aeronautical engineering program here in the Netherlands.
Getting some information, we learned about the three stages of the airline industry which are the pioneering era, commercial era, and now the sustainable era. All three of these eras tackled a different goals within the industry such as getting the airline business started, then commercializing the industry to then allow passengers and cargo to be transported, and now in the sustainable era where we are trying to limit the amount of pollution that we dispense into the air and maximizing the cost per oil to then try and conserve our limited resources.
After learning all about the airline industry we made our way to see one of their innovation spaces where they were building a tiny satellite to launch into space which they were planning on doing in the next few years. The afterwards we went to the actual space where they prototype and design their second year projects where they have to design a RC airplane that is capable of dropping a water balloon as a sort of payload. We somewhat did a very less complicated version of this by building a tiny airplane and flying it to see what had the best trajectory and distance overall. In the end, Franks’s Foodies came out on top with it being a complete team effort especially up until the end.
Overall learning about the different eras and how each era was shaped entirely by what the consumers needed at the time was a great example of how the concept to consumer aspects came into play especially within the reality of mixing in engineering and business. Allowing for all of the aspects to be separated but in tandem, in the way that engineers will do their research and development to then allowing the business majors to market the idea, was brought into light with this visit and was eye opening in many ways.
Later on throughout the day we had a little boat ride of Delft and then went to get “Freaky Milkshakes” in order to celebrate a birthday of someone in our cohort! Overall, amazing day, amazing people, amazing food once again.
