How do aeronautical engineers study aircraft and design new ones?
As the use of the scientific method became increasingly important, it also became clear to aircraft designers that testing their hypotheses with human subjects was too risky. Wind tunnels were the first tool of aeronautics to be developed. In the very early 1900s designers built models of their aircraft and placed them in tunnels through which air could be blown to simulate flight. While wind tunnels did provide valuable information and were certainly safer than human flight, there were many questions that were left unsolved simply because the interactions of all the forces on an aircraft were too complex for the analysis methods of the day. The advent of the computer changed everything. Now massive quantities of data could be gathered from wind tunnel tests and analyzed quickly and efficiently using the computer. In addition, new tools were developed. Next came flight simulators which enabled a pilot to fly without ever leaving the ground. Flight simulator cockpits were designed to be
