WE WERE very proud to act as the host for the Schools’ Aerospace Careers Programme Roadshow last term. The Schools’ Aerospace Careers Programme is a charity, which aims to support young people in the UK in accessing careers in the aerospace industry. Sixty pupils from Wilson’s joined students and staff from other local schools in the John Jenkins Hall on the 27th March for an exciting programme of events. Advik and Sanjiv (both Year 11) report on their exciting day below.

Last term, we aspiring engineers at Wilson’s School had the opportunity to attend The Schools’ Aerospace programme, aiming to encourage the interests of students in technology and particularly provide us with career advice, connecting us with the employers in the aerospace industry. The event consisted of two fascinating halves. In the morning, we received an interactive presentation on the fourth industrial revolution. The presentation featured a variety of topics, ranging from the future of Quantum computers to 3D printing, focussing on the stark change the entire technological industry will come to experience in coming years, in particular the aerospace industry. The highlights were a robot dog called Spot from Boston Dynamics and our very own Dev (Year 12) in a whopping £13, 000 spacesuit! In the afternoon, we enjoyed 4 different stalls in the breakout session, two of which allowed us to visually experience how the titans of the aerospace industry harnessed the new technology of this rapid industrial revolution.

The morning started off with a crowd of students sitting in the JJ hall from a variety of local schools. The buzz of excitement was hushed by a dramatic video which detailed the aerospace industry and projects in and out of our atmosphere, notably the Artemis 2 mission to the moon led by NASA. The video also focussed on the impact of the rapid change of technology through the term the ‘fourth industrial revolution’. This introduction to the exciting awaiting day was followed by the morning’s main event - the interactive presentation! The seed of the fourth industrial revolution was planted in our minds through the video and only grew throughout the presentation delivered fabulously by the chairman of the ACP, Dr Michael Smith.

Throughout the article so far I have mentioned the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ multiple times, but what exactly is it? In Dr Michael Smith’s words, it is the exponential physical, digital and biological development, outlined in eight significant fields, including “Big Data Analysis”, 3D printing and Quantum Computers.

The section on Big Data Analysis was really more of an eye opener for how our personal use of technology is constantly being collected, processed and used to, for example, uncover trends or patterns to make more informed decisions. This industry is growing by the day with a mind blowing 2.3 quintillion bytes of data being produced and stored every day! Everything from our emails to social media is being stored, with one email ending up at 31 unwanted locations.