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Just going to school and majoring in design does not qualify one to design
an aircraft. As designing an aircraft has a lot of risk associated with
it, major companies want to see engineers gain a lot of experience before
allowing them to be responsible for the overall design of an aircraft. In
small companies, an engineer can get more responsibility faster, but once
again, they can't be "wet behind the ears" - they have to have at least
some experience in the real world.
The reason that someone like Burt Rutan gets to design airplanes is that
he worked for a while at the Edwards AFB, learning aircraft stability and
control and flight testing. Then, he worked for Bede, learning about
developing small aircraft. Finally, he risked his own money to start a
company developing and marketing homebuilts. After he had proven that he
could design aircraft that worked, people came to him to design their
aircraft.
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