just turned 32 and I feel this as well. I feel into a deep depression shortly after graduating for this exact reason; mourning the loss of that regular contact with similar-age, similar-interest people as they all moved across the country to start their careers. Similar thing happened a few years later when I was internally transferred to another group at work with no people my age. It's never been the same since.
I've always scoffed at paying for those "activity groups" (what kind of loser would pay for friends?), but recently I've started reconsidering.
There's a thriving community of aerospace startups in the US right now that are eager to snatch these NASA folks up. It won't be the right move for all of them, and it's unfortunate to get displaced from a comfortable, prestigious job like that, but I strongly believe a lot of these people will go on to do great things in industry, and potentially have a far greater impact on aerospace than they ever could at NASA.
Not saying I agree with the cuts, just pointing out there may be a silver lining.
Progress on airplanes is often tracked by # of engineering drawings released, which means that 1000s of little clips, brackets, fittings, etc. can sometimes misrepresent the amount of engineering work that has taken place compared to preparing a giant monolithic bulkhead or spar for release. I have actually proposed measuring progress by part weight instead of count to my PMs for this reason
I recently started a new job (big upgrade from my last gig), and after onboarding, one of my interviewers told me that a major factor in him recommending me for hiring is that I "looked bored and ready to move on" during the technical interview. I'm not sure if trying to look bored is a winning strategy in general, but there is my personal anecdote.
Agree on most points. However as someone who has worked on new aircraft I can tell you that friction/mis-communication/finger-pointing between airframe and powerplant manufacturer is a huge issue. There is a common saying in the industry, that you should never design a new airframe and a new powerplant at the same time. Each new aircraft certification program should be one or the other
I work in this space. Most likely it is a huge conglomeration of commercial CFD, FEA, and CAD softwares, custom in-house codes, and empirical aircraft design curves all stitched together with some python.