Being an engineer is sometimes one of the most rewarding jobs. Not only for the almost guaranteed employment in your field but also because you get to play with some of the coolest ‘toys’.
National Engineers Week has come and gone but one of the highlights for engineering students at Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District was seeing ‘The Echo Ranger’ in the flesh. The Echo Ranger is Boeing’s submersible ‘yellow submarine’ – an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) – which was shown off in its yellow brilliance to the students, this past week.
Randall Hoover, the senior mechanical design engineer of the vehicle said, “We are using Echo Ranger as kind of a tool,” for attracting students to the engineering field. According to WIRED, these vehicles are now being used for “oil and gas surveying, searching for sunken ships and aircraft, and mapping underwater features.”
According to an official video of the Echo, the claims are that it can dive to 20,000 feet and can remain submerged, working on an objective for three days.
“It opens a whole new capability to undersea exploration for both military customers as well as the commercial environment,” said Mark Kosko, the program manager for Boeing Undersea Systems.
A mechanical engineer at Boeing, Julianne Choy, who is working on a new unnamed, unreleased vehicle for Boeing vouched for engineering as a career. She said, “Engineering is a job where you can make the world a better place,” she told students. “And, while you are doing that, it’s very fun, very collaborative and you get to work with really amazing people.”