The Education and Adventures of an Advanced Aircraft Designer

Dr. Daniel P. Raymer, noted aircraft designer and author of the award-winning textbook "Aircraft Design: A Conceptual Approach", has written a non-technical book that will be treasured by everyone who loves airplanes, wonders how they get designed, and wants to know how somebody becomes an aircraft designer.
Half the book is Raymer’s warm and personal memoir of growing up in the 50’s and 60’s as the son of a Navy Test Pilot, discovering his own love of aviation, and entering the rarefied club of those who stare at a blank sheet of paper and turn it into a new aircraft or spacecraft design. The other half covers Raymer’s early involvement in the projects that became the X-31, B-2, F-22, T-45, F-35, and many more. (Yes, you get both halves bound together for one price!)
The book is an “easy” read, quick-paced, funny, and aimed at a general audience. Raymer includes his mistakes, disappointments, and downright stupid decisions. It’s not all airplanes either – read about Raymer’s aborted musical career, his misadventures in exotic destinations like Belarus and Bulgaria, how he got on the Internet early enough to grab www.aircraftdesign.com, and how he came to write his design textbook.
Paperback, 378 pages, $39.95
Design Dimension Press, Los Angeles, CA, 2009
ISBN 9 780972 239721

The first ever reader review! Click here then scroll down to the 15 December entry.

Excerpts from a detailed book review in the “Books Worth Buying” section of Scott Lowther’s “Unwanted Blog”:
I highly recommend this book. It’s enjoyable, readable, and stuffed with unbuilt aircraft projects...If you are interested in finding out how preliminary aircraft design is done, and what happens with those designs, then this book is for you. …it is written in a very casual style… and is eminently readable. I rarely read autobiographies… they just don’t interest me much. But the autobiographical half of “Living In The Future” is engaging both in terms of readability and in just being a good yarn. This book is unique in that it serves not only as the personal history of the author (a well known aircraft conceptual designer), but also presents a number of the designs he worked on. Many of these seem to have not seen the public light of day previously…. Rockwell’s earliest Advanced Tactical Fighter…; the Rockwell Delta Spanloader stealthy bomber; the X-31 (did you know some thought was given to building it out of an F-86?); a Lockheed ASTOVL fighter…; the “Black Horse” and Pioneer Rocketplane “Pathfinder;” a launch vehicle that uses sunlight, of all things; several small ground attack planes (including one with a slewable wing); the Hot Eagle/SUSTAIN concept to shoot a dozen or so crazed Marines in a rocket vehicle anywhere in the world; future airliners; unmanned aircraft, and more!

From the Foreword by Darold Cummings, Chief Configuration Designer for the Northrop YF-23:
I first met Dan when he joined the configuration design group at Rockwell International (North American Aviation) in 1976. He was fresh out of Purdue, segueing from playing guitar at pizza parlors to designing fighters, bombers and trainers...Dan and I worked together for six years until I left Rockwell for a stint at Northrop. We’ve stayed in contact ever since and have enjoyed swapping stories about the vagaries of the aerospace industry, which are the soul of this very personal book.

If Dan’s aircraft design textbook covers the “ethos” of the aircraft design arena, then this companion book covers the “pathos”; the warm, ironic, joyful, frustrating, rewarding, agonizing, and downright Zen experience of being an aircraft designer. Enjoy Dan’s journey!

The following material, excerpted from Chapter One, introduces the book:
This book is a collection of stories about Raymer and his life in aviation and aircraft design. Some are personal reminiscences about growing up in the 1960’s as the son of a Naval Test Pilot, and some are about life as an aircraft designer. Other stories are about specific projects – how they started, how and why Raymer designed his aircraft concepts, what was learned, and what happened in the end. Some stories have nothing to do with airplanes and are included just to interest and amuse.

The book includes Raymer’s experiences in the early stages of the programs that became the B-2, the F-22, the T-45, the F-35, the X-31, and many more. In these Raymer was among the first people to study the emerging need and to create “blank sheet of paper” designs. These chapters are liberally illustrated with drawings from those studies, many taken from original publications by Raymer.

Engineers and airplane lovers should be interested in seeing the way a design evolves. Even non-engineers should enjoy seeing “behind the scenes” of the creative process that leads to airplanes, and the joys and frustrations of a career field in which the vast majority of designs never get built.

Dan Raymer is a recognized expert in the areas of aerospace vehicle design and configuration layout. During his ten years in the Advanced Design Department of Rockwell (North American Aviation) he created the layout design of Rockwell's entries in what became the F-22, B-2, and T-45 programs, and headed Air Vehicle Design for the X-31. His industry career includes positions as director of Advanced Design with Lockheed, Director of Future Missions at the Aerojet Propulsion Research Institute, and project manager of Engineering at Rockwell North American Aviation. He wrote the best-selling textbook Aircraft Design: A Conceptual Approach and the layman's book, Dan Raymer's Simplified Aircraft Design for Homebuilders. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, has undergraduate and graduate degrees in astronautics and aeronautical engineering, an M.B.A. from the University of Southern California, and a Ph.D. in engineering from the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology.

Dan Raymer’s Living in the Future can be ordered at Atlas Books (publisher's fulfillment house) or at Amazon.com and other on-line retailers.