Very Different Clouds and Aerospace Engineering with Ignacio Echavarría from Dovetail Electric Aviation |🎙️#48

What do people misunderstand about aerospace engineers? What future do electric engines bring to aircrafts? How does QA work in aviation? Today we take a break from our usual DevOps and Cloud talk to have a conversation with Ignacio Echavarría, an aerospace engineer and CTO at Dovetail Electric Aviation.

• How to become an aerospace engineer?
• The carbon footprint issue and the problem of scale;
• Quality assurance and rules of maintenance in aerospace engineering;
• Can aircrafts go fully electric one day?
• What can aviation look like in the future?

You can listen to episode 48 of DevOps Accents on Spotify, or right now:

Becoming an Aerospace Engineer: A Journey of Curiosity and Technology

Ignacio Echavarria’s path to aerospace engineering started with a fascination for machines and a desire to understand how they work. Early in life, his curiosity led him to explore engineering, and in university, the allure of cutting-edge technology in aerospace solidified his career choice. Aerospace engineering is a vast field, where diverse roles range from stress analysis to aerodynamics, thermal systems, and electronics, with each discipline contributing to the development of complex aircraft systems.

There is no single path to becoming an aerospace engineer; many professionals come from various engineering backgrounds, including mechanical and software engineering, before specializing. What binds aerospace engineers is the shared goal of solving difficult problems with precision and innovation, making a tangible impact on an industry that is crucial for global transportation.

When you want to be an engineer, you usually know you want to be an engineer because you see all these machines working, whether they are computers or aircraft. You see a fighter jet or you start wondering, how does a computer work? I mean, why am I able to play a video game just on a piece of plastic? And if you have that curiosity, you start understanding that there's lots of things that need to be done and working on the shoulders of giants and being able to do increment things and you know that engineers can actually build things and solve problems and you know make things which change the life of everyone, change history. — Ignacio Echavarría

The Carbon Footprint and the Problem of Scale

The carbon footprint of aviation is a hotly debated issue, with public figures like Taylor Swift sparking discussions about the environmental impact of air travel. Ignacio highlights that aircraft emissions are a significant contributor to global warming, stemming from three main factors: CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion, soot and other particulates, and contrails formed by condensation at high altitudes.

The problem of scale is central to this discussion. While individual flights by celebrities may contribute to emissions, they pale in comparison to the collective impact of millions of flights globally. Ignacio emphasizes that while electrification and new technologies are important, behavioral changes alone won't solve the issue. Instead, investment in cleaner technology and more efficient systems is the key to reducing aviation's environmental footprint.

I would say in the big picture, in the end, Taylor Swift could fly every single day to have breakfast in two places with the aircraft. She would not have an effect on the climate herself. I mean, it's one person flying. The big problem is usually scale. When you have millions of people doing something, even if it's smaller. For example, AI, all of us are using Chat-GPT and things like this, and that is actually consuming things. So I think personally, we need to all think about what we do and how it affects things. So take decisions based on what we can do to reduce consumption of energy and reduce everything. At the same time, yes, think developing technology is the solution because if in parallel to reducing consumption and making more efficient use of consumption with Second Life and with making more efficient everything we do, we also have technology to also help us reduce that more and more and more then it's an effective solution, but just one of the two will not work. — Ignacio Echavarría

Quality Assurance and Maintenance in Aerospace Engineering

Safety in aviation is paramount, and quality assurance is a meticulous process. Ignacio explains that aerospace engineers operate under the principle that no single system failure should ever cause an aircraft crash. To achieve this, aircraft components undergo extensive testing, often at levels far exceeding normal operating conditions. This rigorous testing ensures that even in extreme situations, systems remain reliable.

Aircraft are also subject to regular maintenance checks, ranging from minor inspections after every flight to complete overhauls where parts are disassembled and rebuilt. Predictive maintenance, aided by data analytics, is emerging as a way to enhance safety while reducing unnecessary maintenance by monitoring systems in real-time and identifying potential issues before they become critical.

Basically what we need to do is we need to make what we call quality assurance, design assurance. We need to make sure that what we put in the aircraft is safe. Then there's levels. I mean, for instance, the infotainment system is going to be less critical than controlling the aircraft. So if my infotainment system bugs out and, you know, has a blue sсreen of death, it's fine. I have a grumpy customer, but that's it. The airlines won't be happy, but the aircraft will not crash. If I have the flight computer of the aircraft deciding that it wants to be upside down, that's an issue. So that's where levels of quality and design assurance come in. And this is also why aerospace sometimes seems to lag behind. We cannot take AI and get to say, okay, AI is the big hype, I'm going to put AI controlling my aircraft. Because we have no assurance that it's going to do the right thing in all conditions. So what we need to do at the aircraft level, when we put something, we of course define its criticality based on many analysis on safety and what can go wrong and how can it impact the aircraft. And if it's no problem at all, like infotainment system, then you can do whatever you want. You can put anybody working on that and just, I don't want to check it. It's fine. As it becomes more more critical, and especially for the very high criticality systems like controlling engines, controlling flight controls, landing gears, things like this, which could actually create crashes, then you need to be as certain as you can as that it's safe. — Ignacio Echavarría

Can Aircraft Go Fully Electric?

Electrifying aviation is a major challenge, especially for larger aircraft. Ignacio’s work at Dovetail focuses on smaller regional planes, which are more feasible for electrification in the short term. Battery technology is improving, but current batteries are too heavy to power large, long-haul flights. For smaller aircraft, however, electric propulsion could soon become a reality, offering a quieter, cleaner alternative for regional and short-haul flights.

While fully electric large aircraft remain out of reach for now, hybrid systems that combine batteries with hydrogen or other fuels may bridge the gap. Hydrogen, particularly in fuel cells, is seen as a promising solution for mid-size planes, while sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) could help reduce emissions from larger planes in the near future.

That is the type of aircraft we're working on. So the plane you take for your little islands is the type of plane we want to modify first. And exactly one of the markets we want to go in. We're going to go into the small markets, at the beginning, it's a niche. I mean, as mentioned, it's not a Paris to New York. It's going to be skydiving. It's going to be scenic flights. But also to me, the most interesting one is island hopping, field hopping, where right now it's not workable because it's expensive, it's noisy, you need infrastructure and also it doesn't work economically. But if you have airplanes which are near zero emissions, which are quieter and which also are cheaper to operate, then suddenly you might be able to create these air taxis that jump from island to island and communicate places which are not well communicated. That's one of the places we're actually working with and we have some interested customers who actually do that. They're actually interested in doing island hopping or connecting islands to mainland. And that's the type of places we want to start with. So you might be one of our first customers. — Ignacio Echavarría

The Future of Aviation: A Mix of Technologies

Looking ahead, the future of aviation will likely involve a mix of technologies rather than a single breakthrough. Ignacio envisions a world where smaller planes run on electric power, regional routes are served by hydrogen-powered aircraft, and large planes use sustainable fuels. While the dream of fully electric commercial aviation might still be decades away, incremental progress—like electrifying regional aircraft and improving hybrid systems—will be essential in making air travel more sustainable.

As the industry moves forward, collaboration between startups and large companies will be crucial, pushing the boundaries of what's possible in aircraft design and technology. In the next 10 to 50 years, we might see radical shifts in how we fly, with cleaner skies and quieter flights becoming the norm.

I think there's no big consensus, but again, because as I mentioned before, there's not going to be a one solution for itself. In my opinion, probably people will not agree with it, it's going to be a combination of things. So the first thing is, so 10 % of the fuel is going to help us bridge the gap for the big aircraft for the moment. People will still need and want to fly. The economic way we have now means that we need to ship things from places to places. We need to fly from places to places. And it's really, I think it's opened up the world that you can actually know other cultures and fly there. So those places will probably need to go into the sustainable aviation fields. At the same time, batteries, I think, will be able to open up those small markets, those short haul routes and be able to start allowing for making jumps within cities which are not well connected. And instead of having just highways, you can actually have the little planes for some things and connecting places which are more difficult to connect like Salzburg and Switzerland are not far away, but you have the mountains in the middle. So you need to go to Munich and then go back. And airplane could actually do that very quickly. So there's other things that we can actually work with and create something. And at the same time, then there's all the technology working on the hydrogen. Hydrogen is the lightest molecule we can get. It's also very energetic. So it's a very interesting one. And there's different ways to use it as a fuel cell or as a combustion engine. So I think there's going to be, in the end, it's going to be a mixture of all of them becoming decarbonized aviation in the coming, and it will start slowly and then hopefully will come take more and more momentum and become bigger and bigger. And maybe in a hundred years, a new technology will come in and maybe many new fusion reactors will come in and then we'll be able to put those in an aircraft. But right now we don't see other solutions in the horizon. — Ignacio Echavarría

Our guest, Ignacio Echavarría.

Podcast editing: Mila Jones, milajonesproduction@gmail.com

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