Or, at least a missile engineer gap:

Not only are fewer American engineers and scientists choosing to work on missile technology, there are fewer of them altogether, the report says. Each year, about 70,000 Americans receive undergraduate and graduate science and engineering degrees that are defense related, compared with a combined 200,000 in China and India, the report says.

The government should pay higher salaries and offer other incentives to attract more experts into the strategic missile field, the report says.

As always, I find it irritating that reporters think that it takes "scientists" to design and operate missiles. I guess they think that someone with a physics degree is a "scientist," even if they're actually doing engineering (perhaps because they think that getting a journalism degree makes one a journalist, regardless of how much journalistic malpractice is committed).

What I find annoying is calls for graduating more engineers, or encouraging more students to select engineering as a major, when the market is not signaling a shortage. If the companies that want missile engineers are serious, they should raise salaries. The market will do the rest.

Well, yes. That, too.

Scientist encompases soft science as well as hard science.

Not many Biologists work on the design of propulsion systems I would wager nor Geologists on the design of deep space communication systems.

In this case, it's neither hard nor soft science. It's engineering.

I understand that Rand, I am merely trying to illustrate the absurdity of linking the totality of all Scientists and ability to engineer the required subsystems to build a functional rocket.

I think alot comes from that stupid phrase "Rocket Science". There might be some Science in the early stages like the current development of VASMIR but building a LH2/LOX engine is an engineering affair the same as designing a new V8 for Chevy is.

I agree, it is Engineering, not Science and have been arguing such with the unwashed masses for over a decade.

This is a little like the distinction people draw in the medical field. If you ask me what I do I say I'm a surgeon, not a doctor.

> What I find annoying is calls for graduating more engineers, or encouraging
> more students to select engineering as a major, when the market is not
> signaling a shortage. If the companies that want missile engineers are serious,
> they should raise salaries. The market will do the rest.

The article isn't talking about private-sector employees; it's talking about Space Command. The Pentagon can't raise salaries without approval of Congress.

That's the whole point: "The government should pay higher salaries and offer other incentives to attract more experts into the strategic missile field, the report says."

Jane,

You are a Doctor beause you have a Doctorate in Medicine. You are a Doctorate by title and a Surgeon by profession.

You would not want to have had Doctor Edward Teller perform an appendectomy but he was a called Doctor by virtue of his Doctorate in Physics.

Doctor Teller didn't walk around a hosiptal with scrubs and have some patient ask him if he would examine a sick child.

Doctor Teller didn't walk around a hosiptal with scrubs and have some patient ask him if he would examine a sick child.

If he did, he must not have gotten caught...