If engineers waited for the development of scientific knowledge to use and organize into technological achievements, ours would be a very different World from what we know. In engineering, it is not so much science as it is ingenuity that is applied to solve problems and satisfy needs and wants. If this were not so, the steam engine would never have been
invented in the absence of thermodynamics. The Wright Brothers would not have flown since they had no aerodynamics textbooks. The astronauts would never have landed on the Moon nor the rovers on Mars without firm geological knowledge of their surfaces. Rather than following scientific theories and discoveries, engineering leads them. Operating steam engines prompted the development of thermodynamics, actual powered flight drove aerodynamics, and Moon and Mars missions brought back samples and sent back data that led to increased scientific knowledge about those extraterrestrial bodies.
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