There is a way of describing mathematical work at the frontier of aerospace that focuses on the glamour — the connection to missions, to spacecraft, to the drama of space exploration — and a way that focuses on what the work actually consists of.

What the work actually consists of is, in significant measure, the management of uncertainty.

The systems that aerospace engineers design operate in environments that are not fully predictable, governed by physical parameters that are known within bounds rather than exactly, subject to failure modes that can be modeled statistically but not eliminated.

A trajectory calculation has to account for the uncertainty in the spacecraft’s initial velocity, the uncertainty in the planet’s position, the uncertainty in the density of the upper atmosphere.

A missile design has to account for manufacturing tolerances, for the variation in fuel burn from one instance to another, for the uncertainty in the target’s position.