The aerospace industry is headed for major turbulence as an aging workforce stokes fears of an impending talent shortage.

That was the point of a Monday evening event called Aerospace Workforce & Education Symposium, at the Los Angeles Air Force Base in El Segundo. The conference drew a who's who of the industry including NASA Administrator Michael Griffin.

The stakes are huge for the nation, which depends on the aerospace industry to create jobs, spur technological innovation and develop systems for national defense.

The issue is especially pressing in the South Bay, which depends on aerospace for a major part of the area's economy.

"It's a very big problem," said Rep. Jane Harman (D-El Segundo), who helped organize the event. "Think in economic terms. If kids here are not going (into aerospace), I don't know what our future is."

She added that the industry is headed for a "demographic cliff."

The Soviet Union's launching of Sputnik more than five decades ago inspired a huge U.S. government investment in aerospace. The so-called Space Race captured the imagination of countless Americans, who devoted themselves to jobs in the industry.
Today, that spark of public fascination has grown dim.

For example, about a quarter of the nation's aerospace workers are eligible for retirement this year, while the number of potential replacements -- Americans graduating with engineering degrees -- has dwindled. And many of those who do graduate show more interest in pursuing other industries such as the Internet and gaming.

One of the main points of conversation at Monday's symposium and during interviews before the event was how to inspire children in grade school to consider engineering or the hard sciences as a career.

Wanda Austin, president and CEO of The Aerospace Corp., a federally-funded think tank in El Segundo, said that young people can be drawn to aerospace if they understand its impact on daily life.

"Part of the challenge is people don't realize we need the aerospace industry each day, with satellites, TV, cell phones," Austin said.

Some aspects of aerospace not only lack the excitement and mystique of early breakthroughs, but can actually turn off young people, NASA's Griffin said. He cited airline travel as an example.

"Airline travel is late, dirty, uncomfortable and rude," Griffin said. "But when aviation was new, everybody wanted to be an airline pilot. Kids can spot the new frontier and they go for it."

Harman suggested making the aerospace workplace more "exciting."

Instead of resembling the Defense Department, you need to resemble Google and biotech firms," Harman said. She added: "There is an amazing short-sightedness that aerospace is all about war. It is about war, but it's also about comforts of society."

Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, the Hawthorne-based developer of experimental low-cost rockets, said the industry must focus more on promoting itself.

"Science and engineering have a marketing problem," Musk said. "There really needs to be some exciting, some overarching great thing" to excite children.
He suggested that creating a human colony on Mars could produce the needed excitement.

Former UCLA chancellor Albert Carnesale said that not enough was known about the aerospace industry's looming workforce shortage. This lack of information would make finding a solution difficult, he said.

Carnesale also bemoaned U.S. immigration policies that prevent many foreigners from working here for long after earning a degree in engineering or science.
"More than 70 percent of the foreign science and engineering graduates work in the U.S. ... and then we throw them out," Carnesale said.