The one thing about engineers is that they really love their spreadsheets. I've never encountered an engineer who doesn't use them on the daily. Whether you calculate orbital information for a LEO satellite or study the development rate of a protoplasm in a rat cell, there's an overflowing spreadsheet lurking in the background. It may not be the handy-dandy tool or sim software that you primarily use, but it's always there as a first draft, your back of the napkin calculation that kicked off the whole thing.
I recently read a really moving Substack article by Blake Scholl, the CEO of Boom Supersonics. It wasn't the 'moving' part of the article (his vision for faster travel to bring the world together, ergo a supersonic aircraft) that inspired this brain dump. But this other line about how his vision for the aircraft, which is arguably one of the most complex and exciting projects in existence today, started with a spreadsheet. Oh, and of course, a dream. And he was in a basement in California. We've hit the trifecta, my dudes.
Starting with a spreadsheet (especially for conceptual design) makes a lot of sense. Not to go all aerospace engineer on you, but the traditional design process, in very simple terms, looks as follows. You start off with a bunch of mission requirements — how many seaters is the aircraft (payload), what kind of distances do you want it to travel (range), what airports are you targeting (runway limits), what are the relevant regulations etc. With those targets in mind, you need to set up equations for take-off weight calculations (based on your crew, payload, fuel and empty weight). The fuel weight is estimated by the Breguet Range equation, while the empty weight (i.e. actual weight of the airframe, engine, systems etc.) is calculated using an empirical regression equation. The other chunk is the wing/aerodynamic performance. The two key parameters in this process are the thrust to weight ratio (governs choice for engine size and number) and the aircraft weight/wing surface area ratio (governs the geometry of your wing and the airfoil you can pick). Now the process is iterative. You start by guessing your take-off weight (because you don't know what the aircraft looks like yet) — 2) size your powertrain and wings (with the equations that were set up) — here sizing is a fancy term for picking design parameters —3) estimate the actual weight based on the design you just sized and Raymer's empirical equations— 4) check with that weight if your performance and CG requirements are met. If not, keep changing/moving things till the loop stabilizes. If that doesn't happen, throw your laptop out the window and go get a normal job. If this paragraph sounded like a bunch of baloney, don't worry, I have a graduate degree in Aerospace Engineering and I can barely understand it. But it's also kind of cool.
Back to the original premise, all I'm saying is this process would be quite easy and efficient if you set up a spreadsheet with a tab for weight calculations, a tab for wing sizing and one for performance calculations. Although the initial work input is quite high, once set up, you can keep identifying feasible design space and optimizing the aircraft for fuel efficiency till the end of eternity. I'm guessing that's what Mr. Scholl was trying to do, but with key differences in the cruise speed, operating altitude and civilian supersonic flight limitations. On the off chance that you're reading this, Blake, I would love to come work for Boom.
That's a very niche example. Let's talk about the one that almost every individual has used a sheet for, monthly budget planning. Be it recording monthly expenditure, tracking spending over prolonged periods of time, or calculating interest and payoff plans for your car payment. If you are an organized person, you open this sheet up at the beginning of each month to plan your spendings. If you're like me, you're entering all your credit statement information into the cells way past the end of the month and mentally cursing at yourself as the number rises. It may be simple tables or a dynamic visual dashboard. But it gets the job done.
We use spreadsheets to track habits, track job applications, log time, plan meals and even schedule trips. Having all this information stored in one place, with a bunch of math on it, helps provide real actionable insights. Seeing that you've spent $200 on DoorDash in the past two months is going to make you plan more trips to the grocery store. Tracking your TikTok screen time and extrapolating for your entire lifetime will make you delete the app. On the professional end, having a live updating inventory spreadsheet can help a manufacturer plan their next shipment. Plotting temperature and pressure sensor data over time can help test engineers identify anomalous behaviors in the performance of their engines. Sure, there are fancier tools that can do each of these individual tasks. But, at the end of the day, it can all be reduced to a spreadsheet and some good old-fashioned number crunching.
The way I see it, there are two big reasons why engineers stick to spreadsheets. One is the ability to store and analyze information. The table cell format is intentional (which makes the fact that it defaults to overflow egregious). All your data is in one place, things are relatively intuitive and once you know the formulas, you can get pretty much gain any statistical insight you desire. Which brings me to my other reason, the dynamic nature of the tool. Making updates and observing changes in real time is what truly makes the difference (at least for me). The reason why interactive dashboards are such a big deal is because it gives the user a sense of control. You can move the slider, change the numbers and see how far away you are from the target. It helps you play out scenarios that exist in your head, see real time results (oh, the chart moves left, and I am in debt now) and actually make data-backed decisions. Although, it might also just be that you think you look really cool working a spreadsheet.