Aerospace engineers find niche

Benjamin Schiltgen, Andrew Gibson and Trevor Foster, founders of ESAero Inc., were students in Cal Poly’s aerospace engineering program who decided that after graduation, they would work for themselves.

As members of the Cal Poly Space Systems Club, they built cost-effective, high-end radio aircraft models, with the goal of moving beyond theoretical research to the development of ideas and concepts that could serve the engineering industry.

Flight School

In their senior year, they also had taken trips to companies that critiqued their aircraft design work to be presented at the annual national American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics competition.

Aviation Colleges

Those experiences gave them a “first-hand look at what working life would be like after graduation,” said Schiltgen, vice president of finance. “Needless to say, it added more fuel to the fire in our ambition to create our own job.”

In 2003, they opened Empirical Systems Aerospace Inc., which provides entrepreneurial concept development, aircraft modifications, military and commercial air vehicle designs, subscale technology demonstrators (aircraft models), niche engineering support and research and development on hybrid propulsion systems for aircraft, which use power architecture similar to a Toyota Prius, for example.

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