Mach 9 Academy is short online courses in aviation, aerospace, space, engineering and technology, written for students roughly 11 to 18. Every course opens with a free chapter, so you can see exactly what they’d learn before you pay anything.
A video shows what a jet can do. A course explains why it works: the forces on a wing, how an orbit holds, how engineers design and test. Those fundamentals sit underneath careers like these, and a curious teenager can start on them now.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook: median pay in May 2024, and openings a year averaged over 2024–34. Each career page links to its source.
For the kid who knows every plane at the airport
Nine chapters from the four forces to the accident chain, what holds an aircraft up, what the rules are protecting, and why the decisions that matter most are made before anyone leaves the ground.
Take a jet engine apart, one section at a time.
For the kid who wants to design the next one
Nine chapters from what an aerospace engineer actually does to where the field is heading, vehicles, aerodynamics across every speed regime, structures, propulsion, stability and control, systems integration, the design and test process, and the careers built on all of it.
Follow the fuel through SpaceX’s Raptor 3 engine.
For the kid who stays up for rocket launches
Nine chapters from what makes spaceflight fundamentally different from atmospheric flight to where the field is heading, orbital regimes, spacecraft systems, space law, orbital mechanics, mission planning, transportation, human spaceflight, and the future of operations.
See low, medium and geostationary orbit at true scale.
For the kid who takes things apart to see how they work
Nine chapters from what engineering actually is to the ethical obligation every licensed engineer carries, the design process, statics and materials, thermodynamics and fluids, electrical fundamentals, feedback control, systems engineering, manufacturing quality, and the profession’s ethics and economics.
Put a truck on a steel bridge and see where the load goes.
For the kid who lives on a computer and wants to know how it works
Nine chapters from what a computer actually does to the fairness tradeoffs baked into the algorithms shaping people’s lives, computing fundamentals, algorithms and data structures, software engineering, networks, databases, cybersecurity, embedded sensing, machine learning, and technology ethics.
Watch a small neural network learn, one step at a time.
Accounts ask only for a display name, an email and a password. If your child is under 13, set the account up yourself and explore it together. Privacy Policy
Read it together, or send it straight to them.
Know another parent with a plane-mad kid?