There’s something quietly unsettling about the message that experience no longer matters. That’s the impression a group recently received after applying to present their aerospace project to a panel of angel investors. While they didn’t make the final shortlist, it wasn’t the rejection that raised eyebrows. It was the feedback.
The team was told they were too old.
That phrase landed heavily. Not just as a flippant comment, but as a dismissal of decades of professional experience, technical mastery and lived insight. In aerospace, where safety, regulation and engineering precision are non-negotiable, experience isn’t just helpful, it’s foundational. These aren’t considerations you learn by either playing Flight Simulator Delivery 2025 VR for three days in a row or watching YouTube tutorials. The work demands a deep, nuanced understanding of systems, risk, human factors and materials science. It is not the kind of project that lends itself to a 5-minute pitch deck and an AI-generated roadmap.
And yet the panel were bowled over by a group of graduates proposing drug manufacturing in outer space. The irony wasn’t lost on anyone. It’s a photogenic idea, certainly; the kind of shiny, sci-fi concept that plays well on pitch nights. But anyone with experience in aerospace, biotech or pharmaceutical regulation would know that the technical, legal and ethical hurdles for such a project are Everest-sized. Yet, somehow, they were seen as one of the better bets.
The issue here isn’t youth. It’s not about whether younger founders have value – of course they do. It’s about the clear signalling that older professionals are now considered irrelevant, even in sectors where their experience is essential. That’s not just a bad business decision; it edges into something much more serious.
Ageism in the investment and tech ecosystem is well documented. Research by Age UK and the Centre for Ageing Better has shown that older entrepreneurs are consistently overlooked for funding, despite being statistically more likely to succeed. In Silicon Valley, the cult of the young founder has been so fetishised that people over 40 are regularly told to pivot to advisory roles, as if their days of original thinking ended with their first grey hair.
These patterns are harmful not just economically, but psychologically. For the older members of the aerospace team, the panel’s comment hit hard. It wasn’t just a rejection of an idea; it felt like a rejection of them as individuals. Of their lifetime of problem-solving, team-building, cross-disciplinary collaboration and hard-won lessons.
It takes resilience to build a career in an industry as exacting as aerospace. To be dismissed on the basis of age was not only professionally insulting but personally disheartening. These are people who have taught, mentored, built systems that have flown, launched, and landed. To be told they are somehow no longer valid, because they’ve passed an arbitrary birthday is deeply damaging.
Legally, it’s also questionable. Under the UK Equality Act 2010, age is a protected characteristic. That means funding bodies, panels, and any entity offering access to opportunities must not discriminate on the basis of age. While informal investor panels may fall into grey areas, discriminatory commentary, especially when it informs outcomes, risks breaching both the letter and the spirit of the law.
The real irony? The panel who delivered the “too old” verdict were themselves very much in the same age bracket. It’s like watching a group of middle-aged execs boot out fellow grown-ups for not being young and disruptive enough, while nodding sagely at a bunch of graduates pitching intergalactic pill factories.
In contrast, take Adrian Newey, widely regarded as the greatest Formula 1 designer of all time. At 66 years old, he’s just been snapped up by Aston Martin on a deal reportedly worth £30 million a year, which works out to roughly £3,700 an hour. That’s right, while one team of investors was busy telling seasoned aerospace professionals they were “too old”, Aston Martin was happily shelling out thousands an hour for the expertise of a man whose design mastery has come from decades of experience. Funny how age suddenly becomes an asset when you’re trying to build a race-winning car…
If investment decisions are now being made on aesthetic rather than substance, on youth rather than knowledge, we should be concerned. Especially in sectors like aerospace, defence, and transport, where experience is not a luxury; it’s a vital safety net.
There’s a place for bold, ambitious graduate entrepreneurs. But in aerospace, there must also be space for those who’ve already proven they can take a concept from blueprint to launch pad. If we want to build a future worth flying into, we might want to make sure someone on board has actually taken a project from the drawing board to full US Federal Aviation Authority or UK Civil Aviation Authority certification.
Because when you’re 40,000 feet in the air, the last thing you want to hear is that the auto pilot system was coded by someone who learned avionics from a Reddit thread and tested it during a coffee-fuelled all-nighter on AI…
