We won't need any more pilots for a few years...but interest in aviation and space is a good lead-in to science and engineering, and we WILL be needing more of those folks.

The aerospace/defense industry even has an acronym for it: STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics). Where we are going to get them in the future is a big issue for those industries. Especially defense, since they cannot simply offshore, or sponsor visas for foreign nationals like other sectors.