People working in the space industry, any advice?

[Ultimate Steve]

I'd imagine that there are at least a few people working in the aerospace industry on the forums. I know there's at least one, @IonStorm, and if he'd be polite enough to comment on this, that would be greatly appreciated.

Some background, I'm currently in my junior year of high school, in the middle of nowhere in Iowa, which means I still have time to rethink my life if I want to. For quite some time I have been obsessed with space, and when I was younger I wanted to be an astronaut (as we all probably did) and I still do, but given the insane skill, dedication, and luck that requires I decided to aim for a more realistic goal. "If I can't be on the rockets, I want to build them!" I said, and I stuck with that philosophy for a while, with the idea that I'd try to become an Aerospace Engineer (or in cooler terms, Rocket Scientist). Maybe, if the whole "rapid reduction of cost" thing happens (not to say "BFR!" but "BFR!") then spaceflight may still be an option, but I'm getting off topic, this isn't the point of the thread.

The time has come for me to start looking for colleges and planning out my future a bit more. But, I'm second guessing myself. I'm starting to question what exactly this future might entail, and whether I'd enjoy it as much as I think I would, and if the job is as cool as I think it will be. Yes, I'm aware that the field of jobs I could end up in with a degree in Aerospace Engineering is extremely diverse, so answers may vary.

So I guess my questions are...

• Do you enjoy what you do?
• What do you do on a day to day basis, and how diverse is your job?
• What would you recommend doing to get in to such a line of work?
• What do you wish you had done differently?
• Is the work fulfilling?

And anything else you think is relevant, please. Thank you very much  for taking the time to respond to this.

 

[Bill Phil]

I can’t speak for the workplace, but I can help with how to get into the industry.

UAH in Huntsville, Alabama is a great university that happens to be in an area with lots of aerospace firms, and of course NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (the main launch vehicle development area, afaik) itself. Great intenship opportunities are in the area as well. There’s also pretty good networking opportunities down here as well.

Plus you get to see a Saturn V pretty often. Standing upright. It’s not a real rocket, but man is it awesome to behold.

[IonStorm]

I'm happy to comment publicly, but I don't build rockets, just use the samples and data they provide.  I got a A.B. and Ph.D. in biochemistry and did post-doctoral work at NASA Ames on pre-solar ice chemistry and now study meteorite organics at NASA Goddard.  I am also project scientist for OSIRIS-REx and department chair of astrochemistry.  So this is a very diverse set of experiences.  I talk about it in this 8-year old video, before the selection of OSIRIS-REx, https://youtu.be/QDlx8lnAlcM.  The best and most fulfilling parts of my job are 1) discovering something totally new, 2) sharing that discovery, and 3) helping connect people so they can achieve more science than I could alone.  (Working on a mission gives me all three of those things.)  The worst parts are dealing with 1) personnel issues, 2) budgets, and 3) drama.  My day to day is highly variable, right now it is a lot of telecons and meetings.  In the past it was doing wet chemistry in a lab, now I mostly advise the people doing the lab work. 

One thing very important in both science and engineering is your writing and public speaking ability.   The way you communicate your designs is with a report and a PowerPoint presentation.  Many engineers at Goddard attended U. Maryland or Johns Hopkins.  They have BS, MS, or PhD.  Many had military engineering experience many don't.  Scientists almost universally have a PhD and rarely attended school near Goddard.

I wish I had taken more geology, speech or debate, and an accounting class--but I'm not sure what I would have given up to do that.

Here is a recent brief profile of my career path https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/people/290/jason-dworkin/ 

I'm happy to communicate further if it helps.  You can also try @Jasonden and other professionals.

 

[razark]

I'm not in one of the exciting branches.  I'm in the Information Resources Directorate (read that as IT department).  But I've dealt with many different areas around the center, as well as the general culture.  So, take that for what it's worth.  Also, I'm slightly drunk and a bit cynical, so again, ttfwiw.

My advice:

-Work hard in school.  The better you do, the better chance you'll have.  This may seem obvious, but there will be times when you think "I can just skate through this, it's not that important."  Keep your focus on your goal.
-Look for opportunities.  Internships are good.  I've seen people that have done multiple ones.  Not only does it give you a chance to apply your academic learning to real situations, it also exposes you to the real world in a way college NEVER will, as well as getting you familiar with the organization and culture.  Further, it gives you a chance to meet people that might be useful later.  That mentor?  She could be in a position to recommend you for a job.  That guy you met during the summer?  He might get a job before you and remember you.  Don't burn bridges, and that applies to professional and social interactions.
-Be willing to go beyond your capabilities.  Taking on a task that you can't do?  Could be a good idea.  Show a willingness to take on a challenge, as well as ask for help when you need it.  But be careful of who belongs to the toes you step on.
-BEWARE OF POLITICS!  Don't get drawn into it.  Stick your foot in the door, not your mouth.  There's a lot a scrabbling for meager funds, and people can be territorial.
-Be willing to change.  The next few years of your life are going to be very eye-opening.  You may be exposed to any number of ideas/fields/people that will completely change your outlook on life.

 

As for your questions:

- Do you enjoy what you do?
Meh.  I've seen it many times: No matter what it is, once you start doing it five out of seven days, it becomes a job.  Sure, it might be better or more rewarding, but it becomes just what you do forty hours a week.  The exciting parts and the bad parts fade into the "it's just another day" parts.

- What do you do on a day to day basis, and how diverse is your job?
On a good day, I solve problems.  On bad days, I try to figure out how to get what needs to be done in the face of bad management decisions and vendor problems.  On many days, I do other people's jobs or tell people that earn more money how to do their jobs.  Most days are rather tedious repetition.

- What would you recommend doing to get in to such a line of work?
Depends on what you want to do.  There people that fly on rockets, and there's people that empty wastebaskets.  There's folks that figure out how to get people into space, there's people that figure out how to feed them, there's people that figure out what to do after they eat, and there's people that plant trees.  Know what you want to do.  If you have a specific goal in mind, work towards it.  If it doesn't work out, there's a thousand other jobs that need done.  And after all that, it comes down to chance.  I apparently got my job because it came down to two candidates.  Turns out my boss checked out a laptop for a trip, and my father's name was on the slip as having previously checked it out.

-What do you wish you had done differently?
Wow, that's a can of worms we really don't want to op...  Oh, you mean professionally?
Honestly, I don't know.  I can't say what would specific events would have lead to something different.  If we're going to examine that question, it would probably end up with me in a completely different field.

- Is the work fulfilling?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!
*cough*
I mean, umm... Yes.  Yes it is.

Honestly, some parts of it are, some parts of it aren't.  On the whole, however, yes. 
I grew up in the area.  Both my parents worked for the agency.  All the neighbors on our block (except one family of college professors) worked for the agency.  There was an astronaut that lived one block over.  There's some feeling of being where I should be that comes with it, because that's what people do.  (Those college professors?  Their son works for the agency.)  There's a comfort of knowing that I'm a small (tiny) cog in a machine that shaped defined my life.

Individual results may vary.

 

 

Plus you get to see a Saturn V pretty often.  It may not be standing upright, but it's a real rocket, and man is it awesome to behold.

[Piatzin]

I've always been torn between choosing genetic engineering and the aerospace industry. It's one of the more unfortunate aspects of life that you can rarely pick two paths and handle them well. It's also hard to turn back once you settle :/

I'm in an IB school at the moment, but my subjects (Psych/Bio/Chem) are geared towards neuroscience and fields in biology. And I can't change them at this point, apparently. However, I've heard you can take AP tests for subjects even if you aren't enrolled in the class itself, and I plan to take physics on the side. Might end up being unmanageable, but at least I'll try :D

9 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

UAH in Huntsville, Alabama is a great university that happens to be in an area with lots of aerospace firms, and of course NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (the main launch vehicle development area, afaik) itself. Great intenship opportunities are in the area as well. There’s also pretty good networking opportunities down here as well.

I checked the website for UAH and it looks interesting. Unfortunately, applying to universities in the US is a little tricky for me due to financial issues, so I'd have to scrounge up information on scholarships and general aid :P

[Ozymandias_the_Goat]

@mikegarrison may be of aid.

Hence, I summon thee!

[mikegarrison]

2 hours ago, Ozymandias_the_Goat said:

@mikegarrison may be of aid.

Hence, I summon thee!

Well, I am an aerospace engineer, yes, but I work in the airplane industry. It's probably a similar experience, but I can't say that for sure.

[mikegarrison]

18 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

So I guess my questions are...

• Do you enjoy what you do?
• What do you do on a day to day basis, and how diverse is your job?
• What would you recommend doing to get in to such a line of work?
• What do you wish you had done differently?
• Is the work fulfilling?

And anything else you think is relevant, please. Thank you very much  for taking the time to respond to this.

 

• Sometimes
• I do a lot of data analysis. Go to a lot of meetings. Surf the web some. BS with my coworkers. Read a lot of emails. Write some emails. Write some code. Document the data analysis I did.
• Get an engineering degree from the best school you can get into. Apply for jobs. Be prepared to run into roadblocks. (I was laid off from the first company I worked for.)
• Married Kate Beckinsale.
• Sometimes it's frustrating. Sometimes it's boring. Sometimes it's thrilling. Sometimes it's important. It's always cool to watch an airplane take off and know I had a part in making that happen.

[mikegarrison]

In my experience, which may not be typical everywhere, engineers start their career by doing go-fer engineering work. "Plot this data for me." "Go over these numbers." "Give me the answer to this question by following this procedure that is only half-documented, and come ask me how to to do the stuff that isn't documented."

Eventually they get more experience and more responsibility and nobody has to tell them to do this, then to do that, because they know it.

Later they figure out better ways to do this and that, and they end up writing the documentation and telling other people how to do it.

Also, they become "subject matter experts" in something or another and more and more people come to them with questions rather than the other way around.

-----------------

Or they go into sales, become managers, leave the industry and write a novel, or whatever.

[mikegarrison]

17 hours ago, IonStorm said:

The way you communicate your designs is with a report and a PowerPoint presentation.

Oh God yes. No person in the universe *likes* Powerpoint, but if you go into this field you will see Powerpoint presentations in your dreams. They are omnipresent. You will have to watch, read, and make Powerpoint until your eyes, ears, and fingers bleed.

Learning to write well (and quickly) can be a great (and I mean outstanding) asset to you. Practice, practice, practice. One of the best things I did for my engineering career was to join my college newspaper as a news reporter (and later editor).

Edited November 29, 2018 by mikegarrison

[IonStorm]

2 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Oh God yes. No person in the universe *likes* Powerpoint, but if you go into this field you will see Powerpoint presentations in your dreams. They are omnipresent. You will have to watch, read, and make Powerpoint until your eyes, ears, and fingers bleed.

[Ozymandias_the_Goat]

It is exceptionally ironic that this meme is itself a PowerPoint 

2 minutes ago, IonStorm said:

 

[TheSaint]

12 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Oh God yes. No person in the universe *likes* Powerpoint, but if you go into this field you will see Powerpoint presentations in your dreams. They are omnipresent. You will have to watch, read, and make Powerpoint until your eyes, ears, and fingers bleed.

[cubinator]

6 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

In my experience, which may not be typical everywhere, engineers start their career by doing go-fer engineering work. "Plot this data for me." "Go over these numbers." "Give me the answer to this question by following this procedure that is only half-documented, and come ask me how to to do the stuff that isn't documented."

Eventually they get more experience and more responsibility and nobody has to tell them to do this, then to do that, because they know it.

Later they figure out better ways to do this and that, and they end up writing the documentation and telling other people how to do it.

Also, they become "subject matter experts" in something or another and more and more people come to them with questions rather than the other way around.

-----------------

Or they go into sales, become managers, leave the industry and write a novel, or whatever.

That seems like a pretty decent approach. As an aerospace engineering student myself, thanks! Your advice is very helpful.

@Ultimate Steve, I can't speak for the industry but I can talk about the college experience a little bit. I'm currently in a rocket team that has just entered in a competition - a space race to launch a single stage, liquid propellant rocket to 100 km by the end of 2021. This sort of thing is a great way to get attention from employers in the space industry. You will likely have similar opportunities in college wherever you go, especially going to a school with a good aerospace program.

Also the coursework contains a lot of calculus and physics, and later some computer simulation stuff.

Edited November 30, 2018 by cubinator

[YNM]

I'm definitely very far removed from the field of aerospace (they try make things move - we try keep things to a standstill), but a lot that has been said here (work-related) are true for engineering in general. Documentation is very important (and it's your task to do it).

As to what do you learn... well we're facing back-to-back. Or so I think, it's still physics.

[cubinator]

On 11/29/2018 at 12:02 PM, mikegarrison said:

Oh God yes. No person in the universe *likes* Powerpoint, but if you go into this field you will see Powerpoint presentations in your dreams. They are omnipresent. You will have to watch, read, and make Powerpoint until your eyes, ears, and fingers bleed.

Can confirm. I'm only in an engineering student team and I've already been exposed to this. I am even presenting one today!  

[Jasonden]

On 11/28/2018 at 2:38 PM, Ultimate Steve said:

a degree in Aerospace Engineering is extremely diverse

So I guess my questions are...

• Do you enjoy what you do?
• What do you do on a day to day basis, and how diverse is your job?
• What would you recommend doing to get in to such a line of work?
• What do you wish you had done differently?
• Is the work fulfilling?

Thanks @IonStorm for the shout-out.

I'm not an Aerospace Engineer.  I'm a Planetary Scientist.  So I help to design robotic missions to other planets at the front end, and to use the data from them at the back end to learn new things about planets.  I work with the engineers who actually do the designing, providing requirements, and evaluating their ideas for whether or not they can answer our questions.  In the end, then, I write the first section of a giant Discovery or New Frontiers mission proposal and contribute obliquely to the rest.

What this means in the end though is that while there are some jobs designing rockets, there are many more for engineers designing payloads.  Planetary missions, helioscience missions, astrophysics space telescopes, Earth-observing satellites.  And that's just within NASA's Science Mission Directorate.  There's also designing crewed vehicles and their support, communications satellites, LEO constellations, GPS systems, and the like.  So there can be more to rocket science than the first 8 minutes of fire!

I myself have always known that I wanted to study planets, since I was like 4 years old.  And yeah:  it's awesome!  There are always those parts of the job that are less fun, like planning your budget from now until 2038 and answering an endless stream of email.  But I don't think that there's a way out of that.

Your first step is to get an undergraduate degree in an appropriate major.  Engineering works.  Elon Musk majored in Physics, though, remember, which I think gives you a better sense not just of how to build things but rather of what things haven't been built before but COULD be built.  I was an Astronomy major, which ended up being nearly indistinguishable from a physics major.

From there you can get a better sense of what to do next, but it's important to spend your time as an undergrad seeking out opportunities, be it at NASA, or private companies, or other universities.  Get a sense for what your job would actually be like, and then figure out whether you want to do a mid-course correction.

I grew up in suburban St. Louis, Missouri myself, so there's no impediment for contributing no matter where you're from so long as you've got the background!  Good luck, and let me know if you have other questions.

 

On 11/29/2018 at 10:05 AM, IonStorm said:

Presentation skills -- or more broadly communication skills in general -- are a critical component to this work.  They say that a bad idea, brilliantly presented, will still eventually fail owing to its inherent challenges.  A brilliant idea, poorly presented, however, will fail immediately.

[mikegarrison]

On 12/3/2018 at 6:13 PM, Jasonden said:

Your first step is to get an undergraduate degree in an appropriate major.  Engineering works.  Elon Musk majored in Physics, though, remember, which I think gives you a better sense not just of how to build things but rather of what things haven't been built before but COULD be built.  I was an Astronomy major, which ended up being nearly indistinguishable from a physics major.

Be careful with this.... Elon Musk gets to call himself an engineer because he owns the company.

At my company, if you get an engineering degree, you get hired as an engineer. If you get a physics degree, or a math degree, or some non-engineering degree, you get hired as a tech. And it's much better to be an engineer than a tech.

Now if we're talking PhDs or something, that's entirely different. A PhD in physics is very, very different than an undergrad degree in physics. But if you want to be an engineer, I highly recommend you get an undergrad degree that says "engineer". Because at least for some employers, that makes a difference.

An alternate method besides either getting an engineering degree or founding Paypal is to pass a Professional Engineer exam. All states have them, in various disciplines. First you pass an exam called "Fundamentals Of Engineering" (aka the EIT exam, for "engineer in training"). Then you pass the PE exam in your specialty. This is required if you want to go into business for yourself as an engineer. But if you have an engineering degree and want to work at an engineering company, it's not so important to pass this exam. (In some engineering disciplines it's more important than in others.)

https://www.nspe.org/resources/licensure/what-pe

Edited December 5, 2018 by mikegarrison