The Other Thing in the Desert
With great regret I have canceled my annual pilgrimage to the Utah desert to help students safely launch big rockets. None of the usual suspects will be there this year, and I can't face the idea of five lonely nights in a motel right now. I wasn't really looking forward to the 20 hours of flying, or the logistics of getting a rental vehicle to
( Read more... )
Please don't despair for your daughter's space future. probabilistic and I have talked about this before, but I think under friends-lock. The upshot is that while the space business isn't perfect in this regard, it's probably a good deal better than the software business.
There's something not right about the culture of this one particular rocket launching competition. It's like the anti-Burning Man. To give another example, after four days of hacking out in the desert there is a buffet dinner in town for the presentation of awards and general wrap-up. It was pointed out to me that not one single student sat with anyone other than their team.
This boggles my mind. Here we have 100+ young people from all over the world. Tomorrow they will all load into trucks and vans, with their team-mates, and drive for many hours to get home. This is their last night at the event. Has nobody made a friend or lover that they would rather sit with? If they have, are they ashamed to be seen sitting with them?
I really am at a loss for how to change this, and maybe I can't. Just being there and radiating positive vibes doesn't seem to make enough difference :).
In contrast to this, there are some week-long space events that very much are Burning Man with less dust. The Small Satellite Conference (also in Utah) is a magical place.
Reply
I'm glad to hear that the poor culture is mostly isolated to that one event (nowhere's perfect, and I'm hard pressed to think of an industry that isn't better than software). I'll keep trying to get my sister more niece-time :)
Reply
Leave a comment