(no subject)
“…But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too…” - JFK, Speech at Rice University, 1962.
My dreams are hard to accomplish; I’ve started to take this as a fact. Nothing has ever come easily, and things that do tend to never be the best fit. I thrive on challenge. I thrive on being around people who are smarter than I am and challenge me to rise up to their level. I thrive on space flight. My head is stuck somewhere in low earth orbit, and it is happy there. The challenge of engineering for those environments is amazing. It’s a giant puzzle that may or may not have an answer, but has to be worked around and dealt with. Few people have had to be concerned with the fact that latch up and inrush currents look remarkably similar. Radiation can hose you, as can an off nominal power supply. If something breaks, there is no repairing it. Best of luck if you have spacecraft charging and happened to have an accidental ground loop. It keeps you on your toes, keeps you running, thinking. There is never a dull moment. It all comes up to a moment when you hit initiate on a launch sequence which could end everything in under a minute. Years of work gone up in smoke with only “what if” and “why’ remaining.
I’ve come to the realization the past few weeks that nothing keeps me engaged like space. I don’t care now if it’s a spacecraft or launch vehicle. Other engineering seems, well, too grounded. There is no challenge. There is no larger puzzle to fit together. There are no moments of truth on top of a flame throwing beast, and hours later over head. It comes down to getting things right the first time, and figuring out what can go wrong.
This is why I refuse to give up on a job in the space industry. It currently has me flat on my face. Opportunities for EE’s abound if you look hard enough. (~60 job applications in at the moment) Yet they still don’t fit. I’ve been forced to become OK with working for a defense contractor; I am just making sure I do not get myself into a position where I aid in directly bringing harm to others (building missiles). I keep searching for that one job I know will fit and will keep me challenged with an environment that will not destroy me. It’s likely in R&D somewhere, working on small spacecraft. Where it is at the moment, I couldn’t tell you. How I’ll get it, I also don’t know. I finally got family behind me this week (well, the ones who count) to allow me to press for that one space job that I will completely fall in love with but that tells me nothing more than keep searching. I don’t know where I’ll live, nor when I’ll know this fact. Yet I do know one thing, one little tiny thing:
Failure is never an option.
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too…” - JFK, Speech at Rice University, 1962.
My dreams are hard to accomplish; I’ve started to take this as a fact. Nothing has ever come easily, and things that do tend to never be the best fit. I thrive on challenge. I thrive on being around people who are smarter than I am and challenge me to rise up to their level. I thrive on space flight. My head is stuck somewhere in low earth orbit, and it is happy there. The challenge of engineering for those environments is amazing. It’s a giant puzzle that may or may not have an answer, but has to be worked around and dealt with. Few people have had to be concerned with the fact that latch up and inrush currents look remarkably similar. Radiation can hose you, as can an off nominal power supply. If something breaks, there is no repairing it. Best of luck if you have spacecraft charging and happened to have an accidental ground loop. It keeps you on your toes, keeps you running, thinking. There is never a dull moment. It all comes up to a moment when you hit initiate on a launch sequence which could end everything in under a minute. Years of work gone up in smoke with only “what if” and “why’ remaining.
I’ve come to the realization the past few weeks that nothing keeps me engaged like space. I don’t care now if it’s a spacecraft or launch vehicle. Other engineering seems, well, too grounded. There is no challenge. There is no larger puzzle to fit together. There are no moments of truth on top of a flame throwing beast, and hours later over head. It comes down to getting things right the first time, and figuring out what can go wrong.
This is why I refuse to give up on a job in the space industry. It currently has me flat on my face. Opportunities for EE’s abound if you look hard enough. (~60 job applications in at the moment) Yet they still don’t fit. I’ve been forced to become OK with working for a defense contractor; I am just making sure I do not get myself into a position where I aid in directly bringing harm to others (building missiles). I keep searching for that one job I know will fit and will keep me challenged with an environment that will not destroy me. It’s likely in R&D somewhere, working on small spacecraft. Where it is at the moment, I couldn’t tell you. How I’ll get it, I also don’t know. I finally got family behind me this week (well, the ones who count) to allow me to press for that one space job that I will completely fall in love with but that tells me nothing more than keep searching. I don’t know where I’ll live, nor when I’ll know this fact. Yet I do know one thing, one little tiny thing:
Failure is never an option.