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Ask Slashdot: How To Enter Private Space Industry As an Engineer?
First time accepted submitter CtownNighrider writes "I'm in my senior year of high school currently in a selective program for future engineers. I have always been a good student and feel like I can get into most good schools (MIT is a long shot but RPI isn't). I plan on studying aerospace engineering (most likely getting a dual major with mechanical) in college and working for a company like SpaceX once I graduate. I would love any advice anyone can offer for my college search or being an engineer in general. I live in upstate NY and don't want to travel super far, I'm thinking about a 5 hour radius. I have the RPI medal so it's one of my top choices and MIT is my long shot but I'm having a tough time figuring out what schools are worth applying too. Academics come first hands down so male/female ratio and party scene aren't too important."
Interview and get a co-operative engineer position at any space-related engineering firm. Sounds like your credentials could get you an interview. Can't be beat to get a leg up on that type of career; it worked for me...
Being an engineer is about learning how to solve problems. 'Asking Slashdot' is about getting other people to solve your problems. If you want to be an engineer, you had better learn how to start solving your own problems, or answering questions like the one you posed, by yourself. That's my best advice for getting into your chosen field.
In nature, there are neither rewards or punishments, there are only consequences.
don't go china inless you want to die in a cheap and unsafe space craft
Don't feel like you have to go to a hard-core engineering school. Go to the best state school in your area, the undergraduate curriculum is not much different from a really well regarded school like MIT. It will be cheaper and you will likely have a better social life.
Recognize that with fancy schools you are paying for the prestige, the education is not much different. I went to a top five engineering school, most of my classes were giant lectures that would have been exactly the same at any state school. (the state school is often even better if they have good professors rather than uber-researchers who suck at teaching) If you really want prestige go to the best graduate program you can get into after you graduate. For good engineering students this is typically free and the high prestige schools actually are better at that level.
You say you do not care about the quality of your social life now, but believe me, after 4 years of hardcore engineering school you will. Nearly everyone who makes this decision does
Just get into to the best school you can and apply for internships every summer (including after freshman year). If you go to a good school then it's usually pretty easy to get an internship at a name-brand company. From that point on all the other name-brand companies will want to hire you.
If you want to be an engineer, you had better learn how to start solving your own problems, or answering questions like the one you posed, by yourself. That's my best advice for getting into your chosen field.
Crap. Asking questions is good. Building on the experience of others is great. Be ready to challenge the wisdom of others but don't refuse every source of existing information.
That's good advice. But if you start out with the idea that you want to get a very specialized job in a microscopic startup industry but don't want to travel more than a few hours from your location, the chances of success are negligible in any case.
I cannot talk for the other country, but in Canada the ÉTS ("École de technologie Supérieure" which mean "Superior Technology School") just started a new program for their engineer. It's a Master's degree in aerospace that I'm planning to join this year.
http://www-eng.etsmtl.ca/ETS-brochure_maitrise-en.pdf (Look at page 8).
I would love to give you more detail, but their whole website is in french. Also, since it's quite new, I don't know it's worth in the aerospace industries. But I'm sure a few of you would find it interesting!
FuCK YOU! YOU AsHOLE DICKHEAD! YOU WILL BUrN IN Hell for your cRIMES! AUUGH! IT BURNS! FUCK YOU!
or get run over while walking to the launch pad.
This is bad advice. Successful engineers spend lots of time asking questions and soliciting advice.
It sounds like you're on the right path... aerospace with dual major in mechanical.
You have some time though, so I'd suggest you get a hobby in the field you're going into. Help out some open source rocketry projects. Surely they exist. Launch some things up really high. Rig up some cameras and get pictures. Write some code. etc. etc.
One day someone is going to be looking at your resume. If it's one in a thousand, you probably won't get noticed. Hopefully they'll be looking at it because Bob down in the lab says he knows this one guy who really kicked ass on this one project. Hopefully you'll already know the guy through the right circles. Hopefully they'll look you up on the web and see that you have your hand in the right projects, that you do good work, and that you love what you do.
Also, it would be good to actually do the work you're seeking to go into. It'll tell you if you're on the right path for YOU.
The secret to Industry is that you don't get promoted to do work .... You get promoted and paid when it's noticed that you're ALREADY doing the work and oh, perhaps they should pay you for that....
The USA is in a long term serious decline for anything to do with science and engineering. These fields are moving to places like China which put a larger value on education. You'd be well advised to consider moving overseas, because the trend is clear: less and less of this kind of work happens in the United States. The aerospace industry here has been gutted since the 1960's. It still exists to some extent, but not nearly like it used to, and it's declining all the time.
You go to fancy schools because many of the students with whom you get drunk there are tomorrow's industry leaders. They are good people to know, because they will be able to provide you with employment opportunities that you simply can't get by sending off resumes.
This can really help you with this.
I also work for space industry now (I was partially responsible for guidance systems on recently launched Juno mission.).
The above site has invaluable information about how to get started in this industry.
In the end, you'd be demonstrating your love for the subject in a very visible way. Most resume submitters never ever do this.
I know lots of successful engineers. I are one.
We were all blowing things up when we were your age.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
RIT has a good Mechanical Engineering program (where you can specialize in aerospace engineering). If you do decide to go to RIT, try to get into their Honors program, it will make your life 500 times more awesome since you're focusing on academics.
Given the number of astronauts killed on US missions (2 shuttles and quite a few other "accidents"), i find that remark extremely amusing.
Don't limit you options based on the geographical factor. If the male/female ratio and the party scene are not important, then the location shouldn't be either.
I went to MIT. It was kind of brutal at times, but I loved it anyway. I have a number of friends who didn't get into MIT and went to RPI. They all hated it. They said that they felt like their time at RPI was being in an uncaring engineer-producing factory. They also said that it is located in the "armpit of the country".
So, I guess my advice would be to work harder so that you get into MIT. ;)
But, of course, there are a number of good engineering schools. And it may be that RPI has learned since how to make its students happier--I went to college a while ago. It seems as if spending some time trying to determine how happy the students at various schools are with their experience would be time very well spent. You don't want to have your joy for what you love to do crushed out of you.
|>ouglas
P.S. I ended up working as a software engineer on a space telescope (RXTE). I learned C++ and then applied for the job and they hired me. Getting a good education, keeping your skills up to date over your entire career, and persistence towards what you want to achieve seems to always be a good approach.
Formula SAE (undergrads build small race cars and compete) is a fantastic training experience for any kind of vehicle engineering. The cycle of design-analyze-build-test-repair-repeat is an excellent compliment to a standard engineering education. Several of the judges and organizers of the competition work at SpaceX and they attend the competitions to recruit new engineers.
Home page for Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) student events, http://students.sae.org/ Note that SAE also serves aerospace engineers, not just automotive.
Ongoing discussions about building and racing these cars are on this site:
http://fsae.com/groupee?s=763607348&cdra=Y
Read this forum topic first, before posting:
http://fsae.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/125607348/m/72110779141
In NY State, there are excellent FSAE teams at RPI, Cornell and also at RIT (Rochester).
Yes, well done.
Haven't fallen for one of those in years (though I did have some suspicions before clicking).
WPI is a good school in Massachusetts, it's about as selective as RPI from what I understand and it's not in Troy, NY. Also, don't go into school close minded like this. The reality is that you probably don't know enough about aerospace engineering to know if that's what you really want to do. Start there, but look look into other fields too, or at least other sub-fields in ME/aerospace.
obvious goatse is obvious
I am an Aerospace Engineering/Mathematics Grad Student at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. I do more theoretical work now, but I think I can offer a little advice.
If you want to stay state side I would also recommend (in no particular order) you look at U of M, Purdue, Georgia Tech, Cornell (Aero/Mech), Caltech, Stanford (Aero/Mech) and the University of Maryland (more aeronautical).
The biggest thing is to get involved with research projects. Look at current professors and their research interests, see if they have anything related to satellite/rocket design. Do not be afraid to ask/e-mail. Professors and grad students alike love getting undergrads involved, perhaps because they usually come free.
If you do look at Michigan I can recommend looking at Professor Cutler and his RAX project or professors in the Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences (AOSS) department. Several people from my graduating class who took Aerosp 483 went on to SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and Bigelow Aerospace, so there is a network.
For more U of M information look at:
Professor Cutler: http://aerospace.engin.umich.edu/people/faculty/cutler/
RAX: http://rax.engin.umich.edu/
AOSS: http://aoss.engin.umich.edu/
GO BLUE!
Once you've nailed the academics at a state undergrad level and proven yourself (with less cost), then hit up the larger research universities like MIT. You'll have more track record on your academic resume, and you'll have tons of contacts from your undergrad years to help you get in.
Transferring into a top tier University with less debt is not a bad way to go, if you're willing to do undergrad work at a state level. The majority of undergrad studies - Physics, Calculus, etc. are all pretty much universal whether at the state or Ivy league schools.
It's when you get to the higher levels that your dollars will be well spent at a specialty school.
I suggest some military (self?) education, because its a fairly effective way to analyze long term campaigns...
So... your goal... what intel do you have about the goal? When you asked SpaceX what did they say? When you talked to the engineers there, and especially the engineering department management, what did THEY suggest? Tell them the truth and HR will filter / blow you off. Tell them you need to interview an engineering dept manager for a school report, you Might make it thru the filter. Get all 007 on this if necessary. Unless they're here on /. with us, which is possible, I'm not thinking your intel from /. will be worth much.
Next check out the opfor, that being all the other applicants at SpaceX, what is your edge? Teachers naturally try to convince their students the most important techniques for success are being a follower and getting high grades, and many/most kids are stary eyed enough to believe them, the fools. I'm not 100% certain that is remotely relevant. I'm guessing that if SpaceX gets 1000 qualified applicants per position, if you are in fact the #1 GPA in the nation that might help, otherwise you need another strategy... join the model rocket club that the hiring manager is a member of? Something like that?
Finally check out yourself. Very few people pick a career at age 17 and stick with it.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
MIT isn't the answer, CalTech is. JPL is managed by CalTech and there is some crossover and plenty of educational opportunities there. Also, since SpaceX is based in southern California, being there helps. Aerospace is very strong in SoCal.
Also, SpaceX hires a lot from companies like Boeing, Northrop, etc(all of my friends that work there are from said companies). In order to get in as an engineer at those companies(to use as a stepping stone), you generally need your security clearance or military experience. The military is always looking for engineer graduates, and you'll be able to pay down your loans as well. With a degree, you'll go in as an officer as well generally.
what the fuck is inless? its UNLESS you moron
So you never asked a single question in your entire career?
Job skills are secondary to 'soft skills' (networking, interpersonal, manipulation) in terms of getting you where you want to go. The people at the 'top' of their fields are almost always talkers rather than doers. If you want to be the guy who actually invents something, you probably want the absolute best training you can get, push hard for MIT. If you're not going to be able to get that, you won't be able to compete with the guy who does, so you may as well go down the other path, and get credit and patent for his inventions by being a direction setter.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I'm an aerospace engineering student, nearly done with my undergrad career at Cal Poly Pomona, and I've also done research during two summers at Caltech.
I know people that have attended several of the more prestigious schools and notice that the level of education you receive is almost entirely up to you. If you have the drive to learn, the school you choose is secondary. I will say that the difference between Caltech and a school like Cal Poly Pomona is that the students are much more enthusiastic about learning theory as opposed to simply knowing enough to get a project done.
I think the best thing you can do is actually visit the campus during the school year if possible and attend some of the seminars or group meetings in your field of interest. It will give you a feel for the kinds of students that the university attracts or the types of problems they like to tackle.
Another thing to look for, and ask current students of those universities, is how difficult/easy it is to get funding and school resources for engineering projects and competitions.
Lastly, I now have a math minor and find it much more valuable to have more mathematics (advanced D.E.s, tensors, numerical analysis, set theory) under my belt than classes on the specifics of bearings or fasteners (something that my aerospace curriculum doesn't cover at all, but M.E. majors do). The way I see it, the abstract concepts are harder to learn on your own, but specifics of equipment you tend to learn as you deal with the equipment, read specs from catalogs or from your employer's protocol.
First, design and build your own space craft.
Second, pilot that spacecraft to Mars.
Third, gather some unique samples of stuff you find lying around on Mars.
Fourth, preserve those samples for future experimentation.
Fifth, pilot your spacecraft back to Earth, where you will turn over those samples to some carefully selected colleges and universities.
Sixth, patent all the cool shit you used in your spacecraft.
Seventh, patent all the algorithms and other cool shit you used to navigate to Mars and back - not to mention navigating around on the Mars surface.
I see nothing but profit here. You might rival Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, and that guy in Mexico if you can pull all of that off! Don't forget the patents - they're more important than all the other cool shit!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
That's about retarded, if you ask me. Engineers are pretty much specialists. Specialists aren't necessarily the best people to solve networking, social, and employment problems. I'm sure that you're not a retard - you've just had one of those infamous blonde moments, right?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
A few questions/thoughts to think about:
1) How do you know you'd enjoy working for the private space industry? Sure, it sounds cool, but until you try it, don't assume you'll love it.
2) Academics is not the most important thing. More important is getting experience. Look at the schools you're interested in and see what professors have contacts with the industry. E-mail them and, ideally, try to meet them. Most professors are very approachable and interested in working with undergrads. Sure, you'll be essentially free/cheap labor for 4 years. But you'll get hands-on experience and learn a lot, and, if you're any good, the professor will drop a note to his former students at SpaceX or whatever other company, who'll get you a job as soon as you graduate.
3) Take classes besides engineering. You'll learn a lot, meet new people (networking is the most important thing), and get a different perspective on life. And, you might decide something else is more interesting. Treat college as a chance to explore and learn, not a something to deal with on the way to what you think you want to do.
4) Male/female ratio and social interaction in general is essential. If you go to a good school, you will be battered by problem sets, projects, etc... You survive that by having friends, a significant other, etc... You don't survive that by just working harder. Having a good social life (which does not mean partying all the time) is vital for having a good college experience and being successful. Plus, you never know when your friends will be able to help you later in life. And learning how to socialize (which you're probably not the best at right now) while in college means you have the skills to be confident both for future personal relationships and when you look for a job and need to deal with other people.
5) If you/your parents don't have any money, go to a good state school or to a school that gives you a good scholarship and save >$100k. It's not really worth the hassle if you really take advantage of the opportunities in your school. And you can always work with a professor at another school during the summers.
6) If you do have the money, go to the best school you can. The advantage of those schools is not that the education is better, but that the networking opportunities are much better and that the professors there have the best connections. MIT and RPI are good. Also Cornell has a top notch engineering program (and it's my undergrad alma mater). Carnegie Mellon is very good. Also Cooper Union, UPenn, Princeton, and Columbia. Probably some others as well.
Good luck and remember, academics is not everything in life!
Mechanical, aeronautical, electrical or computing. A good name school helps, but a 4.0 degree from a less stellar school is good too.
Absolute nonsense. When I was starting out, I asked lots of questions of the more experienced engineers. That's how you learn the ocean of practical knowledge they don't put into the books. Now that I've been at it for over 20 years, I'm the one getting asked the questions, and I'm happy to answer them. In your world everyone sits on little islands reinventing the wheel and never sharing sometimes completely unique experiences.
Actually it isn't good advice; there's nothing 'good' about a telling a young person not to ask advice on life choices. The roads in life are not just simple 'engineering problems', since they are more often solved through experience rather than analysis by an inexperienced person.
For one thing those with experience can tell you when you're asking the wrong question, which is not that easy to deduce through analytical reasoning.
E.g. the 5 hour radius limit is stupid, studying far from home is not a disadvantage. Hell, a stint abroad is definitely strongly recommended, not just for academic but life experience reasons. Also don't study something because you want to get into a company, study it because you love what you are doing and going to bed feels like a waste. (to the point where your personal projects end up competing for time with your 'real' schoolwork)
You don't get into a place like SpaceX by wanting to work on spaceships, and then studying the right things. You get in by being exceptionally good at some skill they need, and to become exceptionally good at something you need to spend countless hours honing your skills, and only way you will be able to do that is if you like doing it. So don't fret that much about how to gain useful skills, instead do interesting stuff and the threads will connect in surprising ways.
Don't consider any school within 800 km of home. (I would relax that some for MIT, but not for RPI.) It's a big planet, get used to moving around on it.
As far as schools are concerned, check out MIT, Rice, Caltech and Ga Tech.
'Cause if you do, you need two things: wicked smarts and mad social skills. Unless you are one-in-a-billion smart and have your PhD by age 15 (which you clearly haven't), you need to be focused on making this your life, and by learning who everyone is in your field. The best way - and I mean this sincerely - to get into an existing is to know someone on the inside who wants you there. The best way to get into a startup is to know, or be one of, the founders.
That sounds like political bullshit, but it's true. You know how I got into NASA? My mother was the dental hygienist for a scientist there, and they chatted at appointments over the years about what her son did (aero engr). One time, he asked if I might be interested in lasers. Next thing you know I'm meeting the teem and chatting with the techs - and I understood the science and asked meaningful questions. I knew some CAD - back when almost nobody did. I talked with the math guy, and it turns out they are so sensitive to performance that they program some of their routines for laser time-of-flight in assembly/ machine code, so we talked about that since I learned to code on the 6502 in the summer of my 7th grade year (I was too poor to buy a compiler, so I hand compiled assembly into machine code). And boom - some medium smart kid with a year of undergrad engineering, a middling 3.6 gpa, got a co-op position with NASA. My story isn't unusual - the stack of resumes that come in for the truly "open" positions in these firms are filled with 4.0+ gpas, high profile school names, and activities that make Mother Theresa look like Hitler.
If you really, truly, want to make a go of it in a very selective field, you need to go where the contacts are. Visit colleges that (ideally) already have connections with companies. Make sure the professors are rubbing shoulders with the SpaceX guys regularly - actively collaborating if possible - and find out how you can get on whatever research project they're working on.
Being smart and getting a good degree won't cut it unless you plan on starting your own company (which isn't a bad idea, but does involve risk and money). Don't get me wrong - that IS a prerequisite. But just that will only put you in with the thousands of other smart kids who like rocketry. You need to get contact with people. Until the SpaceX guys know who you are, you're just another faceless piece of paper.
I'm not involved in aerospace anymore - the math is hard, the jobs are few, and I have too many other interests to be all consumed in my work - so I don't know where to tell you to go. Ideally, it will be a place with an active private-ish space department, and a place to "play" (launch things). I recommend taking an alternate approach - pretend you're looking for a PhD or Post-Doc program, not an undergrad. The shift in focus will put yo on the right track to find the PEOPLE you need to work with to get into the industry. Once you're in and people know you, you'll do well from there.
Note: this is all stuff I wish I understood when I was in high school. I just didn't have the discipline back then. FWIW, today I run my own engineering firm, and play with rockets on the side. Still, it'd be nice to play with somebody else's money for my hobby ;-)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I realize these are outside your radius, but don't overlook some good state universities like Illinois, Purdue, and Penn State. They have excellent aerospace and mechanical engineering departments. Also, undergrad is pretty typical everywhere. Grad school is where you really need to get picky about the program offerings if an advanced degree is in your plans.
MIT and RPI are fine choices but may be cost prohibitive without grants, loans, or scholarships. A good state school will teach you everything you need to know, if you're serious enough. A loan might not be a good payback for those schools however when you can get the same degree in many other places. I'm not knocking these schools, but you have to be realistic in your expectations. You aren't going to learn anything different at MIT. They all teach the same stuff and many state schools have excellent faculty.
So you're saying he's destined for management?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Don't go to Caltech for aerospace unless you just want to learn airplanes. I work at JPL and have a lot of interaction with CalTech students who complain about the lack of space stuff in the aero department... they don't even have an orbit mechanics class. MIT is ok if you want to do systems engineering, but generally their aero department doesn't do much space stuff either (last I heard, their orbit class was taught by a grad student who took it upon himself to have some sort of orbit class).
If you want to do SpaceX, I'd write them an email and ask for their advise, ask where they recruit from. They will probably want chemical prop and systems engineering people.
From what I've seen the best schools if you want to do space are Carnegie Mellon, Purdue, Colorado, UT Austin, Georgia Tech, Stanford, Michigan, UCLA, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Carnegie Mellon and Stanford have awesome robotics programs. Michigan and Caly Poly SLO have excellent cube sat programs. Michigan, Stanford, and UCLA have excellent electric propulsion. Georgia Tech and Michigan have excellent systems engineering. Purdue, UT Austin, and Colorado have excellent orbit mechanics. And Purdue has probably the best chemical propulsion program. Georgia Tech has a really amazing senior design class (best out of the 5 that I've advised as an industry person).
If you don't want to go to far, I'd recommend Michigan, Purdue, or CMU. But try to email SpaceX and see what they advise (but be aware that the person who responds will be biased towards their alma mater)
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Disclosure: I went to RPI, I work at SpaceX.
Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Rochester Institute of Technology, Clarkson, MIT, Johns Hopkins, Rensselaer, Olin, Columbia, etc are all very decent schools for engineering. The goal here should be to end up with an aeromech degree and no debt. Bring up a Google map of the northeast and search for university... huge list, right?
Private schools like RPI are good schools, but the costs make changing your mind late in your education a pretty expensive mistake. I'd recommend taking a bunch of different engineering courses early on (Computer Science, Structures, Electrical, Robotics), so you can really identify if aeromech is really something you like. CAD, Matlab, Python, and knowing your way around Office-like suites are interdisciplinary engineering staples. Space systems blend a ton of different aspects of engineering together, and you've only begun to scratch the surface in high school.
What will make your resume pop out for any aerospace employer is spring/summer/fall work experience. You can land engineering internships simply with good grades and common sense, but some will be 6 months long, and bump your graduation date by a semester or two. This adds more cost, so beware. Also, some classes are only offered in the fall or the spring, and you may need them to graduate.
Research projects are also a good way to go to get experience, but you get as much out as you put in. Try to butt into every aspect of the project, not just what you're working on, and understand how all parts fit together. You should leave the project knowing how to start up your own research if you were given the money.
When it comes time to apply to internships and jobs, don't focus too much on the qualifications - entry level engineers never meet the qualifications of entry level engineering jobs. If they did, they wouldn't be entry level. Some advice I got: If the qualifications are what you want to know, apply for the job. If they're already things you know, you will be bored. Use your college recruiting office for ideas, but spend time going to websites of companies you see in the news - they all have careers pages and open jobs, despite what the news says about the economy.
Bringing it back to the title, I feel it's best if you try to ignore that you want to go to School X and work at Company Y. Focus on being well-rounded and multifaceted for the first 2 years of a 4-year program, and then spend the next 2 years chasing the one aspect you've preferred the most. The roundedness will get you in the door at big (or little) engineering firms, and the late specialization will get you a full-time position fresh out of college.
Mechanical, aeronautical, electrical or computing. A good name school helps, but a 4.0 degree from a less stellar school is good too.
You learn much, much more from a top tier school. GPA is for schmucks. I'd rather have someone with a low GPA from a good school where they learned the theory behind stuff than a 4.0 from some middling school where they only know how to do cookbook problems. Space is full of hard problems, and if you want to make a difference in aerospace you need to seek out a school that will expose you to hard problems.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Expect to get an advanced degree (Masters or PhD) doing research in a related field. I probably wouldn't put too much weight in the name of the school for such a small field - how related and good the specific research/program is will be most helpful. Look for schools that are doing research and have good clubs related to aerospace (microsatellites, robotics, rocketry). Figuring out what schools are partnering with the companies you're interested in could help narrow your choices down too. I work for a tiny advanced robotics research startup and they hired me not for my schools name but for the projects and research I did as a student.
Don't waste your time at RPI. I took classes at five other colleges too and they were *all* better than RPI. The teaching is by rote and produces dull sparkless engineers who need recipes to get anything done. GE used to hire lots of those so it worked, but those days are over.
At any school you're considering, it would pay to find out who teaches the courses you'd actually be taking. Colleges don't teach you, professors do, so there's no point in being impressed by the place's overall reputation if it doesn't affect your own experience. The worst college in the world can be perfect if it happens to have one really awesome professor in your field.
JW / RPI '92
Check out Worcester Polytechnic Institute, in Worcester Massachusetts. It has a great engineering program and is generally highly regarded as one of the top schools in the field (right below MIT). They're also a bit different than most other schools, in that they run on a quarter system instead of semesters and have an intensive project system as graduation requirements regardless of major (internships and/or study abroad is almost a requirement), but that's part of what makes their program so good.
DON'T ASK AT SLASHDOT!
Asking at Slashdot is probably one of the few places which will give you an even higher number of competitors. Did you really think you were alone in that dream? ;)
If you want to work in Aerospace, have you considered applying to the Air Force Academy? It doesn't meet your radius obviously, but going to a school based on location might be a mistake in general. I don't know your situation, but you asked here so you are going to get all sorts of answers.
Yes will you have to put in some time to the Air Force when you get out, but if you have an aero degree and some time in the air force, you are almost guaranteed a job when you get out. This idea is obviously a long shot as the Academy is probably harder by the numbers to get into than MIT, but it might be the best decision outside of Caltech.
"We need a fourth law of Robotics: Stop Fingering My Wife"
Seconded.
Sure, you need to work hard in college. But it's also a once-in-a-lifetime to do things that, once you leave, it becomes much, much harder to do. You say the male/female ratio is unimportant? You say you don't care about social aspects? I suggest you reconsider.
I'm not saying you need to become a binge drinker or a man-slut. But there's only one time in your life when you'll be able to date college-age girls respectably, and you don't want to waste it. If that sounds superficial, it's not entirely. As you get older, you'll find that people close up; they build walls; they get harder and harder to connect with. (Plus, college, unlike the real world, has admissions criteria.) You will never get closer to people than during college, and that's worth a lot. It's a learning experience for both of you, and without it you'll have lived quite a bit less.
It's not unusual for students to travel, learn languages, see the world. For adults, this is discouraged. Once you get a job, you will get two or three weeks vacation annually. That's it. And time off on your resume is hard to explain. Don't waste your youth. You won't have the same socially-acceptable opportunities for exploration. Ever again.
Sometimes I think that the purpose of life is to collect stories. How many stories will you have by the time you graduate?
Connect with people. Travel. Learn a second language (You like engineering. German? Chinese?). Join organizations (Formula SAE, which builds racecars, is a good one) Become a well-rounded person. Don't waste opportunities, and don't fear failure. Just go out and do a bunch of stuff. Your 25-year-old self will have fewer regrets.
I realize this is outside your preferred radius, but if you want to do engineering, I'd consider Georgia Tech. It's very similar to MIT, albeit slightly less well-known. The aerospace program, in particular, is excellent. On top of that, it's one of the cheaper engineering schools for out-of-state students, and is much easier to get into than a place like MIT. Just a thought.
The first sentence is true. The second is completele backwards. None of us know so much we can solve every problem. The more people you ask or collaborate with the more succesful you'll be.
A little history before my advice (just like everyone else, I love to give my opinion)... I had to leave high school and start working full time because of one those curve balls life can throw you. On one hand I was quite angry because I was preparing to enter university to study sciences (in general to keep the story short) and on the other it was so exciting because I was a free bird and I could do whatever I wanted.
I did do a lot of shit work over the first few years and thought this was what was in store for me because of my lack of education. However my interest in sciences did not end when I left high school and I continued to pursue my interests through library books and projects @ home. Then I figured out the key to start doing what I wanted... Ask questions.
I asked. I sent resumes to companies that worked in my fields of interest. I called them to find out what they are doing and how I may get involved. There are a lot of really great people out there who respond to enthusiasm and you will find some that will give you the information you want and in some cases may even take you under thier wing.
The internet has made it even easier to not only ask questions (of other people or to pursue on your own) but also to get involved with other people who have the same interest as you. I've used it since day one.
The first 5 years of work sucked but the following 20 have been awesome. The only time I met closed doors was when I tried to get a job in government. It seems they will take someone fresh out of university over someone with 10+ years of relevant experience. Meh... I hate bureaucracy anyway.
The short of it is asking questions has taken me everywhere I wanted to go. I still have no formal education but the work I do in the company I'm currently at has a lot of crossover with what the engineers are doing and it really pisses them off. :P
Upstate New York = 0 jobs
Harsh and remote Californian or Texan desert = when do you want to start? (I'm exaggerating this part)
Notably, this is one of the biggest differences between engineers of pre-internet era and those of post-internet era. Pre-internet information was scarce, and skill to find information on your own was very valuable.
Internet changed this upside down. Now it's a flood of information, and those who are considered best are those who can pick the needed information out of the constant stream of useless informational overload. In this regard, using slashdot and similar sites as a filter against general flood and a starting point to isolating which pieces of information are important is a mark of a successful modern engineer.
When marketing the 'private space industry', the word 'space' is often used as if there's some equivalence between rising out of the stratosphere and attaining a useful orbit. The reason past space programs involved gigantic rockets with huge tanks of fuel, is that's how much energy is required to get very far out of the gravity well. No amount of engineering advances can change this much. People also use the word 'private' as if its a synonym for 'makes sense in the market'. But in this context its more of a synonym for 'conning gullible people out of money without being constrained by the federal GS salary system.' My opinion is if you want to do real space related engineering, go to somewhere like MIT that has JPL connections, and forget about 'private' space industry. Space related engineering doesn't even potentially make sense for private industry beyond launching communications satellites with conventional rockets. A somewhat superficial exception is private companies that do engineering for government space projects, but that has always been how the space program worked. Most of the real engineering was done by employees of companies like Lockheed Martin, with government funding. Although significant contributions were also made by good engineers and scientists at NASA, the role of NASA was largely administrative.
These days most NASA centers do a lot of pretend/junk science, and are very depressing places to work if you have much ambition or integrity. JPL is significantly better than most, and has had many good projects like the Mars rovers and some scientifically useful telescopes. I'm not sure what the prognosis is for the long term though.
As a ME working in the racing/automotive industry I can tell you that experience is king in the engineering field. This becomes even more true when you are targeting a "small" industry (in this case Private space flight). Get into the best school you can, that as other people have said, gives you opportunities to work for professors doing research in the industry you want to work in. Unless you ABSOLUTELY can't leave home for whatever reason, follow the research.
Most importantly though, from your first day on campus start contacting the companies you want to work for and inquire if they have coop/intern programs. Getting a job out of school in a highly competitive industry such as the one you intend to work for is nearly impossible, but if you have previously worked for them you already have a foot in the door so to speak. Coop is usually preferable over interning because the company will have already invested lots of time in helping develop you as an engineer, and you will have made personal relationships with them.
Hope this helps and good luck.
I live in upstate NY and don't want to travel super far
Well, it's good that you want to have a life with friends and family in NY. However, if you want to be a rocket engineer for new space firms, you're gonna have to go west eventually.
There are boatloads of aerospace companies here in southern California, including SpaceX and Scaled and Lockheed.
You could write them (Elon, Burt, Bezos) a letter now, explain your dream about being an engineer in the coming age of commercial spaceflight, and asking advice on where to study, what to study, and summer internship opportunities. And get an internship as soon as you can and start being around engineers and talking to them. Knowing people and human networking is worth ten times a fancy degree from an ivy league school.
Cornell. It's a no brainier if you can get in and want to stay in Upstate NY.
Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
See you in 8 years.
First, I've studied in Germany and while the universities here do (mostly) have no big names, they have high quality curricula. My guess is, that beside some low quality private universities, the US system also provides descend education on all state universities. So go there and try to master your stuff. Stick your head out of the crowd. Otherwise you may end up at SpaceX, but only as an unimportant minion who never comes near important and cool technology.
The next thing is. Go to a university which matches your profile of interest. If it is 1000 km away. Go there. To be close to home will only make you go there too often. Try to stand on your own feet. You can visit friends and parents in your holidays.
Ah yes. Don't ask Slashdot for advice. Wrong place. Most of us here do not work for SpaceX or other similar companies. SO how should we know?
And one other thing: Study something you like. Don't look at the open job list, because it is todays list and nobody knows how the list will look like in 5 or 7 years when you got your master degree (don't drop out with a bachelor, please). You are only good in things you like. And you have to be good to go to the interesting places in engineering.
Look for related research projects you like. Get involved with them now if you can. Just communicating with the TA, and if your lucky the professor, will tell you if you will fit in. If you enjoy the project, the TA's like you, and you impress your professor, you are going to make the long haul. The name of a University is nothing compared to a professor with connections.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Is that walking driving or flying?
a 5 hour flight go anywhere
a 5 hour drive go where you can and take what you can get
a 5 hour walk go f yourself
For an engineering student you are not thinking this out very much, "like spaceX" really? where are these private companies "like spaceX", I promise you they are not within your bubble
Jealous because you work at McDonald's and he has loftier goals?
No offense, but the launch market is too small to sustain the number of launchers out there. Many launchers exist because of military dual use. (Russia, United States, China).
Nearly all of the good ones find spouses in college, as do some of the bad ones.
The bad ones become available again, via divorce. The good ones tend to remain unavailable for the next half century.
So there you are, 35 years old, still thinking that you fit in with the college-age crowd at some club or bar or whatever. You don't. Eventually you will have some awkward experience that forces you to notice this fact.
Like a home seller in a crashing market, you can't lower your standards fast enough. You don't wish to "settle", but you must or it only gets worse. Your choices are all undesirable in numerous ways: diseased, psycho, dumb, evil inlaws, violent, in a never-ending custody fight, irresponsible, ugly, divorced, unfaithful, criminal, infertile, drug-addicted, etc.
Your spouse(s), if any, will affect your life far more than your education. Don't waste the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to find a good spouse.
Being an engineer is about learning how to solve problems.
'Asking Slashdot' is about getting other people to solve your problems.
If you want to be an engineer, you had better learn how to start solving your own problems, or answering questions like the one you posed, by yourself.
The act of asking a question shows you want to learn, understand that someone else may have the answer and are willing to listen. This is how science and engineering work. To suggest that asking a question is a problem is ludicrous.
And btw, a book and a website are just efficient consolidations of (often but not always) one person's knowledge - it's really no different conceptually than asking a question.
Check out GD-AIS in Pittsfield Ma, only an hour east of Albany and almost always looking for engineers. They do missile guidance and fire control systems among other stuff. The missile guidance system work is sub contracted from Draper Labs, if you are lucky you could get to make some contacts there also. Test flights are done from Cape Canaveral and interface with Lockheed-Martin, another good place to make contacts in the industry. Apply for a summer internship or co-op program, that gives you a chance to check them out and make contacts and gives them a chance to check you out without a long term commitment. Field engineering and support of guidance and fire control systems gives you chances to travel to the various facilities and make contacts with other companies.
Don't forget the social networking and dumb luck factors.
Being great in your field is great.
Being great in your field, and you know someone who will make the right introductions, will get you the job.
I may have skills that are extremely valuable to anyone. I won't make it past the applicant queue in most places, because they don't know anything about me yet. No amount of wording on a cover letters can fix that.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I was in your situation about 7 years ago myself, was visiting RPI, applied to MIT as my long shot. Got into MIT somehow, got my SB MechE, MS MechE (had the chance to go PhD, decided not to), working in industry now and I think I've got a little bit of perspective on the engineering school experience.
From working directly with lots of engineers, helping profs select grad students, my own job search, and helping hire engineers there's a couple things you can do that'll greatly help your success no matter where you go to undergrad. Be passionate about something, stay focused, and do substantial work on it. Whether it's Robocup, Formula SAE, rocketry club, etc, just do it and make an impact. Do design, learn, work with people, and have fun doing it. Add being friendly and reliable (don't underestimate these!) to that and you really can go anywhere.
I think I could have gotten a similar education at most reputable engineering schools, everyone has the same statics and dynamics equations, but if you're passionate about what you do a top school can be a truly exhilarating experience. Besides getting the opportunity to do substantial work during undergrad for top PIs, there was just an intense forward current that came from living, working, and keeping up with brilliant people. Make sure you've got the humility to deal with people smarter than you and can take failures in stride and you really can come out with a tremendous life experience.
Whether you do Aero+MechE, or Aero or MechE will really depend on the specific program where you eventually go. When you end up working on real projects you'll likely find the impact is small, and from what I've seen Aero and MechE resumes are often thrown into the same pile. Both programs should be teaching structures, dynamics, design, controls, thermo/fluids (different spin, but it's the same math) and you may find your time is better spent on your own independent study than the specific requirements of a double degree.
YMMV and such. Good luck!
You gotta find first gear in your giant robot car
There are some harsh truths you need to understand, before you even set a strategy:
First: It's a very bad idea to decide, "I want to work in Industry X!" and then tailor the next five to ten years of your life around that dream. It's a bad idea because you don't know what that industry will look like ten years from now. It's a bad idea because you may close yourself off from other fields that captivate you just as much. It's a bad idea because you might get what you want, decide you hate it, and find yourself trapped.
I'm not saying not to have a dream or a plan. In fact, I commend you for having an early idea what you want to do with your life. I just caution against putting all the eggs in one basket.
Second: The cold hard truth is that your undergrad education matters for exactly two things in life: Getting into grad school or getting your first job. And the choice of schools isn't *that* important to either one, as long as it's not some third-tier diploma mill or community college. There are a number of very good state universities for engineering, and yours may be one of them. (I've done both in my time-- undergrad and masters at small selective schools, years in industry, and now PhD studies at a state school.) What does matter is your performance. Work hard. Work *very* hard. Now, if you go the academic/advanced degree route and still have the dream of working in commercial space enterprises, then your choice of grad schools may be much more important. (Even there, some state schools are very highly regarded in engineering. In my field, three of the top five are public state universities.)
All of that was negative advice. Now for some positive advice:
Three: I don't know of any engineer, scientist, or computer scientist who ever looked back and thought, "Man, I wish I hadn't taken so much math." You can NEVER know too much math in your field. Ever. It cannot be done. You can know not enough engineering, so you don't want to become a math major (probably) but you really, seriously want to take as much math as you can. Learn it, live it, love it, internalize it. It makes learning everything else so damn much simpler in the long run.
Four: The older I get, the more I think that the third point above can apply just as much to computer science as to mathematics. Whether you go the research grad school path, or the pure industrial approach, or some hybrid, every thing you do will depend on computers. You might want to delay any decisions about double majors until you get your feet wet-- double majoring in computer science rather than mechanical engineering is worth thinking about. (In general, though, do what you love. It's worth considering, but if you hate computer science and love mechanical engineering, don't make yourself miserable.)
Five: Realize that not all commercial space activity comes from SpaceX, and that SpaceX might not win the race in the long run. Defense companies (the big four of Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon) all do space contracting work as well. Lots of pure commercial companies do as well, like Motorola. Working in the space industry doesn't just mean designing rockets and rocket engines, it also means developing satellites, doing materials science, etc. It's a vast ecosystem.
Six: Co-oping or interning with any of these companies is a good idea. I wish I'd done it when I was younger. I've mentored a few co-ops and interns in my time, too, and some of them came back and worked for us.
Finally: I know I discounted the notion that undergrad institutions are a dominating factor. However, if you still worry about your undergrad pedigree, here are some things to look for rather than the big names or the networking considerations. Get hands on experience, if applicable. Choose a place with a strong lab program, if it's appropriate. (It is appropriate in electronics: I'll take a BSEE or an MSEE who has some bench experience over a PhD EE who forgot how to use an oscilloscope, any day.
On upper class student's projects, professor's research, with companies they know over summer break. Start talking to profs in the fall, so you get a job by next summer.
Learn how to use real world shop tools, because everything you design needs to be built...right. Tear apart and put back together everything you can to gain experience on "what works", why and how mistakes get made & then fixed.
Engineering is a profession where you never, ever stop learning...including the unsuccessful results which are just as much about learning as the things that work.
Eventually you start to form an internal order of design thinking for your field that gives you the ability to take a desired end result and sort the 50 variables down to the key defining elements that dictate what designs are reasonably possible, so you don't waste design, construction & testing time. The more quickly you can get to real world possibilities, the more quickly your work and career can progress.
Several people have posted that co-op or internship (or diy) work is the way to go. I strongly agree. Pick a school that has intern/coop program and uses it heavily (ask what space companies use their interns too!) I interned (as comp.engr) many years ago and it made my career. I hired summer interns several times since. When I worked at Aerovironment in Moorpark CA, we hired a number of interns ... many from Cal Poly SLO. A couple of them got hired full time after graduation. (dual major aerospace/mechanical is good recommendation)
Another option (although probably not before doing school work) is DIY. A good friend of mine had an idea for rocket engines, wanted to do space work, but was full time employed doing computer animation (sweat shop job! dont go there!) He got a small cnc mill, lathe, etc and set up in his local makerspace (crashspace in LA) and started building. He did some tests, got known in the biz, took a leave of absence from his day job, took some contract jobs making parts at crashspace.... and now he's living and working out in Mojave for some rocket company. If you want it, work for it, it may happen for you.
Also if you are really serious about rocketry, get the heck out of upstate NY. There are no rocket companies there per se. Then again with that 5hr radius, you may not be really serious. If you want it -be realistic and do what it takes. See the world dude. Upstate is gorgeous but lacks a lot of industry.
And forget the PhD. By the time you finish, no one will want to hire you, and all the fun work will be done.
I think the space industry is going to undergo a dramatic change in the next decade or so. This is based on conversations that ia have had with several longstanding industry insiders. The irony of curricula as it exists today is that it is still far behind the needs of the future. What you will need is a program that is multidisciplinary-even the engineering disciplines as they are demarcated are quite antiquated. This would be my priority in choosing a program.
Of course, the choice of a school will depend on many factors. The problem that I see with most youngsters much like the way I used to think is that you always want to take a shortcut to success. And success for some weird reason has to be correlated with financial gain. This thinking limits your ability to do great things. It took me several years to realize this. School are simply systems but they cannot teach you engineering. Engineering takes more than just what is taught in a class or a lab.
I recently saw a undergrad from embry-riddle present. I was impressed as to how they are churning out leaders of tomorrow. Of course, I didn't even know that this college existed. And that's my point.
Decide who you want to work for. Get a summer intern job there. Any accredited Engg school is good. Hard Work is everything. And, since you don't know all the answers ( nobody does) ask for help / guidance at each milestone.
US space, outside NASA, is a small industry. Space-X has only 1000 employees.
In 1965, the Apollo program had 376,700 employees, about 36,000 within NASA and the rest contractors. NASA today has 18,000, which is too many considering how little NASA is doing right now.
Go to a technical school (MIT would be your best bet) and major in Aero-Astro Engineering. You realize that's a separate discipline, right?
It's also the hardest one at MIT. I was in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering there, but had a handful of Aero-Astro friends. They were, every single one, intellectually impressive.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
As an employee at one of the private commercial space companies (with close friends at 2 others), i'm in a good position to provide some useful feedback.
Obviously it's fundamentally important not to suck at school. Go to a good engineering school, get a relevant degree, and knock your academics out of the park. If you don't, it's going to be hard to get on the radar.
To actually get yourself hired, though, you have to:
1) Build shit. Lots of it. Outside of school. A CS major who builds robots and rockets in his free time (and makes the time to do it- everyone knows how busy you were during school, but that's not an excuse) is WAY more attractive than a CS major whose only project is their java-based web app they did for a senior design project. BORING. Show that you know how to work with your hands, learn cross-discipline skills, and work in groups. If you're aerospace or mechanical, know how to code. Play with microcontrollers and circuits. Tinker with your car. Etc, etc, etc.
2) Don't be a douchebag. At the end of the day, these companies are *small*, which means close-knit teams who work a lot of very long hours with each other. if you think you're a hot-shot and act like you know everything, it doesn't matter if you're the most talented person in the world. They won't want to have you boasting about how great your work is, when they're up at 4am fixing it. My team at my company turns down probably 80% (number pulled entirely out of my ass) of the candidates that make it to on-site interviews, purely based on personality.
Best of luck. The industry needs all the talent it can get.
I graduated this spring with a degree in Mechanical Engineering from RPI. While there, I did two co-ops at JPL working for the Mobility team for MSL, the next Mars Rover (aka "Curiosity"). I designed, had manufactured, tested and assembled flight hardware that is launching to Mars in about a month. As an undergrad. When some JPLers left to form a Seattle-area startup, they picked me up and now I'm back where I grew up working in private spaceflight. I can't promise you'd have the same experience but I've got to give my Alma Mater some props.
What RPI lacks in females it makes up for in the career center support and available engineering projects. It's night and day compared to the connections that other schools have to industry.
The other big key that has been identified is experience. The easiest way to gain experience is through hard work solving problems. As far as intensity and how worthwhile the experience was, I've yet to find too many things that compare to the Formula SAE program, but there are many others that are in the same boat.
Indeed - reading Richard Feynman's "What do you care what other people think?" where he describes his role in the investigation into the Challenger disaster, one gets the sense that he asked innumerable questions. Now, Feynman may not have been an engineer, but he was a hell of a lot smarter than anyone posting on this board. If someone of his intellectual capability had no issues with asking questions, then there should be few reservations for anyone else!
Not necessarily. The act of asking a question may show that, depending on the question and how it is asked. It might also show that the person asking is lazy, and doesn't care to find an answer on his/her own. If you are asked the same question by the same person repeatedly, it might indicate that you're not answering it clearly or that the person is incapable of understanding the answer.
I do agree that believing that the mere act of asking a question is a problem itself is ridiculous, however.
Regards,
dj
The truth is that if you want to do something like that, you need to not make being a corporate lackey and cubicle-worker as your life's goal. You need to be of the mindset where you want to beat SpaceX and their incredibly top-heavy corporate style where they feel as if they are gods or something and you should be grateful to work for them (despite having few actual successes, as is the norm in this industry) at their own game. If you're not going to aim at making your own company or working with a few friends to make one of your own, then you're really not going to be valuable to any company or actually get into space. It's a bit of a catch-22, really.
Also, the best engineers that go places and do things are the ones that build things and basically, have patents. Schooling is worthless beyond a certain point unless you want to work at, say, a defense contractor or other government type job. What matters is what you can actually do and build. I'd be sure to take some classes in metalworking, welding, and fabrication in any case, as these are real skills that you'll need wherever you go. Also, CAD and similar software is good to know how to use.
Look at job listings and note what skills and certificates and so on that they want. Because skills can get you a job. A degree is optional, really, and only "required" because they want to weed out the rank idiots and those without any skills.
note - no job I have had actually cared one iota about my degree or used it as a factor - they wanted skills, pure and simple.
I'd also at the least, build your own home based fabrication machine and start working with basic designs. Also, start building your own electronic and similar designs as you can manage. Say, if you want to get into designing rockets and so on, having built a few designs yourself (how Scaled Composites got started, btw), is a big plus. And who knows, maybe you'll be the one to make some design breakthrough.
Get into experimental aviation. Being able to show up in a plane you've built yourself is the best resume you could have.
(Same poster as above.)
I knew I would forget something: Bear in mind that technology is moving VERY fast, these days. There's not much pro-active you can do about this as an undergraduate. Unless the education market falls apart completely, you're going to have roughly the same requirements for a BS today as you will five years from today when you're done. But you do want to pay attention to the way the winds are blowing: What jobs are getting outsourced? What jobs are being automated out of existence? (At some point, this will apply to jobs at the high end of the value chain.) What tasks do we want to be able to automate out of existence fifteen years from now? Those are the research areas to look at five years from now.
This was a motivation for my claim that computer science skills are just as applicable as mathematics skills.
I have some hunches right now, for the field, but please, please take these only as examples. When you get your BS four or five years from now, these ideas will probably be a little stale at best, or overcome by events at worst. But today? I'd be looking at things like high-end 3D printing, where "high end" means extremely small feature size, extremely large component size, or extreme environment materials. I'd be looking at things like artificial intelligence for docking manuevers. I'd be looking at advanced sensor nets to better diagnose things when they go wrong up there.
This sort of thinking is very hard to do consistently and successfully. But it helps to stay semi-current on a lot of different fronts. Not, per se, that you need to be able to *do* all of the things I mentioned, just be aware of what's going on in related fields, what problems are hard to solve, what problems are moving forward, etc. It takes a very long time to build up a breadth of information like that, and it's hard to keep it current. I've been trying-- note the key word, trying-- for over twenty years. So make it a habit to read widely.
Times are changing too quickly to rely on something attractive to even be around 20 years from now. Be a well-rounded ME first, specialized in aerospace second, with a goal to work in private spaceflight third. It's OK to have a goal but do not ignore the potential to [have to] work in an unrelated field several years down the road. The economy is contracting long term. Do we still have the opportunity for supersonic travel? Do we still have reusable space transport? Do we still have a way to get to the moon? Bu the time you have finished your education this will be painfully obvious.
Most of all make sure you don't have significant debt.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Being in upstate NY, you aren't that far from the Canadian border. McGill is regarded as a top university and they have a pretty good Mechanical Engineering Program with an option for an Aeronautical concentration. Also, considering the quality, from what I understand, its rates are a bargain compared to the US universities.
We aren't talking about just astronauts.
http://www.metafilter.com/90280/The-worst-spacerelated-disaster-happened-in-Xichang-China-in-1996
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
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Step 5: Profit!
OK, seriously...
As with any other engineering field, don't pass up any opportunities to learn new shit. You're only as valuable to your prospective employer as your (perceived) skills and willingness/ability to learn new ones.
I didn't start out in aerospace. I thought I wanted to write video games, but ended up doing stints in telecom, finance, and at a US DOE research lab for most of my career. I eventually landed in aerospace/military. Vast majority of the aerospace jobs are with companies doing government (read: mostly military) contract work... just so you know, in case that's an issue.
Even if you don't get your dream job right out of school, stay focused. If you're genuinely interested in aerospace and have a clue, I think you will get there eventually.
Disclaimer: I'm old enough to be your dad... not sure if that's a plus or a minus in your book. :D
Get a NASA internship or Co-op while you are going to school. You will meet a lot of people in the industry including those in private space. Also if you are a co-op and do well you will end up with a NASA job. Then you can apply for a Graduate Fellowship. They will pay you for 1 year of your salary while you go full time for grad school. This way you can get your education cheap. You do owe them a couple of years after that but use that time to build up your skills on great projects before applying to private space.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Check out Olin College in Needham, MA. It's Boston area campus puts you within 3 or 4 hours of upstate NY. They have a mech eng program as well as a engineering concentration in systems. And the best part is the tuition. Sadly, it used to be free (as in zero); with the recent (2008++) financial downturn, they have changed to 50% need-blind scholarships for all admitted students. Based on their "list price" of 40K, that's $20,000 a year in tuition, which is a friggin steal compared to just about any other *private* institution (compare, for example, with over $41K tuition at Cornell). Just a thought.
Five hours radius by Falcon 1, Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy or Dragon?
As long as you go to a well-respected engineering school, its not necessary to go to one of the supposed 'best' like MIT or Caltech or RPI for that matter. Lots of state schools qualify. As someone with a degree from Caltech I'd recommend against doing their undergrad aero program if you want to do space. The curriculum and on-campus research is very focused on airplanes with some solid mechanics tossed in.
ALso, you don't necessarily need an undergrad aero degree to do aerospace. My undergrad was from Brown U in Mech Eng, and I worked 15 years successfully in the small satellite and UAV industries.
But if you want to work in the private space industry, don't focus too much on keeping your GPA the highest. Find interesting group projects to participate in that will help you stand out. Better yet, START some projects. Build a rocket. Build a cubesat. Build an in-situ propellant factory model. Design a lunar lander for the Google X Prize. Grades won't make you stand out to these places, getting something interesting done outside the classroom will.
absolutely join a student project like formula sae. it will force you to learn how to be an engineer as opposed to a graduate without any knowledge of how to do anything. fsaeonline.com rpi has a team you should join.
Rochester Institute of Technology is a first rate school, plus they focus on getting their students internships. The fact of the matter is nobody gives a damn about where your degree is from but they do care about your expedience so I would focus on schools that have great co-op and internship programs. If you manage to land a good internship a good job is pretty much a sure deal if you are actually good at what you do. Check schools for what their placement after college ratings are.
I went to these people looking for an IT job.
The first thing they asked was "What kind of plane do you fly?"
my reply was that I did not have one but flew RC at the national level and have designed my own contest sailplane.
The Interview was immediately over and i was asked to leave!!!! this after driving over 3000 miles and leaving my wife behind.
the wife has never forgiven me and my life in the asshole of michigan sucks
So if you want to work for these people, go there and chat with some of them, you may change your mind
Call several of the companies that you are interested in and find out which colleges have internships with these companies. Getting an internship with one of the companies is a huge advantage over everyone else.
I highly suggest the school, RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology). The school prides itself on low faculty/student ratios. All of my professors know me by name. Unlike MIT, the professors care about undergrad students. Its also located in upstate NY... Although the school does not have an aeronautical engineering program, it does have an aerospace option for mechanical engineering. The co-op program is excelent as well. In fact, in you join the ASME group on campus, you'll have several contacts at SpaceX immediately. Feel free to contact me for further conversations..
You absolutely need to get into a design team, like Formula SAE, AIAA Design Build Fly, or a rocketry group like USCRPL or Daedalus Astronautics at ASU. SpaceX loves people that have hands on experience and who go above and beyond what is merely required of them for an undergraduate degree. They even sometimes hold recruiting sessions just for the design teams. I've met a lot of SpaceX people from Purdue, Georgia Tech, USC, UCLA, and a smattering from MIT and RPI. Getting out to the west coast will definitely help.
And yes, I'm currently working at SpaceX.
Depending on what your goals are, be prepared to study your ass off. By that I mean little to no socializing, no computer games, and lots and lots of reading. Being good at anything isn't easy, and to get into the space industry you're gonna have to be among the best (human lives are at stake here). Are you prepared?
The big aerospace companies are grappling with the impending mass exodus of old people like me, and most are looking to hire enthusiastic young folk like you. Go to a decent (regionally accredited) school, get good grades, maybe look for an internship.
One thing to consider: the larger the company, the more opportunity available to you over time. As programs and contracts come and go, you'll stand a better chance moving within a big company than one with just a few things going on.
in Schenectady, not far from RPI. A small college with engineering since the early 1800's.
May as well say that as a college freshman, RIT is pretty sweet, and can help you get a job wherever you want considering how many companies kiss up for interns and such.
http://CryoLANparty.com/ A lan I'm staff on!
The guy who design the space craft isn't one to ride it usually... So it seems pretty safe for him.
(\__/) This is Lapinator
(='.'=) copy it in your sig
(")_(") so it can take over the world
I think you need to put yourself were the action is, so to speak - I went to the University of Central Florida which is close to Cape Canaveral and KSC - My first job out of college was working on Eastern Range, at one point I had engineering work at every single launch complex, Trident, Atlas, Delta, Titan and even work on the manned shuttle side - but you desire is to work private space ? Go to Mojave or Palmdale California area, go to a Southern California school. Be close to the action, get an internship - a LOT easier if you are nearby - Satellites ??? LA area.... If you look at a company like Scaled Composites, they are more likely to hire someone who is obviously into aircraft - they look for people whose hobbies include aviation , people that have built aircraft (full size and RC) - medals and awards... not so much......
Texas Institute of Technology.
I'm a proud graduate myself.
Great fraternity system patterned after Delta house in Animal House.
Plenty of hot, horny and easy female students/spouse of Profs.
If you can't score at TIT, you're gay.
SEDS (seds.org) is a national student group in the USA and stands for Students for the Exploration and Development of Space. There are local chapters at a lot of universities so they'd be great place to make contact with people who are wanting to get into the same industry as you. They would also probably be good people to contact to get advice on choosing a university for your undergraduate studies. I attended one meeting of a chapter at the University of Arizona and they were doing some seriously cool stuff. A few of them had put together a microgravity experiment to study liquid lenses and got a grant to go up in a zero-g plane to test it out. They're currently starting a project to build a micro-satellite and arrange for it's launch. That this is being down by an undergraduate club on their own initiative is pretty impressive.
Regardless of where you choose to go to school, you need to show real aspiration. There are all sorts of national engineering competitions for students (wood bridge building, metal bridge building, concrete canoes, solar-powered boats, race cars, model aircraft racing...). These competition clubs are an excellent place to develop hands-on experience (and make friends) while getting a formal education. Some students have even participated in NASA engineering challenges. Your school's engineering club will be able to put you in touch with the industry; one girl I know got hired simply because she attended a conference.
A high-tech start-up company isn't necessarily looking for freshly graduated engineers: New graduates remember all the formulas and methods, but often lack ingenuity. Do everything you can to show them that you have what they want, and you'll have a good chance at doing something awesome.
...at your choice between Russian, Chinese or Persian. US space program is disappearing, so you will have to work abroad.
Because there is no way you are going to get a job in a retro industry like Engineering anywhere in the US... space is a metaphor that we conquered decades ago here.
if your life is such a big joke then why should I care?
I know for a fact that SpaceX has a ton of Purdue grads. Mostly because they have a fantastic propulsion research center.
So, either go to undergrad at Purdue and stay for a masters, or go to your state school, do really well and do your grad work at Purdue.
Blue Origin has a decent amount of Purdue grads as well.
Above all else you need to do excellent work in school have a decent amount of ambition. I did ok in school and "settled" for being happy with life instead having much ambition. :-)
MIke Melville was not looking for a job. He build an airplane from plans (a Rutan design) and flew it out there to show Burt. Burt offered him a job, and that was that. No degree, he just demonstrated that he could do exactly what they were doing. That led him to be the first private astronaut. Sure others at scaled went to MIT or whatever. I sent a resume to Scaled (along with a number of other people I know) and I got a phone interview and the others didn't. Why? Probably because my resume is full of verbs from DOing stuff. Parent post is spot-on.
So here's the deal with state cool or 2nd tier school vs. a top engineering school like MIT or Stanford. If you are a good student and work hard, you will probably get the same education at any ABET accredited school.
At a top tier place, like MIT, you will be an environment of high achieving students unlike anything you've probably experienced before. Being surrounded by such incredible minds can be very stimulating and you will have access to research opportunities unlike anywhere else.
At a 2nd tier or state school, if you are a top student, it's easier to stand out from the crowd. I went to a good school, but not a top tier one, (WPI), and I stood out with a 3.9 GPA, which I don't think I would have carried at MIT. Financially, the scholarship money I got at WPI made it a much better choice, which counts for a lot these days.
I got a job working at MIT Lincoln Laboratory (which does indeed do a fair bit of aerospace work). Honestly, I think I could have gone to any school and gotten a good job afterwards. Pick a place with a decent program, work hard, learn a lot, get internships, and you'll go places.
www.awkwardengineer.com
Warning: I'm a child of the 60s and 70s and don't hold with this "everything should be subjected to a cost-benefit analysis" modern trend.
Go do what YOU are interested in and don't worry about what some speculative employer might happen to want 5-10 years from now. It will change anyway.
When I interview people, I look for passion and interest. Were you grinding out the grades or doing something you loved? Once you're "over the bar" it doesn't matter what your grades are. the impressive applicants are all scary smart, but know how to do more than problem sets. They're looking for new questions to answer and looking for ways to find the answers. Stupid questions maybe, but hey, they're looking.
Sure, have the basics: you'd better know Newton's laws and simple calculus and basic electronics. But specialized knowledge is just that. You're not going to learn it in school, you're going to learn it on the job.
Know how to find out stuff. If someone asks you a question about something obscure, do you know how to find the answer? I don't care if you know today, but I surely care if you can know by the end of the week. Google is your friend. Career counselors are not.
Know how to improvise. Sure, there's formal methods for everything, and in a perfect world, we'd have infinite budgets and infinite time and be able to use them. Knowing how and when to cut corners is invaluable, because "good enough" is what gets to the pad. Ask yourself what college teaches you this? What courses should you take? (hey, that's a "find out stuff" question).
Anyone who has done independent projects is better than someone who turned in the homework every week. If you do a project and get on a team with 2 other lame-os who cant find their rear with both hands, an instruction book, and a mirror, what did you do? Did you get it done? How did you make lemonade out of those lemons (to quote the trite poster)? What college will give you that invaluable experience in soft skills. I know you know how to use mathematica or Matlab, and you have a copy of Gradshteyn&Ryzhik under your pillow next to the rubber handbook, but do you know the resistor color code? Can your read a drawing? Can you DRAW a drawing on a white board to illustrate your ideas? Maybe you should look for a curriculum that teaches this.
Can you write an intelligible proposal?
Can you describe what you did in English prose that won't make an English major run screaming from the room? You do know that the primary product of aerospace companies is paper reports and documents, right? I'm not asking for Tolstoy or Bronte, or to deconstuct the former a'la Derrida, but you'd darn well better be able to write an intelligible explanation or user manual that you can hand me at the interview. If you hand me a "it's all in the comments in the code" or a "it's really cool, you just have to run it", you're heading for the door.
Can you stand up in front of 50 hostile people and present what you did without reading a zillion slides and getting defensive when they start asking questions? Maybe a college with a drama program (or stand-up comedy classes) is what you're looking for?
to be successful, you need be something other than a technological head-down wizard. There aren't many jobs for those.
There are tons of jobs for people who can understand things, find out things, and explain things to others. And who can "play well with others". Go to a school which teaches you that and gives you good experience. You'll meet people, you'll do things you didn't think you could do, etc.
And that will get you the job at SpaceX or JPL or APL or NASA or whereever your heart leads you. Or, maybe, you'll decide that being in a rock-n-roll band is where it's at, because, after all a life of sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll isn't all that bad. Passion.... that's what gets you to the stars.
yo, from Imperial College.
Go to the best institution you can. I have always liked the sound of Caltech, also consider non US universities as their educations system is... lacking. Never take internships with significantly less than a graduate salary, I never have had to.
Bear in mind a UK masters will take you most of the way into a US PHD and a UK bachelors is better than a US masters. This is evidenced by all the additional work Americans have to do when coming over here.
Your RPI medal will get you a half price discount at a great school and a degree that will easily unlock many doors just on the name alone.
RPI is where so many key technologies have originated (including Ethernet!) and that will continue to be true going forward. It's also a school that encourages undergraduate participation in such projects. You'll never regret the opportunity.
-Patrick
"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
Here are the rankings for top 10. You can buy the full lists. but even better is send off questions to HR at SNC, SpaceX, Blue Horizons, etc and ask them. HR ppl are fairly stupid about the engineering and science world. They could not tell a total loser from Einstein. The reason is that most of them were losers from the business world (HR and Marketing is where the dredges of business worlds go to). BUT, HR WILL have a list of the top schools that they employ. And yes, they will be happy to tell you that.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
RPI is a fine school, you'll find plenty of company. Or, find a way into Caltech. JPL is a long way from your 5-hour radius, but you actually have the opportunity as an undergrad to get involved in some cool-ass stuff. JPL is a mechanical engineer's paradise, those of us who are EEs get treated OK %^).
"Academics come first hands down so male/female ratio and party scene aren't too important."
Part of college is to have fun, because once you are older, you're not "allowed" to be irresponsible like you were in your college days. I studied engineering, and looking back, I wish I had been to more parties and met more people.
When you start interviewing for jobs, you need to be able to hold a conversation, be interesting, talk about different things, and generally be a likable person. An active social life will help you with that.
Life isn't all about academics - enjoy it a little.
I wasn't going to say anything but...
Note to self:
Start asking applicants if their /. username is WindBourne.
Signed,
Some idiot who apparently knows nothing about the engineering and science worlds who works in the HR department of one of the companies being discussed.
PS: BTW, assume the original poster has been contacted directly too. Sometimes it pays to put yourself out there...
I know some people will argue with you about the degrees, but I'm one who won't. I've gone very far, and had quite a bit of success, without a degree. I don't hire on the merit of a piece of paper. I hire on the merit of the individuals skills. ... and I'll quote an email from Dick Rutan.
"To dream is great and never give up. The dreamers that are successful are the ones that can go back into your shop build it and bring dreams to reality. Fly it then talk about it."
I strongly suspect if anyone wants to really get in the door there, doing rocket and balloon launches, such as we've seen mentioned on here, and pushing the envelope are the ways to do it. Anything we do, should only to be to impress ourselves. If it happens to get us in the door with someone else, all the better.
I have some of my own ideas that I'm working on. They're way outside of my experience. If it ever goes from electronic development (autocad and simulators), and the first scale prototype is built, I intend to impress no one but myself. If it gets past that phase, will it get me in the door with an existing company? Who knows. Maybe my ideas will be purchased, or maybe investors will help me build my own. But right now, I'm not holding my breath, and I'm not letting it interfere with the day job that pays the bills. What will happen in 5 years or 10 years? Most likely I'll still be doing IT work. Who knows though. Several years ago, I had worked at the same shop for almost a decade. I was sure I'd be there til I retired. A few years ago, I was looking for work. I've changed industries a few times since them. Who knows where I'll be in the future. I know just as well as any of us. I just know, I won't ever stay somewhere that I will stagnate in a cube, with the promise of advancement "someday". I don't want to die of old age, thinking of what I could have done.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
This has been discussed on the a-rocket list http://exrocketry.net/mailman/listinfo/arocket
There are active members who are employees of several space companies.
http://www.hobbyspace.com/ is probably the best collection of resources about space, get to know the companies and people.
read "The Rocket Company" http://www.hobbyspace.com/AAdmin/archive/SpecialTopics/RocketCom/titlePage.html
Don't go to Georgia Tech. The profs are stuck in the 1950s, and can't teach.
All the comments about getting out of your education what you put into it are spot on. Things are not taught at MIT; resources are made available, whether that's projects to glom onto, professor's time, the general atmosphere of extracurriculars, etc. The difference is who these companies come recruiting to, and the network of contacts available. I did CMU -> MIT -> JPL, and I wouldn't have made it despite perfect numbers and a host of paper projects without the support of my advisor at MIT, who along with another one of my SE professors pretty much provided a litany of filial academic connection lining the way past those couple days of interviews with golden, personal touches. As an aside, the advisor of my advisor of my advisor was von Karman. I'll also mention that I got an offer at Orbital, and they revealed they have the directive only to accept students from a short list of some of the better thought of schools people have mentioned. SpaceX is a bit more egalitarian. They will call you up and do the Google 20 questions to suss out your technical acumen. JPL has a wide mix too, though three out of four of my bosses are fellow MIT alum.
If there is one thing I learned from Government aerospace contractors, its WHO, not WHAT you know that counts.
If you are not good at doing technical stuff, but have good people skills with those above you, they will put you in charge of engineers,
I found dealing with people who have management skills but limited awareness of the laws of physics the most frustrating experience I ever had.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
I went to RPI. I hated it. If you get the chance to go to MIT, do it. Otherwise, I'd head to California state school and save your money for grad school.
> male/female ratio
highly important. Don't underestimate this. You're young and need proper inspiration!
From what I hear, if you go to MIT you'll work 18 hours a day and have no social life. If you go to RPI, you'll work 12 hours a day and have no social life.
The most important thing I learned from RPI was how to fail. It was an important life lesson, but it had nothing to do with my degree. I worked way harder and got way worse grades than I ever did in high school. From what I've heard MIT is a worse version of the same thing. I graduated with an embarrassingly low GPA. But I learned it's more important for me personally to fail at something hard than succeed at something easy.
The upside is that pretty much everyone around the world have heard of MIT, where RPI is only know in the serious engineering community. My first job out of school was working for the Army. No matter how many times I corrected my boss, he still thought I went to RIT.
"It doesn't take a rocket scientist" -I guess I should leave then
It makes me wonder how many aerospace/aerospatial engineers even have class 3 rocketry licenses? How many have built their own rocket motor? (this requires tons of sub-skills as you might imagine)
With the advent of portable CNC machines and fabrication devices that you can fit in your garage, a whole world is now open to many people.
Of course go to school. But also do what you want in the meantime. Spend as little as possible while getting the most out of your education. Myself, I took as many classes as I possibly could (almost 80 credits) at the local community college before transferring. Be lean, mean, and inventive, and someone will want to hire you.
I went to Carnegie Mellon and got (but rejected) an offer from SpaceX. All I would say is that what matters most is getting good experience in internships and meeting the right people, and making a name for yourself by working on important projects. Obviously a good school is a great start for getting this kind of experience, but you could do it from a state school as well.
I know of a guy who got hired by one of the biggest newspace companies, apparently they were very interested in a large model rocket he built himself and tested. This kind of thing used to be more common, but I guess not that many students nowadays grow up building Heathkits, flying models and other hardware stuff on their own.
So at least take advantage of whatever student engineering projects are available at your school, or even better take the initiative to start one. You'll learn a lot in the process, and maybe even more importantly, build your confidence level.
If you are willing to stretch your distances, the University of Alabama in Huntsville is a good engineering school(not n aMIT or Georgia Tech) that is collocated with a lot of space and missile companies. By going to UAH you can do Co-ops and internships with NASA, Army Missile and Space Command, Space X, and others. Almost every US space and missile company has a presence in Huntsville Alabama and takes students from UAH.
The purpose of language is communication, If the idea is clear the grammar ain't important
Although I mostly agree with the part about seeking advice and asking questions, I don't think most folks understand the Challenger Commission. Basically the whole Commission was an exercise in politics (Feynman knew that General Kutyna and the engineering crew at Morton Thiokol knew what was the likely problem was, but they were politically unable to deliver the news, so Feynman simply delivered it for them).
The one thing about this example that is about engineering is that Feynman (a very smart guy by the way), basically laid out for the public to see the all-too-common disconnect between managment and engineering. In this case, NASA managers presenting rosy pictures where the engineers were sweating the cost-cutting/corner-cutting. Since Feynman's job wasn't on the line, he got to ask the questions that many of the engineers dared not ask. Also because he was smart and articulate, he often got the answers where other askers did not.
The moral of this story? Just being smart and asking questions isn't enough... You have to be able to communicate too. If you think people don't like what you are communicating, you'd better have a plan B.
When I was at RPI in the mid-1980's, several RPI professors sat on the board for the local community college - Hudson Valley Community College. At that time, you could do two years at HVCC and transfer all of it to RPI, assuming you kept a decent QPA (which any simian could do at HVCC). This would give you the first two years of RPI ar 1/10th the cost of RPI itself. I'd be surprised if this hasn't changed since then, but it's worth looking into.
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
Schooling is worthless beyond a certain point
That's true only for very high values of certain point.
If you want to work in the space industry as an engineer, the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation will show you how the odds are stacked. To get anything into orbit with rockets you need a mass ration of something like 40:1, that is the propellant you need to carry weighs forty times everything else: engines, tanks, payload, etc.
You cannot fine tune a system to that level with gut feelings alone, you must do a lot of calculations. It is rocket science, you know.
Of course, practical experience is also a must, but experience will never bring you the theoretical knowledge you need. Without an engineering degree you can still rise to the top of the industry as a manager, of course, but that's not engineering.
Without an engineering degree you may still build great rockets, but they will be rockets designed by someone else. You will not be the creator, only the hired hand labor.
Two points:
(1) Stay flexible.
I do nothing related space engineering, but I did go to a fancy-pants private school (MIT) and now I'm in grad school at a big state school (UC Berkeley). Sure it's dangerous extrapolating from two data points, but MIT had a major advantage over UC Berkeley in terms of flexibility. This may not seem important to you now as you have your whole career planned out already, but if you are intellectually curious at all, the smart money is on you changing your focus once you actually get a few semesters under your belt. I highly recommend you give yourself that opportunity. Take this from someone who thought he was going to do aero/astro then went from materials science to computer science to physics and now does molecular biology research. At MIT (and I assume most other big name private schools) class space tends to be a non-issue and it's easy to explore areas outside of your declared major in the first couple of years. It literally takes a conversation and a one page form to change departments. At Berkeley, the undergrads in some departments have a really hard time just getting into the core classes in the first few years and you can forget about getting into heavily subscribed classes outside your major. This delays completion of essential prerequisite courses and makes graduating on time a challenge in and of it's self, let alone exploring other areas or even switching programs after freshman year (often requiring a lengthy application process).
(2) Culture matters.
Course work will be similar at many of these schools thrown out so far, but the atmosphere in which it occurs in varies considerably. Life is just different when the robot competitions generate more excitement than the football games. I would say the biggest feature of MIT was being surround by ridiculously bright, hardworking students who were genuinely excited about their studies. Not only is such an atmosphere infectious, but the friends you make become an invaluable source of advice and council in tough moments. The flip side to this is that if you find yourself burning out all the eager beavers around can start making you feel inadequate and help send you into a downward spiral. I knew many people at MIT who would have been much happier at a state school where they could have worked hard 5 days a week then got drunk and tailgated all weekend. On the other hand, I have some friends who had disappointing experiences at state schools where the social life consisted of being drunk from Thursday afternoon till Monday morning and they found it hard connecting with anyone it because it just wasn't cool to be into your studies. Visit schools you're interested in. Campus visit weekends tend to be not at all representative of normal semester life, but at least you get a chance to talk to the students and see how their lives match up with what you want out of school.
a) For life learning - GO AWAY TO SCHOOL.
b) Apply to all the top 10 Aerospace Engineering Schools - PERIOD.
c) Go to which ever one give you the best scholarship.
d) Look at where the people working in those companies went to school - you really want to go to that short list of institutions.
That means you need to consider Standford, GA-Tech, UT-Austin, and a few others not in your 5 hr drive radius.
I worked at NASA-JSC as a contractor for about 8 yrs. A few of my friends still work there and a few others have migrated to oceanographic and private space sector companies. Whatever that means.
While in school, you need to get the best grades you can, since that is often a filter to apply for jobs. Some companies would not talk to me because I had a 3.5 GPA. Sorry, but I worked my way through university to pay all the bills. "Good enough" grades was my goal.
Oh, and you can probably forget about a double-major. When I was in school, engineering majors were not allowed a minor, much less a double-major. ASE can be mostly mechanical based, especially if you study fluid mechanics (like I did). Viscous boundary layer theory and fully simulating Navier-Stokes https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Navier%E2%80%93Stokes_equations are still some of the hardest problems out there.
I'm a PhD student in Aerspace at Cornell, where I also did my undergrad (and somewhere you should definitely check out, especially if you're in the area). At Cornell, we've very successfully competed in the university nanosat competitions (NANOSAT-4 with CUSat and NANOSAT-6 with Violet). Nearly everyone from these teams goes on to work in the space industry. In fact, SpaceX, Boeing, and others come to campus specifically to recruit from within CUSat and Violet.
I can't speak to aerospace or mechanical engineering, but the half-life of an E.E. in the U.S. is about fifteen years. You should seriously research the longevity of the career you are anticipating.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
Don't forget to factor in the current economy!
I graduated with an engineering degree from a good school, with work experience, and good grades, and it still took me two years to get any sort of engineering work at all. I'll also say that the one internship I was able to scavenge while in school had almost nothing to do with engineering, and I looked everywhere, applied everywhere, etc. Same for jobs. I did everything right, I had a good resume, and I went to the career fairs, went to my school's career center on multiple occasions. Many of my friends still can't find work in engineering.
I'm not saying this to bitch about the economy but just to let you know that for a lot of us, it's pretty messed up right now. Compare this to some people I know who are just ten years ahead of me, and they were practically recruited right out of college.
The moral? NETWORK. If you think going to a big school will afford you better networking because of the prestige that comes along with the school's name, then by all means go to the bigger, more well-known school. If you think a small state-school would be better for your personal networking because you have more of a chance to develop a close relationship with your professors, then go to the small school! It's almost impossible to get a job by resume alone right now. Maybe by the time you graduate things will be different. But right now, you need to have a school people have heard of, have close connections with your professors, have internship experience (preferably more than one internship experience, preferably in the exact field you want to go into, preferably at a well-known company), you need stellar grades, you need to be part of the right organizations that people will recognize because they too were part of that org in college.
I'm getting an engineering degree from Purdue through their distance learning program. If you don't mind missing out on the traditional classroom setting and think watching video taped lectures is a viable option for you, I would suggest you check out www.purdue.edu/proed/.
Go there! I did for a while! It was quiet amazing... And Troy has some cool houses that are reasonable to live in! My buddy had this HUUUUUGE three story house there. He ended up sharing a each level with a friend. And needless to say, the parties there were off the hook! Five words..... Pudding Wrestling In The Garage!!!!
You get in by being exceptionally good at some skill they need...
/. much, you will have noticed that most threads have a level of English which compares to about the fifth grade, possibly worse. An excellent command of written and spoken English will put you on a level above those too lazy or too unconcerned to master English.
Good advice from this poster.
I would add a few things.
In college as an E.E. undergraduate, I much preferred the E.E. courses and, seeing no reason to study things like engineering mechanics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_mechanics), I didn't spend much time on those courses. Who knew I would develop an intense interest in launch systems and orbital mechanics? Try to do well in all your courses. You can't predict the future.
Learn to write very clearly and succinctly. If you read
Learn (and not just on a superficial level) as much math as possible. Become the local expert on calculus and differential equations.
Good luck!
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
I sincerely advise you to pursue a different field of engineering. I studied Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech (ranked by US News and World Report as number 2 or 3 in this field) in the late 80's and the degree did not get me anywhere (I had a respectable GPA and graduated with honors). Why? because it is such a small industry and constantly at the mercy of government budget policy, which curiously is still holding sway over the private space industry. I switched to software development many years ago as did many of my fellow aerospace/mechanical engineering colleagues. With a degree in computer engineering or computer science you can still work in aerospace AND your opportunities have just increased hundred fold. Hey when you get sick of writing boundary layer simulation code, you can always switch to low latency trading software at a wall street firm (and make ungodly and amoral amount of money).
You should look at some of the companies you are interested in and see what types of internships they have. Also try to make some contacts there and see what they advise. But you should definitely study the things you are interested in and enjoy and take it from there. You don't want to end up doing something you are not interested in for the rest of your life right? Don't listen to some of the people earlier in this post saying 'asking here is dumb'. Asking questions is important.
I went to Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) for ME (they have an aerospace option, which I didn't take). What was great about their program is that you have to do mandatory co-ops. You go to school for 5 years instead of the normal 4, but over a year of that time is spent working for other companies. And you have to hunt for the jobs and apply for them just as you would for any normal job after graduation. Even though it is tough sometimes to find a place to co-op that you want and who wants you in the end it is worth it for the experience of the job hunt and quite frankly it pays much better than most summer jobs you'd find (unpaid internships aren't allowed). And since classes are designed so you don't just co-op during the summer you may have a better chance at getting an internship in the Fall, Winter or Spring at a desired company since you won't be competing with so many other applicants during the Summer. While I did find a co-op at an Aerospace company and I was excited to get it, please remember that you may not enjoy all of the types of jobs that those companies offer. The co-op I did there was more related to Manufacturing engineering, so quality control and processes and lots of tedium. No better way to find out what areas of your field you DON'T want to do than to spend a few months actually doing it. Experience is key to finding out what you really like to do but it doesn't have to be all on-the-job training. Be sure to look for hands-on extra-curriculars that a school offers, not just courses you may think will interest you. Again, I know I'm pimping RIT, but they have an Aero Club that does more than just make simple RC model airplanes (they've sent stuff to space!), but also have clubs for other Mechanical enthusiasts like Formula-1 and FIRST Robotics that often can consume large portions (sometimes too much) of your free time. And remember, if you aren't happy at one school there is no shame in transferring. Don't force yourself to stay at a school you hate just because you feel like you have to finish what you started.
Get drunk and get laid as often as you can when you're young, being happy should be your main goal in life.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I'm not in the aerospace field - maybe applying directly into the private space industry is your best bet. But, in my career, I've learned the best way to enter a field that is normally closed to you is to build a solid network. That doesn't mean shmoozing your way in, however. That means, work hard at the jobs you can get, and build great professional relationships with others. As the private space industry grows, it wouldn't be surprising that someone you worked with who has a high opinion of you will enter the industry and will be asked, "got any friends? we're hiring like crazy."
Everyone knows about MIT, nobody has heard of RPI. So RPI gives out silly medals as public-relations material. They just target a highschool, send a letter to a guidance counslor and ask them who should get a medal from their school. They basically get free publicity from that. When I was involved with admissions at my alma mater, we thought about recruiting PR tricks and that one came up, but it got rejected as being too corny...
Go to a school that has an existing relationship with SpaceX. I've heard that students at the USC rocket propulsion lab almost have a guaranteed offer from Elon upon graduating from the program. I bet the same is true for many geographically paired schools and companies. The Los Angeles area does still make some sense despite the lower-than-historical level of aerospace work there. However there does seem to be a rebirth of space technologies with at least half a dozen small startups around Southern California. Virgin, Masten, Whittinghill, and Xcor are all local companies that have recently been selected by NASA to provide commercial space services under the Dryden Flight Opportunities Program.
I haven't seen them listed here, but don't forget about Mississippi State and University of Alabama Huntsville. Both are very good engineering schools, and both have excellent industry connections and co-op programs. I'm a little biased towards Mississippi State, since that's where I went. I know of several students from MSU who are here in the Huntsville, AL area working co-op at NASA Marshall and on Redstone Arsenal (Army aviation, missiles, etc.). MSU has its own flight research lab, machine shops, composite fab areas, and a halfway decent football team to watch on the weekends. Plus, it's not nearly as expensive as most of the other schools listed.
California State University Northridge
Cal Tech
Harvey Mudd College
They are all closer to active launch sites and test ranges as well.
I'm 6 years into my career as an engineer. I got a job right out of school working for Hewlett-Packard. The best thing you can do is find a good internship or co-op. School doesn't teach you how to do the job, it just gives you a bunch of theoretical abstractions. Getting an internship or co-op shows employers that you have experience, that they don't need to teach you how to do the job as much. It will also give you a chance to find out if the job is something you really want to do.
As for the name of your school...it helps, but it isn't everything. I went to Gonzaga and every interview I've been in there's talk about basketball. If your resume stinks, the best named school in the world won't help you get a job. Having skills and experience will always help, though.
I can probably help. I am a software developer for ISS. More specifically I write code for CCS (Command and Control Software), which is the primary bus controller and Tier 1 device.
Let me start off by saying I went to a state school and my GPA is embarrassing. That was less important in my interview than my skills and experience.
Focus on embedded and real time systems. Developing an RTOS is very different than other types of software development. I'm not sure how it is with Space X, most aerospace systems run on legacy hardware because the cost of getting the military spec (MILSPEC) certification. CCS runs on a 486DX, though there is a scheduled upgrade next year (EPIC) that will bring us up to a whopping Pentium. Managing resources on legacy hardware is important. Learn about time management and threading using legacy compilers.
ADA, C and C++ are the primary languages used in aerospace so become familiar with them. Very few people have experience with ADA any more and it is very heavily used in aerospace and military applications, so that alone will open a lot of doors.
Good luck.
My son is a robotics engineer, and the good choices he made may work for you as well. First of all, check to see how different colleges handle their engineering programs. Virginia Tech, for example, along with many other schools, doesn't let pre-engineers start engineering courses until junior year, while Virginia Commonwealth University, whose engineering school is highly rated, starts engineering courses from freshman year on. He chose VCU and benefited from not having that two-year hiatus. He also chose to participate in, and build up contacts in, an organization related to his chosen field, in his case FIRST Robotics. On the basis of having done well at a respected (but not legacy prestigious) engineering school, he had a choice of graduate-school fellowships, chose Virginia Tech, and hooked up with a robotics lab there. He also networked with roboticists at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute (where he now works) pursuing similar work to his and entered a few international competitions, at which he did well and gained some publicity that helped him in his post-degree job hunt. I suspect there are parallels you can take advantage of. Best wishes for success.
I am one of the founders of one of the "New Space" companies, and I am one of the people who will interview you if you apply to work here. The best way to get a job with us is to get as much hands-on experience as you can, take the courses that interest you, go to a good school - you don't need to go to a Ivy League school: RPI or Embry-Riddle or Cal Poly or whatever they are calling Rolla these days will suit you well. U of Maryland has produced a couple of our engineers; so has Purdue. The point is to get a good solid background in engineering, then get a couple of internships under your belt. Secure internships with companies doing actual stuff. Some internships at the larger aerospace companies and at government institutions do not put you on the shop floor or allow you to build stuff. The more practical experience you have, the better off you'll be no matter where you end up.
I have an Aero Degree and have worked as one too.
A few ideas:
1) Pick an set of areas you can learn well in your ABET accredited curriculum. I did FEA and CFD...ended up working with UT-SI people in Tennesse and a bunch of astronauts @ NASA and USAF. FInd out what ever the space companies all need, controls and high-temp fluid modelling are always good, as are aero-structures, and the ability to write simple code to do hard problems.
2) Pick up the non-academic things too: how to run a project to completion, business 101, writing and presenting to a crowd and to groups like AIAA, NSS, etc. Art is also important to engineers. Learn to draw and maybe paint. These activities are all useful: Do up a few student poster presos for a conference. Start a small LLC and run it. Write a space blog on interesting stuff. Get involved in AIAA, etc.
3) My route involved a trip through the DoD ( as an officer) but that is not required per-se if you can nail internships/coops. Summer work is VERY important to most engineering want to bes.
4) Full rounded people are good too, not just GPAs. 3.5 is the most GPA most need, 3.0 is usually sufficient if you have a history of #2 and #3 above, and maybe some volunteer work.
5) There are at least 20 supporting companies for every major company. If you can work at the big boys, look for work at the companies that supply them.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that the school doesn't matter simply because they all give "the same" classes in the undergrad curriculum. I've taken undergrad math classes at three different institutions--University of Chicago, University of Maryland at College Park and the University of Virginia. I can say definitively that "the same" class will cover more material in greater depth at one institution than another.
Some schools attract students who are capable of learning math more quickly than others. The pace of a class will be set, willy-nilly, by the abilities of the student at about the 25th percentile. If your colleagues are quicker learners, your professor will have more time for the "optional" material at the end of each section; your problem sets will have more of the "starred" difficult (i.e., interesting) problems and fewer problems that simply drill you on material that you understood the first time; and in class you are likely to see greater rigor and more alternative approaches to the material--all of which will leave you with a deeper and more thorough understanding of "the same" material.
Conversely, if your colleagues are slower, your professor is likely to leave out even some of the "required" material--hoping that you will learn it on your own or get it in a future class--rather than fail too many students.
Incidentally, based on my experience at the three institutions listed, I would give my math experience at Chicago an edge over Maryland, with Virginia coming in a distant third. This is not how I would rank these three schools according to the overall academic level, but reflects specifically the caliber of math and engineering students whom they attract.
I wrote this:
http://rocketforge.org/?p=436
a few years ago. As a co-founder of Masten Space Systems I would get this question frequently enough that I wrote a standard blog article about it. Here's the gist:
Work for NASA but leave before it makes you cynical.
Work in Mojave but leave or else you’ll never get married.
No matter what, build something.
Internships!
Go to some key conference and meet people
Use LinkedIn, VisualCV, and yes, Facebook
Know your industry intimately
Join Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS)
Go get an advanced degree. Get it from the International Space University (ISU) if you can
Become an expert at something
Do something risky
Spectacularly fail at something
Be LOUD about it!
I noticed my alma mater mentioned (RPI) so I figured I'd reply for what it's worth.
I graduated from RPI with a major in Aerospace Engineering -- sounds like the same path you are looking to take. I graduated in 2008 and now work for Boeing in southern California. I network frequently with the private aerospace companies (SpaceX, XCor, Virgin Galactic, etc) since its an industry I plan to hop to if/when I want a change of pace.
If I can recommend anything to you, its to aggressively seek out internships and co-ops. These companies value work experience over anything else. RPI highly supports their co-op program and many aerospace companies seek out enthusiastic students. Also, find engineering projects to work on at RPI -- they also value leadership withing those engineering projects. Projects like Design-Build-Fly really help, and if you can't find a project you like, start one!
Keep in mind with all the glamour of the private aerospace industry, there are drawbacks. For example, if you work at Mojave Spaceport (where majority of private space industry is), you have to live in the middle of the desert. Quite a different life than LA or even upstate NY. Also these companies don't make much money -- yet, so don't expect much of a paycheck until their vehicles (literally) take off. SpaceX is hiring like crazy, but I have seen some of those young employees overworked pretty good (80+ hour weeks). All in the name of progress, but they are doing some amazing things.
Anyway, feel free to contact me if you have any questions ericgever@gmail.com
What about Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach?
I've only visited but they have a space / strong aeronautical focus, plus... i mean it's at the beach :-)
Any thoughts from those in industry?
My 2 cents: a **really really** a list school like MIT & a **really** good school like the U of M get you to the same place in your undergrad. It's going to be what you make of it more than the name at that point; ie: the variation between students counts for a lot more, you get variation by your aptitude, social network, and extra curricular. But that said, going below **really** good does close off some doors, unless you turn out to be a super-star.
-
FormerSuperStarNowAtJobOfDreams
(Who wishes he'd applied to **really** good schools so he didn't have to nearly kill himself in undergrad/graduate school/extra-curricular in order to get in the door)
You know, I'd be willing to bet that the wonders of the Internet have really advanced what they can do too.
Not long ago, I was thinking back to when I was a kid. There was no Internet. Well, there was, but I had no way to get to it.
When I graduated high school, there were less than 10 web sites. We did have BBSs. Most had porn and door games. And there were the collections of text files, from dubious sources. Oh, we shouldn't forget the experts that populated the newsgroups. Well, about the same ratio of experts, to liars who said they were experts, as Wikipedia has. :)
I lived far enough from any major cities, where the libraries had scarce information. Good luck finding experts. The closest I found to civilian aerospace group was some folks who made model rockets, but never went above a Class C motor.
Getting my hands on construction equipment was rough. Flea markets, yard sales for deals, or if I had money (ya, right), I could order through retail outlets.
Now we can get tools and supplies through Craigslist and eBay. We can find and talk to experts world wide almost instantly (depending on when they read their email). We can read people's accounts of what they've done, and watch videos on how successful they were. And hell, if I were to start a project, I could present it to hundreds of thousands of people in just a day (submit the story to Slashdot), or possibly more attention by emailing press releases to every publication on the planet.
I wish I was doing stuff that I did when I was a kid.. I had room to do stuff. Growing up on a farm sucked for socialization, but had it's advantages, like I could build a rocket at the house, and launch it in the back field. I could probably have done motor tests on some pretty big motors, and no one would have cared.
Then again, if I was still out there, I wouldn't be making as much money as I am now, so I most likely wouldn't be able to fund crazy hobbies. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I agree with the co-op idea,especially with NASA, or perhaps with Richard Branson's company. Then, there is then right college. Don't even think of any state school. Yes, they all teach engineering, but financial aid or scholarships are almost nomexistent. Almost all of them are having their budgets slashed by stupid right wing legislators, so going to a state school could well be the most expensive option you could choose. First, I think you should try to get the best possible undergraduate education at a school that also has enginneerimg. I would think of Cal Tech. They are the home of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which continues to do a lot of space research. Plus, Pasadena, Ca is a gorgeous place tp study. Ten, you definitely want to look at Dartmouth. They have a great engineering school and they do not force you to overspecialize early on. You actually get to take normal
Iberal arts courses while getting a ver hands on, project oriented college and engineering education. Plus, if you need financial aid, they have it, in abundance. Dartmouth is famous for their graduates helping each other, so you can count on getting help in getting jobs, investments in your company, whatever you need. Then, there is Stanford. It is not as close up and friendly as Dartmouth, but you really can' go wrong going there. Let's see... Other schools worth looking at with engineering include Princeton and Yale. MIT. Has the big name, but it does not seem that the students there are very happy. A friend who went there said it was like trying to drink from a fire hose. Plus, the students there are ver competitive with each other, well known for not being willing to help each other. I would not touch the place. Finally, if younger interested in any of the service academies, I would go for the Naval Academy. It is all around excellent and offers the most interesting options for future work, either in, or after the Navy
Ok, I went to RPI. Not as an engineer, as CompSci, but still, all my friends were engineers. After graduation one went to MIT, one to Yale, one to become a Professor of Mathematics, one a tech manager, one a Biomedical engineer, myself to work in defense, you get the picture. If you can care less about cost it's a great school. If you're cheap, skip it. The cost to benefit ratio is not there for any school in or above RPI's price range for the education. If you're not all about cost and you're looking for a smaller school with amazing people then you've hit the right place. Apply to MIT, frame the acceptance / rejection letter, and then forget it. It's just a name.
Saw the usual schools. Don't forget Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University ERAU. Two campuses Daytona Beach and Prescott AZ. Higher priced, middle tier, but comes in noticeably cheaper than say MIT, with MUCH MORE personal attention., get hands on earlier than the big schools. ERAU Prescott Army ROTC there is Best in The West. Very rigorous, mile high training. VERY impressed with the quality of the graduates. Very good rep in aeronautics industry. disclaimer: parent of a graduate, so lots of time to observe.
Hey dude,
There are lots of schools and companies farther from you that would do well for you.
Oklahoma State University is an excellent engineering school. You should investigate.
I work for an aerospace structures manufacturer called Spirit Aerosystems.
Spirit is the largest independent aerospace structures manufacturer in the world.
Boeing and Airbus are our main customers but we make wing components for
Gulfstream and many other companies around the world. Website is spiritaero.com