Summer 2022 has been the most educational, exhilarating, and fulfilling 3-month span in my life.
Looking up to the stars is a primal instinct. As toddlers, our gazes probably drifted upward towards the night sky before we even knew what to make of what we were seeing. As we begin to comprehend more of the cosmos, we barely start to grasp the sheer scale and distance of the objects we see. Our former ignorance of the mysteries of space blossom into an endless stream of questions aimed to understand an endless entity. “Astronaut” becomes a common, incredible, and grossly naïve career goal for many. However, as we grow, and the intricacies of our world and society demystify, we are encouraged to focus on “reality”, and we lose the imagination or mental bandwidth to dwell on the stuff of dreams. “I don’t have time to think about sending an astronaut to Mars, I’m too busy trying to pass my economics class” we say. Steadily, the continuous stresses and toils of the day-to-day trample a blooming flower of awe and inspiration down to an overlooked stain on the concrete.
Then, I watched my first in-person rocket launch: Transporter 5 on a Falcon 9. The roar of the 9 Merlin Engines made our cars panic, even from 3 miles away. The brightness of the exhaust plume resembled a small sample of the sun painted across the sky in a single stroke. The condensation flaking off the main hull offered a hint as to the extreme contents contained within. It was a beautiful sight.
After about 5 minutes, I watched that same rocket land. The same Falcon 9 that had barely kissed the 100 km Karman line (threshold for the definition of “space”) came speeding back down to earth at supersonic speeds, emitting the iconic boom. A single center Merlin engine roars back to life, commencing the landing burn in a loud and bright fashion. In an instant, three meticulously calculated events occur:
- The last bit of fuel is consumed
- The rocket reaches 0 velocity
- The rocket reaches 0 altitude
Falcon sits there, standing 15-stories tall and proud. Fucking wild.
That was the first of many similar experiences I would have throughout the summer. In total, I watched 12 launches from three different companies (funny that not even one was NASA anymore). Let me set aside the whole notion of being able to watch rocket launches now and talk about my experience as an intern.
I worked at Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. This is the primary launch site for all US launch providers due to its proximity to the equator and to sea. For SpaceX, this is the site where engineers work on Ground-Station Equipment (GSE), Launch Hardware, and Recovery/Refurbishment. Cape engineers focus on the infrastructure, equipment, and processes needed to get a rocket into the atmosphere, back down the ground, and fixed up to fly again the next month. Examples include the launch tower, rocket erector, fueling lines, recovery drone ships, and engine maintenance. This was my world for 3 months.
They say 1 year at SpaceX is equal to 7 years at most other companies. By that math, I just put 2 years of work experience under my belt. Not too far off. The hours are long, the work is challenging, and the stakes, and resulting stress levels, are high. At SpaceX, even interns are immediately integrated into the day-to-day work required to get rockets to space. Unlike most companies, where intern projects sometimes feel like they only exist in a mirror-dimension, if a SpaceX intern doesn’t do their job, a launch 3 months down the road might be delayed. For that reason, interns are expected to be relatively self-sufficient and not require excessive hand-holding from a mentor or manager that themselves probably has mission-critical work to complete. Much of the challenge is derived from this fact. If there is a skill you need to learn or a system you need to familiarize yourself with, you are expected to FIGURE IT OUT ASAP. Go home that night and do a tutorial on recursive SQL queries. Hmm, only one guy in the entire company knows how this part functions? Find that person on Teams and set up a 15 minute lunch call TOMORROW. The pace combined with the importance of the work make SpaceX a poor environment for “a relaxing time”, but an outstanding environment for learning and growth as an engineer. On my final summer wrap-up, I whipped up a slide deck with a 101 of every project I worked on/completed over the summer. There were 13 slides. I was there for 3 months.
Another facet of SpaceX that has pleasantly surprised me are the caliber of the employees. Everyone at SpaceX seems to be at the top of their game. The engineers at SpaceX are some of the best I have every met and worked with. They are a multidisciplinary bunch of young and energetic engineers who strike a golden balance between being theoretical and being practical. They taught me immensely critical skills such as bolted and welded joints calculations that I certainly did not learn in school. Most importantly, these engineers were phenomenal makers themselves. Everyone was either a former SAE, Baja, rocketry, or satellite team member. Even among my two housemates, one built half of the parts on his 3-D printer custom made, and the other knew his own car top-down so well that he wasn’t paying anyone for maintenance he could do himself. I felt right at home among this group of like-minded colleagues. It’s refreshing to be in an environment where not everyone is married to software or finance (I’m looking at you UC Berkeley). Alongside the engineers, the technicians and planners were also individuals at the top of their field. Being able to keep up with the pace of progress at SpaceX is no easy feat. The tactical prowess and dedication that goes into planning materials, sourcing supplies, and moving parts to hot locations to send the next mission up is a hectic world that is, I think, even more stressful than being an engineer. Altogether, the employees make the company, and after working with a wide range of employees across a wide range of roles, I can see why SpaceX is one of the smartest, most innovative companies in the world. I have yet much to learn from these brilliant folks.
In summary, I loved my time in Florida. Florida itself surprised me with its low cost-of-living, southern hospitality, toasty beaches, and world-class theme parks (Orlando is a quick 35 minute drive). The weather sucks, no sugarcoating it there, but I have always found that to be a lame excuse for not liking a place, especially when young. I think it is important to not only take a job because it pays well, offers career growth, or uses your skillset efficiently, but also because you truly align yourself with the collective mission of the team. Sure, when performing my daily tasks, I’m sitting at a desk with, let’s be honest, excel or PowerPoint open most of the time (maybe ANSYS, NX, or code on a good day). However, it is an amazing privilege to be able to peer out my office window and see three boosters in the hangar getting prepped to visit space…again… for the 13th time. It is an amazing privilege to be able to set everything aside once a week, step out onto the grass, and watch a million+ pound machine carrying enough potential chemical energy to demolish a city carefully climb its way up and out of the atmosphere while being able to say “I helped do that”. It is an amazing privilege to be able to, even if only occasionally, just stare in childlike awe up at the stars again.
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