Do you have any tips for people who love space and are considering a career in the field but can't stand math and are generally awful at it? -a sad highschooler who just wants to work with space
*HOLDS YOUR FACE* aLRiGHT Let ME TELL YOU SOMETHING
First of all, no sadness here at this blog, no ma’am/sir/distinguished guest, how can you be sad about SPAaCCEEE
NASA/THE SPACE INDUSTRY IS FULL OF PEOPLE FROM EVERYWHERE, EVERY FIELD.
My group handles the operations of the computers and communication satellites of the International Space Station, right? Obviously we have tons of engineering majors, myself include, BUuuuT HOLD ON A DIDDLY DARN SECOND
we also have chemistry majors, statistics majors, physics major, we have a former elementary science teacher, and our intern is a lawyer who practiced for like 7 years and decided he wanted to go back to school. One woman told our boss at her interview “I’m only accepting this job if you swear to me I don’t have to do any coding.”
Heck, even today in a simulation I was decoding some data that comes down in hexadecimal and I was like ain’t nobody got time to do binary by hand, so I pulled out that calculator on my compy right quick. tyvm microsoft <3
What matters is, we all have that love and passion for this job and the things we do, and we work hard for it!
Aside from us, other disciplines / parts of NASA have people from the Medical field helping the astronauts, or working with their exercise equipment. There’s the Scientists who study the moon rocks, or the ones who study physiology and biology, or radiation, and a lot of other fields I probably can’t spell and/or pronounce. There’s the Business side of things that helps manage our contracts and our people. There’s the Strategic Partnerships office that works with our international partners and works out agreements on how we can contribute to one another. There’s the Inclusion & Innovation council, who promotes diversity at our campus and holds awesome events through our many Employee Resource Groups (ERGs). There’s Public Affairs, who coordinates visits from VIPs, handles our public image, puts out publications, makes videos, etc etc. There’s the Education Office, who helps with outreach and talks to students and makes them excited about SssspsPPPPAAAACCEEEEE and encourages them to join the co-op/internship program.
These, and much much more, are ALL a part of NASA Johnson Space Center, and ALL of them contribute to our space program.
Also, if it makes you feel any better, I am probs literally the worst person at aero engineering, mechanical engineering, and physics (CURSE YOU AND YOUR TREACHERY, C MINUS -sobs into college transcript-)
And though my degree is in computer engineering, I wouldn’t consider myself the best coder ever. BuT! I do have a knack for learning things quickly, and I get really excited really easily, and HOT DOG do I love me some space. So I took my strengths and applied them :D
~SPACE IS NOT JUST ROCKET SCIENCE~ It’s this huge collaboration that takes every kind of person, because we need ALL that humanity has to offer to explore further into space, and to help everyone back on Earth as we do it. Off the Earth, For the Earth! And I promise, it’s not just all math equations. (Pretty sure I’ve done like maybe an hour or two total of straight on paper calculating math in the past two years. I have drawn a lot of diagrams tho!)
SO, you find what you love, find how to relate it to space and how to improve it, be as passionate as you can be and work your butt off, and I bet I’ll see you around here soon.
-an ecstatic “adult”(hahahahahahahahahahaahahaha) who wants to see you work with space
(holy moly that got long sorry y’all I’m really bad at brevity)
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