So what steps should I take in order to complete my goal? I want to be above other candidates.
I always hear complaints of graduates who do not get jobs.
Most graduates get jobs. The statistics bear that out. It’s (I believe) the highest employment rate of all undergraduate majors (other than maybe nursing). Anecdotes are scary but they are often outliers.
@PianoWarrior Do good in school. Focus on a mechanical engineering path in college. After say a semester, start seeking out internships. Go to actual Aerospace building sites, or garages and speak to whoever is in charge. or ask the engineers there. They would be glad to give you insight
@PianoWarrior - I applaud you for doing online research. That will be useful. But don’t expect to find shortcuts. Work hard in college and hustle to find internship opportunities once you are there. Make sure to visit the campus job fairs. Early on, they may not result in jobs. But they will be great experience.
I keep forgetting to ask. What do you mean when you wrote NASA careers are political?
NASA does some really cool things, but their funding is subject to the whims of a fickle U.S. Congress, who don’t necessarily (read: rarely) have a good grasp of science and what good science is and what is worth doing.
Now, I don’t want to start a debate here, but I am going to use global warming as an example. NASA does a lot of Earth science missions, one of the goals of which is to study the climate. When you have people like Lamar Smith, who absolutely does not believe in global warming and no amount of evidence could change that, chairing the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, that means that people whose jobs at NASA entail climatology have a really hard time funding and doing their jobs. Now, wherever you may fall on the global climate change spectrum, few reasonable people would deny that studying such things are important. However, in this case, the politically-motivated fear that they might continue supporting the position of the opposing party means that those sorts of jobs can be tough at NASA.
Now, every NASA job is subject to this to some degree. I have a number of colleagues on the aeronautics side of things that have to start and stop projects prior to completion relatively frequently based on the funding picture. The sequester, for example, really hit NASA aeronautics programs hard because of politics. The sequester was supposed to be so unpalatable to both sides that it forced a compromise, but more extreme politicians then took over and let it happen and it really screwed a lot of people.
Jobs in industry are a little more insulated from this kind of nonsense. Take Boeing, for example. If you work in commercial airlines, the federal budget doesn’t really matter to you at all. Just build a good product that airlines want to buy and you are set. On the defense side, the political issue can be a factor, though not as much as at an agency like NASA where they are directly funded by Congress. At least at a place like Boeing, there is generally a lot of resistance to killing big programs because that can mean lots of jobs lost and Congressmen from those districts generally fight tooth and nail to avoid that.
All that said, I know a number of people who really enjoy their time at NASA. You just have to know what you are getting into and know that politics can play more of a role than in industry.
NASA (and the rest of the government funded projects) can be very squirrely from a funding perspective. One NASA project I worked on took advantage of some hardware from a previously cancelled program and designed a system around it. We went thru preliminary design review, critical design review (meaning the engineering was about 95% done), did some development testing (very expensive) and then got cancelled. About 3 years of work and then nothing. NASA did take some of our hardware and use it on a later program so it wasn’t totally wasted (but a lot was).
One of the big problems (IMHO) is that many NASA projects have spans that are longer than the terms of the Members of Congress who fund them. New makeup in Congress equals new priorities for NASA.
Commercial programs aren’t subject to the same whims as NASA projects but they do have their ups and downs. Someone once noted that a commercial airplane development program occupies the same amount of floor space throughout the entire program. You get a hanger and fill it with desks for the engineers. The hardware will start coming in one end and the engineers go out the far end. Finally you have a regular aircraft production line with just a small cubicle of engineers to handle the changes and manufacturing mistakes.
Commercial program engineer needs are, however, easy to predict and so people will be adjusting their careers accordingly (moving to the next project, for instance) where NASA can be quite unpredictable.
NASA civil servant jobs are permanent positions and you are unlikely to lose your job if your program gets cancelled or ends and there is no follow-on work. However, job openings are very scarce right now due to fairly low NASA budget.
NASA support contract positions (contractors supporting direct work at NASA centers) are pretty volatile and also shrinking. These jobs can be 2-3x the number of civil servants.
NASA prime contractor (NASA mission work at say Lockheed) jobs may be stable if Lockheed can keep enough projects going to keep a constant staff and some people will make it through even slow downs there, because they are good at their jobs and well liked.n With all the mergers, there are less players, so each may have a more stable portfolio … Lockheed, NorthropGrumman, OrbitalATK, Boeing, etc. On a big program like Orion, there could be thousands of engineers working on Orion who work for companies large and small all over the US, all funding ultimately coming from the NASA budget.
If it really bothers you if your design or analysis work never is launched or built … despite finding a new and better program to work on … well, that is another issue. I am not sure your efforts at any company are always used … for example, lots of iProducts or GoogleXYZs never get released. Either way, your are building your skills and making a living …
And for the airplane hanger, I am not really sure that the people in your hanger are the same, design engineers are not airplane assemblers, but the total floor space and head count might be similar. Doesn’t help you if your head is not in the hanger and you don’t have work.
Politics are really only important to high level people from my experience, except for the normal workplace politics …
While aerospace engineers and say mechanical engineers in aero are pretty specialized when it comes to skills, very few really would qualify only for “climate science” work other than the climate scientists themselves, you can build very nice space instruments that can look at the Earth or look at stars with the same skill mix. I think all NASA projects are down from typical historical funding levels, whether manned space or climate / Earth science or astrophysics or outer planets, which is making it tough for the entire NASA workforce, all three categories I mention above.
Agree with suggestion of generic mechanical engineering degree (or electrical) with electives in aero as a more flexible career-long degree. Aerospace engineer layoffs are pretty common and seem to occur on long cycles … in other words you will have to survive 3 or 4 in your career, possibly more. I think MEs make more in aero than some other industries, but all ME jobs will pay the bills if you skip the McMansion and Escalade.
The point of the airplane hanger story was that the job skills required did change dramatically over the life of the program. However, the changes are for the most part predictable.
Working directly for NASA is indeed a “permanent position”. But if your program is cancelled you don’t just stick around doing nothing. You move to a new program. If there is no new program, or your skill set doesn’t match what the new program requires, you can indeed get laid off. I worked for a NASA contractor that was associated with several NASA centers over the years and there were layoffs at NASA. The way NASA is funded makes job security somewhat unpredictable at times for both NASA employees and NASA contractor employees.
Hi guys. I am sorry for not responding for a little while. My plan will be to take the ME route, with as many AE courses as possible. I will find a place to intern ASAP… Getting a good job upon or before graduation will be my goal. I will figure out other ways to make my myself a renowned career candidate. Thank you all for the tips you have given me.
@PianoWarrior Northrop has a program for HS students http://www.northropgrumman.com/Careers/StudentsAndNewGrads/Pages/GettingStartedEarly.aspx
Also the gvt has a stem program for HS students. My son worked for the Army summer before his senior year. But it includes several agencies and quality work. I forget the name since it was in 2007 so do a search. One friend’s son even helped author a paper with his researcher. Here is something else that includes HS students https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/hiring-authorities/students-recent-graduates/
There are opportunities out there.
Everyone does internships these days. Esp after senior year so to stand out, start early…