If you want to work for NASA, you will be hard-pressed to do so staying in your little bubble there. Honestly, I think you seem like you just need to do that in general. I am very close with my family, too, yet I moved approximately 1,000 miles and 16 hours by car away from them for my current job. Do I sometimes wish I lived a lot closer? Sure. Then again, I couldn’t do what I am doing now if I lived any closer. Sometimes you just have to be open to relocating. You can always move back later if you need to do so.
Also, don’t be intimidated by Caltech or MIT grads. NASA hires from many, many schools, and graduates of the MITs and Caltechs of the world don’t have anywhere close to a monopoly on it. At any rate, you will run into the same problems at other defense contractors. Those jobs typically pay pretty well and involved working on designing some pretty cool hardware, so they are usually competitive.
In the United States, most people I have met have a highly positive view of working for the military and the military in general. This reaction would be unlikely.
I know a few NASA employees in various fields, and as an aerospace engineer you probably have a better shot at working withNASA than for NASA - they contract out a heck of a lot of work, focusing on operations, management, and non-engineering research in-house. Regardless, you are extremely unlikely to be hired without an advanced degree or experience - they really are not set up to train up new engineers.
As someone who works for a major defense contractor, I actually have gotten comments/questions like these, but only a couple of times. My general response has been: “I believe that we, like every other nation, require a military and I see no problem with supporting its existence. I do not support everything said military is sent to do, but I see that as a political issue regardless, not one that defines the morality of my career.”
Sure. But that doesn’t make him a good human being. A brilliant man, but not necessarily a decent one. My guess is also that he and his scientists angled to fall into the hands of the US instead of Russia more for lifestyle reasons than ideology.
I’ve never asserted he was a “good” person, just to clarify (in case it came across that way).
In fact, my point is that working in the defense industry can raise ethical questions. I think the OP is wise to think about it. Obviously we do need defense technology though.
I’d be willing to bet it was more than just lifestyle that caused the German scientists to lean toward the US/UK over Russia. They weren’t dumb. They knew of the Russians’ penchant for brutality.
That is a “lifestyle” issue. Although they willingly oversaw these factories full of prisoner workers under the Nazis, and as far as is known didn’t to anything to undermine that. Not sure brutality bothered them much.
Yes, that would have had a rather tragic effect on the US space program (USSR did well with Korolev, until he died). Unfortunately space exploration has never been a particularly popular goal with the American public, and it was severely curtailed after the moon landing. To this day NASA is struggling to justify its existence to a rather short-sighted populace, which sees it either as a “jobs program” or a waste of money.
I think you guys assuange my uneasiness towards working for a defense contractor.
Btw Boneh3ead, what was it like when you had to move far way from home? What did your friends and family say? And what do you do for a career?
Ps. There were times when Von Braun’s and his colleagues’s loyalties were questioned by the NAZIs. I guess they overlooked the violence just to keep themselves and families alive.
I mean, I was nervous at first but it was okay. My current location is actually the second move. The first was about 700 miles for graduate school in Texas, then I did a 90-degree turn and ended up about 1,000 miles away total. All told, my family wishes I was closer to home (and I mostly do, too) but they understand that I moved to find the kind of career that I wanted." And everyone is okay with that.
My friends mostly couldn’t care less, particularly since I still speak to only approximately 3 of my old friends from back home during high school. Many friends grow apart during college as they move on with their lives and make new friends. That may or may not happen to you but you shouldn’t make plans now under the assumption that the same friends you have now will be your main group of friends 5 years from now. You can always make friends wherever you go, just like I have in Texas and now New Mexico.
As for where I work, I’d imagine it would appall you based on this thread. Right now I work as a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory. I’ll admit, there are some jobs here that don’t interest me due to the fact that they are applied pretty much exclusively to nuclear weapons. The work I do, however, has much broader application and even allows me to publish openly, so I’m okay with that.
Of course, it is still at least somewhat defense-related (most things here are) but I’m okay with that. In that regard, I tend to take the same approach here as @cosmicfish in that I know that if no one did any kind of defense work, there are plenty of bullies out there in the world who would happily exploit that fact. Deterrence doesn’t work if you aren’t carrying your big stick, after all.
As we move towards the future the likelihood that any platforms you design will be used directly to kill people other than those who rape, pillage, and murder many others, is low.
All weapons will be used for petty political reasons sooner or later, and civilians will often die as a result of these war games. Honestly I find that to be a relatively trivial reason not to work for defense companies. Overall I’d say they do contribute to the public good, though they line their pockets quite handily along the way.
On moving away from home: honestly a very personal decision. Family is more important than career opportunities for some than others, and vice versa. It’s pretty common for people from age 18-30 to want to move away from home, see the world, start their career in an unusual place, etc. Later on, familial connections tend to be quite important and it does start to be very hard to be away from family for too long. I’ve seen many people whose career path is structured accordingly.