Second career: astronomy and space exploration

Anything to do with the traditional world of get a degree, get a job as well as its alternatives
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Mister Imperceptible
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Re: Second career: astronomy and space exploration

Post by Mister Imperceptible »

I have no advice to give but I think this is awesome.

HAIL AVGVSTVS

daylen
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Re: Second career: astronomy and space exploration

Post by daylen »

If you want to improve your chances, find an exotic engineering niche.

Build a Von Neumann rover that can vaporize CO2 in martian soil or something.

Campitor
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Re: Second career: astronomy and space exploration

Post by Campitor »

You could volunteer at JPL/NASA to get your foot in the door: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/events/ssa.cfm

Requirements:
  • Ideal volunteers are self-starters who are enthusiastic about space exploration and active in their communities
  • Demonstrated ability in public engagement and/or disseminating information
  • Initiative and ingenuity to engage his/her community in learning about NASA's space exploration efforts
  • Ability to inspire community youth to seek careers in science and technology
  • Makes the best responsible use of the materials provided
  • Each ambassador agrees to hold at least four public events during the year and report on those events


Volunteer Benefits Include:
  • Receive online training from JPL
  • Educational materials supplied by various space missions
  • Contact with mission scientists
  • E-Mail updates with mission information and news
  • Satisfaction of knowing you've made a difference in someone's life

jacob
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Re: Second career: astronomy and space exploration

Post by jacob »

Getting "involved in a space mission" is like saying you want to get involved in a hospital. Needs more specificity.

At the amateur level, there's useful research serious people can do in astronomy.
The two that come to mind are variable star recording and comet hunting.
https://www.aavso.org/observing-main
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... er-comets/

At the professional research level, you need a phd. Most of that stuff is done with computers where you operate a telescope on the other side of the world after applying for time, etc. Then you get a giant data file and you analyze that to extract some data. And if you do astrophysics (which I did), you build models to understand that data. Read this: https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0310368.pdf ...

Also see the outreach path suggested by Campitor. That might be fun if you're one of those rare outgoing science unicorns. Planetariums? I've seen a couple of instances of people running a B&B but with telescopes.

If you just wanna be part of it ... https://www.spacex.com/careers/list https://www.blueorigin.com/careers https://jobs.orbitalatk.com/ https://nasajobs.nasa.gov/default.htm https://www.ulalaunch.com/careers ... there's everything from working in the cafeteria to being a security guard to fixing HVAC and general sysadmin stuff ... just like a hospital. These are big operations.

Realistically, the most robust path to something that gets you involved with the space part of the space program is a degree in space science (or physics or engineering) and then looking towards either mission control or instrument building. A masters would be pretty solid. I dunno if BSc gets you there. Otherwise, there's always defense. They do missiles too. If you already have a STEM background, lateral moves are possible if you have some skill they need, e.g. C++ programming.

Jason

Re: Second career: astronomy and space exploration

Post by Jason »

All the tie dye wearing physics/astronomy guys I ripped bong hits with in college went on to lucrative careers in bomb building. Shooting down enemy spacecraft is just as important as building our own. I'm thinking Elon Musk is feeling sufficiently beleaguered to want to rain something highly destructive upon his stockholders when he finally gets his flying Teslas off the ground.

daylen
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Re: Second career: astronomy and space exploration

Post by daylen »

Yeah, understanding basic physics would definitely be useful when building software/hardware products that interact with the environment like sensors/instruments.

Not at the level of manipulating mathematical equations, but at least at the level of explaining the implications of thermodynamics and electromagnetic radiation.

Also.. data, data, data..
Last edited by daylen on Sun Aug 05, 2018 12:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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TheWanderingScholar
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Re: Second career: astronomy and space exploration

Post by TheWanderingScholar »

@jacob

I am just cuirous:
Are exogeographers an actual thing or not?

I know Mars has GIS which can be useful, however I never heard of an exogeography program before.

jacob
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Re: Second career: astronomy and space exploration

Post by jacob »

@TWS - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_geology You mean this? I know some people. Otherwise, I don't know; people are certainly turning imaging into maps if that's what you mean instead.

ZAFCorrection
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Re: Second career: astronomy and space exploration

Post by ZAFCorrection »

@Augustus:

If we take (people who can build/run space gizmos)/(people who can code) and (people who can build/run space gizmos)/(people who have some kind of four year education), the numbers are more-or-less equal (~0). Without some additional education, your competition might be the people who are noteworthy enough to get a blog post.

Ninja'd

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TheWanderingScholar
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Re: Second career: astronomy and space exploration

Post by TheWanderingScholar »

@jacobf:

Yeah, I mean a little bit of both. I was leaning towards more imaging and making maps, instead of geology. Also looking at possible seasonal variations in rare instances where it exists. (i.e. methane production season on Mars, where elevated levels of methane production is higher for some reason.)

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Mister Imperceptible
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Re: Second career: astronomy and space exploration

Post by Mister Imperceptible »

@Augustus

Elon Musk needs your help.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/busi ... tesla.html

ThisDinosaur
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Re: Second career: astronomy and space exploration

Post by ThisDinosaur »

@MI
Musk is having a break down, but SpaceX is doing great. In fact, they maybe just made a way in for OP Augustus to get involved in space exploration.

Musk recently tweeted about using a "party balloon" to recover the Falcon 2nd stage. A U of Maryland engineer researching inflatable reusable heatshields tweeted him back, and Musk replied that he's interested in their help.

Here's what I propose;
Augustus should find some grad students working in fields relevant to those subsurface lakes on mars. Find some engineers as well. Help them put together a proposal to land a spacecraft at those locations and practice the Sabatier ISRU fuel making process that SpaceX is planning to use to get their spacecrafts back to earth.

Musk or SpaceX may very well provide your funding, or at least offer a major discount on launch costs.

WalkOnWildfire
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Re: Second career: astronomy and space exploration

Post by WalkOnWildfire »

@Augustus

I was thinking that since you have three years to go you could begin a blog or similar site. I noticed all the great ideas and people you attracted with this post, and I wonder if you created a site it would attract even more that are tied to your interests. Whether or not you thought of it as a business, it would be a just great place to stash resources, ideas and brainstorm. I'd bet a lot of people would like to follow your journey towards your dream of working in space exploration. I know I would!

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