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nblackhand6 karma

Draw pretty pictures on the whiteboards. :P

No, but seriously though, math nerds are beloved, we need them. Maybe go intern for the guidance & control people? They do a lot of analysis, I think.

nblackhand3 karma

I am not OP, but:

It's named after the constellation, of course, c'mon, NASA's like 50% excited kids with telescopes. :P

nblackhand2 karma

MIT's working on that. Your best bet there would be to get into their graduate program. Slightly more achieveable goals here might be trying to get an internship with the people that make space suits now, ILC Dover.

Not my department, but space suit design and cabin insulation are almost definitely different tasks, think. They're totally different engineering problems.

nblackhand2 karma

Hi, I'm a stray physics major, allow me to make a suggestion:

Medical physics graduate programs. Physics undergrads have to take a lot of bio classes to get into those, I noticed, so if you've already taken a bunch of biology as a major, you might be in an okay place if you go take some physics classes as electives. The industry is under-supplied with medical physicists, and there's a lot of jobs that only they can do - laser surgery equipment comes to mind. I can't think of anything obvious they'd do for NASA specifically, but honestly, there's plenty of weird tiny niches, and the more specialized you are, the better your odds are of landing in one. And, hey, astronauts are people who require medical attention sometimes.

Of course, it is never too late to change your major - if you want to switch, go talk to the people in your school's physics department. Astrophysics is never an undergrad degree, but it often is a concentration type for a general BSc Physics, and regardless there are probably relevant electives. You might end up staying a little longer than four years, but that's generally superior to being stuck your whole life in a job you don't want.

nblackhand1 karma

Hi guys! Good wishes from up at Goddard. =)

Do we know what kind of surface charging Orion might be looking at dealing with and what should be done to deal with that? Has it been designed to protect against ESD events in the crew module (likely over for the period of time it'd take to get to Mars), for instance? I haven't been following the project closely.