Since my blog is entitled Houston Chronicles, I thought it would be appropriate to talk about how I came to Houston. It may surprise you to know that I have not lived here that long. I was born in St. Louis, MO and lived there for 18 years. St. Louis is a great city! I'll have to blog about it some time... I lived in several different areas of St. Louis: Florissant, St. Charles, and Chesterfield. I never imagined that I would live anywhere else! Pretty much my whole family is in St. Louis - mom, dad, little sister, big sister and her family, big brother and his family and my other big brother is across the river in Illinois. My Great Aunt Ruth lives in St. Louis, so did my grandma for the last several years until she passed away.
It all started in 10th grade. I learned about Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama one day when I was poking around the internet - don't remember how exactly I came across it. Regardless, I decided that I really wanted to go to Space Camp during the summer after sophomore year of high school - it was the year 2000. The high school camp called "Advanced Space Academy" lasted for 6 days. I signed up for the Mission Specialist track which entailed flying around the Payload Bay of the Orbiter during simulations ("sims") - how cool is that? I soaked up the experience like a sponge. I learned every fact they threw at us in 6 days. We had 3 short sims and one long sim. For the long sim, I was in Mission Control because I ended up liking that job more than being an astronaut - I know, I'm weird! In Mission Control, the counselors do silly things to keep you entertained. They'd sit in the back and make Star Wars quotes pop up on our consoles! It was very entertaining. After Space Camp, I was hooked. I came back and told my big brother that I liked my math and science classes, and I loved Space Camp - but what kind of job could I do that entailed all 3? He said I could be an "Aerospace Engineer."
I wish I had a picture of that moment because it turned out to be a defining one. From that point on, I continued to take all the math and science classes available to me. I took AP Bio, Chem, Physics, and Calculus. When senior year rolled around, I used US News & World Report's college rankings to discover that Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, FL was the #1 Aerospace Engineering school (for colleges without a PhD program). St. Louis University was #2 at the time. Therefore, I applied to both schools. After being accepted to both and calculating that it would cost the same to go to either school (factoring in scholarships), I decided to head down to Florida for 4 years.
Naturally, I majored in AE, thanks to my brother's advice. I loved my classes, professors and experiences at school. I was a member of, and later President of, the AE Honor Society - Sigma Gamma Tau. I also went back to Space Camp as a Counselor during the summer of 2004.
The next summer, I accepted an internship with Boeing in Houston. I guess it should have occurred to me that if I wanted to be in the human spaceflight business, there was a very good chance I would end up in Houston. But I didn't realize that until 2006 when I graduated and took a job with Boeing in Houston - same team as my internship. I never thought of Houston as the place where human space flight comes together. I knew that Mission Control and the Astronauts were in Houston, but I didn't realize that the engineering, analysis, and hardware owners are in Houston too! I guess I thought that it was all in Florida. After I came here in 2005 for my first internship, my eyes were opened as I saw the Johnson Space Center from the inside for the first time.
There are numerous aerospace companies nestled in the Clear Lake area - all working on NASA contracts. Boeing, Lockheed, Oceaneering, Jacobs, USA, Barrios, Wylie, Hamilton-Sundstrand, MEI, and others. It takes thousands of employees to keep the Space Shuttle and International Space Station flying. Now we have Constellation in the mix! It's probably common knowledge to some, but back in high school when I decided to go into aerospace engineering, Houston really wasn't on my radar screen. I just wasn't aware of how Houston fit into the picture. Now that I'm here, I see that JSC is really the epicenter of Human Space Flight.
So... now I've been here for 2 years. Time flies! In the last year, my horizons have really been expanding. I've been participating on a team working on JSC's 20 Year Vision (more on that later) and I've been helping to lead Boeing's new hire club: REACH.
It's funny where life takes you!
2 comments:
Hi Natalie, I've been following you & some other NASA folks for a while on Twitter (@aeroG). I also follow a huge number of aero folks on @AeroTweets, you might want to check its following list sometime.
Anyway, it's both funny and disturbing to me how hard it is for kids to figure out they ought to study engineering. It's kind of a pet peeve of mine. You were fortunate to have your brother point you in the right direction, but I wonder how many students never have that. Both they and society suffers as we miss the benefit of their talents.
"I never thought of Houston as the place where human space flight comes together."
As a native Houstonian, Ouch!! Actually you don't hear Houston referred to as "space city" as much anymore. OTOH, the media, especially the Houston Chronicle (the one w/o the "s") and major TV stations pay a lot closer attention than they used to.
We just had some friends move back to St. Louis last year. They were here in Texas for a decade, and managed to see a lot of the state, but were glad to go back, so I guess it's a pretty nice city.
Hi aeroG! Thanks for the comment!
Yes, it's a big problem in the states - we graduate so few engineers per year compared to the rest of the world. I read that "Media reports have stated that in 2004 the United States produced 70,000 engineering graduates while China graduated 600,000 and India 350,000." (here)
One one hand, that number is small, but the demand for engineers is pretty much met by the number of graduates, at least from where I sit. Some of my friends graduating from Riddle this year are having a tough time finding jobs...so that leads me to believe that the market is pretty saturated right now. I think that with bigger space budgets, we would need more engineers. :)
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