All you've ever wanted to do was work at NASA/SpaceX

That does suck then user.

Now i'm curious as to which country this is :p

>tfw everyone in my prereq classes at my community college wants to either do computer engineering/science or aerospace engineering
>tfw every single one of them I ask either wants to work at a silicon valley tech company or NASA or SpaceX.
It amazes me how idealistic these people are.

I went the CC -> Caltech -> SpaceX route with a couple of detours in between so it can be done but yeah, those kids should just focus on not dropping out for the most part.

Good luck at your CC, I know that shit can be brutally infuriating.

Mind i ask what type of work you do? In as much detail as you can offer ofc

I don't want to get too specific but currently I'm working in Hardware R&D primarily on the propulsion side.

I've been here for a while and have had a chance to bounce around a couple of different departments with the exception of avionics/software dev.

That space shuttle is all wrong

>Spacex
Enjoy working 80 hour weeks and musk be praised for any of your accomplishments

>Living in Hawaii
>>not American
???
OK, I understand you don't know what country Hawaii is in.
But then why did you post anything?
If you're unsure of something, Google that shit first.

80 hour weeks are honestly relatively rare now days even among the engineering staff. You don't have many people going home after a 40 hour week but plenty are out of here after 50-55.

Most only hit 65-70 on launch weeks every once in a while. Anyone working more than 55 is doing so completely on their own volition and contrary to rumors it's perfectly acceptable to put your foot down if the hours get to be too much.

Unless you plan on starting your own company you need to get used to higher ups getting praised for your work. At least with Musk I see him here on weekends and late nights.

You might want to work on your reading comprehension there sport. Pretty sure that's two different anons.

Thanks user, sounds like the perfect job desu.
Im currently doing a bachelor in ME, going to SDSU this fall for an exchange so hopefully I'd get a shot at one of the aerospace propulsion classes that they have.

Post some kind of proof that you actually work at SpaceX.

>all you've ever wanted to do was work at NASA/SpaceX

Is this a meme?

Most Engineers at NASA are Mechanical Engineers tho

>You might want to work on your reading comprehension there sport. Pretty sure that's two different anons.
Obviously.
But the one was greentexting, and it looked like he was paraphrasing the first.

Well, what do you want them to say?

>"Yeah, my plan is to make $50k a year, have 2.5 kids, and buy a Bentley when I'm 70 years old, if I don't get divorced"

What is musk like?

I'm taking aerospace propulsion too when the time comes. I am excite

Rockets'n shit, dude. Rockets!

s-so it's realy t-true? non US citzens can never work at NASA?

heh irone

I'm glad you're enthusiastic but no job is perfect, SpaceX is no exception in that regard. It's definitely a cool place to work but in my experience people who have unrealistic expectations when coming here end up being disappointed. I think it's always wise to temper excitement for a job with the acknowledgement that there will always be drawbacks.

Good luck at SDSU.

No thanks. I don't get anything from posting on an anonymous Nepalese basket weaving forum beyond the mild satisfaction of answering some questions so I don't particularly care if you believe me or not.

I don't know him outside of work but in my interactions with him he's always seemed professional. He can be awkward in large groups or when he's meeting people for the first time but is also pretty chatty at times. He's pretty uncompromising when I've been in group meetings with him but doesn't seem like too much of an arrogant asshole. My desk is maybe 10 meters from his work area and I've never seen him yell at anyone, he's generally pretty low key.

He really does know his stuff with regards to rockets though, and he puts in some long hours with the rest of us.

His teeth are really nice and whenever I've gotten close to him I've noticed he smells good.

continued

Any job that touches rockets in the US is going to fall under ITAR, meaning that generally it will only be open to "US Persons", which means US Citizens or Permanent Residents.

You can get ITAR exemptions for non-US Persons but as I said above it is costly and time consuming so you need to be very good at what you do. There are a handful of people at SpaceX who this has been done for but it's very rare.

There are people at NASA whose work doesn't fall under ITAR. For instance if you're in bio science I doubt ITAR is a concern. Most people who work at NASA facilities are actually contractors from defense/aero corps so there are non-US Persons working in non ITAR controlled fields there.

How long do you have to live there to be a permanent citizen?

It varies based on your immigration status. The shortest path is if you are a refuge or asylum seeker in which case it still takes upwards of a year.

You can also be sponsored by a relative/spouse who is an existing citizen.

The longest and probably most common path is going from a work visa like an H1-B to Permanent Resident. The entire process takes several years but I'm not sure if this is due to a hard set minimum time needed to live here or if this is simply due to the entire process taking very long. I know the administrative processing time itself takes multiple years.

It took my parents and I 5-6 years if I remember correctly.

>His teeth are really nice and whenever I've gotten close to him I've noticed he smells good.
Kek.

>I'm glad you're enthusiastic but no job is perfect, SpaceX is no exception in that regard. It's definitely a cool place to work but in my experience people who have unrealistic expectations when coming here end up being disappointed. I think it's always wise to temper excitement for a job with the acknowledgement that there will always be drawbacks.
Ofc, I merely see it as an interest these days, so i will at least seize the chance to get a few classes that peaks my curiosity. Hopefully I'l get to view a launch in Florida at some point.

Anyway, whats your take on the usual SpaceX BTFO vs MuskFanboy shit-throwing discussions that pops up here now and then? Ever showed them to the guys at the office while either laughing or crying, depending on the post?

>Newfags think greentext is only used for paraphrasing

I didn't mean to be condescending, I'm sure you're going into it with realistic expectations, was just pointing out that so many don't and then end up disappointed/burned out.

The Florida launches are great. If you're going to be at SDSU you should see if your time there coincides with any launches from Vandenberg. The views from there aren't as nice as Florida but it's a whole lot closer and Santa Barbara is an awesome area to check out.

>that pops up here now and then
By now and then I hope you mean constantly. My feelings fluctuate between mild amusement and rage inducing but overall I'm pretty ambivalent about it. I try to stay clear of those threads as it will take up way too much of my time if I actually try to engage constructively. I wouldn't mind contributing more technical stuff with regards to things like Raptor dev but SpaceX wouldn't take kindly to that. I never post during launch threads since I've got my hands full. Plus, there are a couple of anons on here who know enough about rockets to generally counter the ULA/Roscosmos shills.

I can understand why the constant SpaceX/Musk fanboyism can get old and why people here react with hostility, hell I'd probably be sick of it if I didn't work here, but generally it's just contrarians being contrarian.

I haven't show threads to anyone at work aside from a software dev in flight control who I know frequents /g/ so he was used to it. I mostly visit Veeky Forums for the trap threads anyway and I don't necessarily want my coworkers knowing about that.

I did mention to Tom Mueller in a meeting about a month ago that there are people on the internet who think the barge landings are just being played in reverse, he was amused.

I'm a "SpaceX BTFO" guy not because I have any hatred for the company but simply because their fanboys are insufferable. Post anything about NASA and you get attacked so I decided to become a militant, defending NASA honour.
Who the hell shows Veeky Forums to their co-workers?

I go to uh as well. Just try to land a spot at HSFL as an ME. HSFL is NASA sponsored iirc.

>fanboys are insufferable
I can understand this on some level and like I said above I might even feel the same way if I didn't work here.

I like to think the casual SpaceX fanboys are at least getting society interested in prioritizing national space exploration again but then I realize they're only fans because its trending on Twitter or some shit and they'll soon enough forget when something new comes along.

With that being said there are some real institutional problems at both NASA and the legacy defense corps that really need to get sorted out. The amount of engineering talent that has been wasted at ULA due to incompetent upper management is criminal.

this sounds like a good backup tbqh

A lot of the pop-sci fanboyinsm might also stem from the fact that SpaceX has a working PR program. As far as I can tell, nobody else promotes the launches and general programs anywhere near as much as they do. I consider myself a Space-Anything Fanboy to be quite honest, but you dont see Boeing or ULA do anywhere near as much PR. Even NASA falls short not so much due to lack of PR but due to the feeling that they never really get anywhere, like with the SLS. Its a big fucking rocket and I love seeing it built, but one without a dream to reach for, it seems. Musk and SpaceX have a lot of well publicized dreams and plans such as Mars, and that gathers followers who want nothing more than watching someone try to make The Expanse a real thing.
The fanboys who become unsufferable are the ones who are a virgin sacrifice away from forming a religion around him.

If we had this conversation say, 5 years ago, I would have been a lot more of a dreamer and less realistic. My country dont have much of an aerospace industry anyway, besides shooting the occasional science rocket over the north pole and scaring the Russians, so unless I move to the states and get a job there I dont see myself working in the industry anyways.

>Living in Hawaii
>Actually going to UH

Bad move bruh. Gotta go to the mainland. UH is a joke, especially for STEM stuff.

Just work for JPL. They work on the NASA missions and because they are a federally funded research institution, not a government entity, citizenship doesn't matter.

That's why JPL collects a lot of foreign PhDs who want to do defense type work but can't get clearance.

SpaceX is known to have a terrible work environment. The burnout rate for engineers is like 2 years.

Musk gets shit done for cheap by working people to the bone and paying them way less than he should.

All you have to do is defect and bring space plans from your country of birth, or be Indian and willing to work for a salary that's one-fourth the going rate for the job.

source?

Then move to the mainland. It's not like you have to be stuck in one place forever.

Do you know that most people only end up working within something like 100 miles from where they grew up? Frankly I think those people should go screw themselves.

Check out OSU, they have the best formula team. Join it and be active in it. SpaceX and Tesla scout for people who have been on it like you would not believe. It's not that far from Hawaii at least in terms of travel time

>because they are a federally funded research institution, not a government entity, citizenship doesn't matter.
That isn't how ITAR works. It has nothing to do with whether or not you're employed by a government entity. I did some joint research at JPL while at Caltech and there were many projects that required ITAR clearance. Hell, I knew international students at Tech who couldn't even get cleared to attend symposiums there.

>The burnout rate for engineers is like 2 years.
No it's not. Some do leave earlier than 2 years but that is in no way the average.

The work environment isn't easy, particularly if you have a family but it's honestly gotten much better in the last 2-3 years. Prior to that the biggest complaint wasn't really the long hours as much as the unpredictable scheduling. There's actually been a lot of progress on this as we've gotten a better handle on production and staff has grown.

Pay isn't great for LA's cost of living but it's not really worse than most locale aerospace corps. It tends to start lower than places like Boeing/LockMart/Northrup but ramps up quicker after the first year or two.

which one of these guys is right? Surely you don't need ITAR clearance to work on a rover?

Things get complicated with ITAR. The big issue is that you have to have systems in place to keep ITAR or other classified material segregated from non-classified material. This can be a huge pain in the ass.

It could be that nothing involving the rovers is actually covered by ITAR but it doesn't matter if the facilities are also being used for ITAR related activities.

The work our baristas do at SpaceX obviously doesn't fall under ITAR but guess what, we still only hire US Persons because they have access to our main facilities.

Welcome to US government contracting.

Are guided tours pretty much dead at JPL and SpaceX due to the ITAR?

not OP, but I have to respectfully disagree. Certain programs are great like international business as well as ocean and earth sciences. But the rest is pretty crap desu

JPL has an open house for the public once or twice a year where they give tours. The JPL campus is pretty large and I'm not sure exactly what the tour consists of. I'm pretty sure mission control and one of the spacecraft assembly bays is on the tour along with other assorted facilities. I believe this is open to any member of the public regardless of whether they are a US Person and no background check is required. The tour is free but there's limited space and requires a sign up in advance, they always run out of space.

We can still give tours to friends and family at SpaceX but we have to submit names ahead of time to run a very simple background check and only US Persons are eligible. Even this is becoming harder now that we've grown fairly large and are really tight on space.

Go away. We don't have enough space jobs for Americans

Do you get time and a half? Of course you probably don't. Stop being a cuck and stand up for a decent pay and lifestyle. I always said Engineering needs a union. If I don't get paid 1.5 for anything over 40 I go home once I hit 40. Fuck them.

Salaried employees are exempt from OT but I feel my overall compensation package is reflective of the work I put in.

I'm happy with both my pay and lifestyle but I appreciate your concern for my well being.

I know that feel, but in a different way.

>work in mobile app development
>dropped out of college
>while in college, didn't target aerospace as a major because space was dead as a doornail and because anything so mathy felt vastly beyond reach
>now in late 20s and probably have zero hope of ever working at SpaceX without pouring a decade of my life into school

Mobile app dev pays great but does jack shit in terms of forwarding humanity.

>old space PR
Yes, it really is a problem. Boeing, Lockheed, NASA, etc couldn't PR their way out of a paper bag. It's no wonder why kids today aren't inspired to become engineers.

Admittedly I know shit about mobile app development but are you sure your skills aren't transferable to some of the coding that goes on at SpaceX? I know we've hired from gaming/VFX studios.

We maintain our own ERP software and have a pretty large IT staff with roles from web dev to UX/UI design.

You need someone to make those rocket video streams go smoothly without cutting out just before landing ^^

>>your college doesn't offer Aerospace Engineering
And? There's ME, EE, Mechatronics, etc.... all of them are needed at a place like that. In fact probably getting one of the classic (aka EE/ME) or something interdisciplinary (Mechatronics, some kind of systems engineering) would be a lot better than AeroE. This: