A software job in aerospace (avionics or analysis) can be worse than a pure software position, because your managers understand your work even less. Also, there are huge gulfs between reading about X, studying X at the university level, and working in X industry. I see a lot of people entering aerospace programs with dreamy ambitions from Reddit, Neil Degrasse Tyson, SpaceX articles. Then they can't hack the physics and math and 200 page design reports. It's a bit like kids going into CS because they like playing video games.

Most aerospace jobs are pretty Dilbert/Office Space. At the megahuge defense contractor where I used to work, we had Office Space characterizations for many of our managers/coworkers. If you ever want your space dreams dashed, read Glassdoor reviews. We just hired an ex-SpaceXer who loved the mission but hated sacrificing his life as a 20-something to working 70-hour weeks.

I worked at a couple of major defense/aerospace companies in college, and you're spot on. At both places, I (the intern) and other junior engineers were doing meaningless paperwork that could be replaced by a relational database. At one of the jobs, I actually wrote that database and replaced myself, which made my manager very angry, as I wasn't doing what I was supposed to. I talked to a guy a year later and they were still using the thing I wrote.

On the other hand, one of my friends works at a small (~30 people) aerospace company that does various contract work for prototyping and research that the larger firms do, and I'm pretty sure it's a dream job. He does a mix of everything from cool analysis work to working with state of the art machining tools to build stuff. And he's not some PhD genius from MIT either, he has the same degree I do from a middling state school. He just had a lot of passion and drive and found the place that rewarded that.

I know that feel. I'm at a tiny aerospace firm that manages to move slower than any of the huge companies where I once worked. I'm in the process of trying to convince my analysis group to move to a real SQL database instead of hundreds of Excel files, but it's going to be tough. These people are technical in the sense they all have aerospace/mechanical engineering degrees, but know as much about databases as maybe my parents (i.e. nothing).

You first job is probably billing the government/tax player by the hours. The more hours, the higher the billing. Automation means less $ for your boss.

Actually, at large defense contractors there is significant pressure not to bill more than 40 hours per week. It (theoretically) keeps costs down and makes the contractor more appealing for future work. It skews the actuals all to hell, though, because on paper it looks like a project took X hours when it actually took 1.2X hours because everyone was working an average of 48 hours a week but only billing 40. In some cases it can skew even worse. I had a couple workaholic co-workers who regularly put in 25+ unpaid extra hours.

The government doesn't particularly like this, but they usually don't clamp down on the practice. They do get upset when contractors knowingly distort their bids with estimates of this, though. Marietta, before they got rolled up into Lockheed Martin via mergers, once got in trouble because they submitted a bid wherein they assumed "full-time" would be 43 hours per week and set their time projections accordingly. The government auditors were pissed when they found out.

That's exactly what I imagined. Especially since the entire industry basically works with the government.

I was thinking of working for or at one of space startups: SpaceX, Blue Origin, Planetary Resources, Virgin Galactic, and the mars one foundation.

The truth is, my goal is to eventually start my own company.

Kilroy, I'm the author of this post -- if you're a software engineer interested in space, maybe we should stay in touch (email in profile). I definitely had a hard time figuring out how to "break in" to commercial space and I get the sense there's a shortage of higher-level software talent in the industry. As commercial space matures, there is greater opportunity for people like us to get involved.

I agree that a lot of aerospace seems Dilbert-esque. I think (and hope) there will be opportunity to change that in the long term.

I would like to shoot you an email as well, if you don't mind. I left my defense aerospace job after 9.5 years because I just couldn't make it work in that kind of Dilbert-esque environment. I gave it 9.5 years because I really love the problems, the systems, and the technology.

Can I suggest to just start - there are going to be a gazillion suppliers to SpaceX etc - if you want to be in the industry, you can be in.

If you want to put your stuff in space or even orbit, may I suggest looking at micro satellites - there is going to be a vast number of things people will want doing that are going to be within the capability of a large lump of silicon. And the big boys will happily take a dozen iphone equivalents and put them in LEO in passing.

That to me is the growth area

Edit: sorry seemed a bit off dumped the hobbyist reference - just thinking of the issues of orbital speed - until / if orbital speed is achievable for an cluster of iPhones dangling from a weather ballon, then everything depends on huge great rockets. And SpaceX and it's ilk, for all the impact, is only expecting to see a halving of launch costs. It is going to remain a big government big industry game for a very very long time.

I like this advice. I worked with someone who built an aerospace company around an ultra-reliable actuator design he developed with a friend. They had put hardware on dozens of missions, including some inter-planetary missions, before they were acquired a few years later.

A lot of the advice he gave me centered around understanding how supplier contracts are granted / won, and the importance of building relationships and a reputation in the industry. The biggest thing that stuck with me, though, was that it was even possible for a startup company to put hardware in space, let alone mission-critical stuff.

So, I second the "just start" suggestion. Maybe I'll take the same advice myself some day.

Agreed, I should just start. Next year, I'm going to attend a few conferences, just to learn more about the industry, chat with people etc.

The cost do need to dramatically drop, for say, large scale mining operations to happen.

I think we'll ultimately need a space elevator or something extreme. Maybe that's possible with LOTS of advances in carbon nanotube tech... If so, I think several governments could be persuaded to put up funding in the future. Just like we did with the International Space Station.

If the goal is to start your own company, then start your own company.

There are a lot of similarities though, rocket ships run on software.

That said, there are huge challenges in robot manipulators, signals management (space is noisy) and vacuum operations.

One of the things I've been noodling on is a self contained mineral extraction pipeline. You know you suck in raw material on one side and pull out some useful mineral or minerals out of the other. There are several challenges here, one being that many existing extraction processes rely on either an abundance of water or power or both, and often were designed assuming gravity worked :-). So for grins and giggles I've been noodling on "The Mosquito" which is a cross between a well auger and a science payload. It combines three things I find fascinating, robotics, space, and systems design so it is a lot of fun.

Interesting. Do you have a blog or website showing off what you have so far? I'd love to learn more.

I think 2 main things will drive space "exploration":

- mining resources from astroids - solar arrays for more efficient power generation

Actually its just notes in my notebook and stuff clipped into an Evernote notebook but it I'll see about putting something up on my robotics page.