91制片厂

Charlie Nitschelm 鈥�20 started applying for jobs related to space exploration when he was a freshman. Every time, he was auto-denied, his application rejected without being read, sometimes within an hour of sending. Then he had one of those chance life moments with just about the biggest player in the game.

Nitschelm came to 91制片厂 not knowing what he wanted to do, so, because it was something he was good at, he decided to major in math. Enter another life-altering moment 鈥� a video of a sub-orbital rocket landing鈥� and he switched to .

鈥淚t was in January, the start of my second semester. I still remember that moment,鈥� Nitschelm says of the day that set him on the course to study space science. 鈥淚t was a YouTube video of听 SpaceX鈥檚 Falcon 9 rocket landing after flying to space. It still gives me goosebumps.鈥�

After that, Nitschelm founded 91制片厂鈥檚 (SEDS), landed a Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship, which connects students with internships at commercial spaceflight companies, and interned this past summer with Rocket Lab, a private aerospace manufacturer and launch service provider headquartered in California.

鈥淚f we didn鈥檛 have the audacity to look up 鈥� if we were in a village surrounded by mountains thousands of years ago and hadn鈥檛 looked over that peak, we鈥檇 still be stuck in that village.鈥�

On July 25, Nitschelm took time off from his internship to attend the Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship summit. He remembers the date clearly because that鈥檚 the day he met Elon Musk.

The summit attendees were going to get a brief meeting with the SpaceX founder where he would answer their questions; the 25 fellows each submitted a question. Only four were selected; one of them was Nitschelm鈥檚. Then, after Musk had left the room, one of his assistants sought Nitschelm out.

鈥淪he said 鈥楳r. Musk wants to talk to you,'鈥� the Portsmouth, New Hampshire native says. 鈥淚 got to talk with him for about 10 minutes. He asked me why I hadn鈥檛 applied to SpaceX, and I told him I had, but that I鈥檝e always been denied. After that, my information got passed on and I ended up getting an interview.鈥�

And a job.

Nitschelm had five phone interviews with five different people over a two-week period. Then SpaceX flew him to Los Angeles. He gave an hour-long technical presentation on his work with rocketry and then interviewed one-on-one with team members for more than six hours. The next day they called and offered him the job. He starts July 8 as a build engineer working on Starship, SpaceX鈥檚 next launch vehicle destined to land the first humans on Mars.

鈥淚t was all pretty amazing. The hiring rate for engineers at SpaceX is below 1 percent, and most of those come from the top 10 aerospace schools,鈥� Nitschelm says. 鈥淟ife is about moments. If I hadn鈥檛 had that moment of seeing that rocket launch, I would never have gone into space exploration.鈥�

He could have started at SpaceX sooner, but he had a prior commitment with his fellow SEDS members to attend the Spaceport America Cup rocket competition next June in New Mexico 鈥� if they got in. At the time he accepted the job, he didn鈥檛 know they had.

鈥淢ore than 250 teams apply and only 150 get in, and around half of those are international,鈥� Nitschelm says.

In June 2020, the 91制片厂 SEDS team will present the results of their three-year rocket-making project, 鈥淛ourney to Spaceport.鈥�

鈥淲e learn new things by going into territories we don鈥檛 know,鈥� Nitschelm says. 鈥淭hink about what鈥檚 going to happen in the next decades. Think about landing on Mars, and what that will mean to us as a species, to leave our home planet and live on another planet.鈥�

In answer to the question that many people ask about the benefit of space exploration, Nitschelm says, 鈥淭here is so much that needs to be invented because we need to invent it for exploration,鈥� and cites the Hubble Space Telescope as example: when the first images from the telescope were viewed, they were blurry. The method used to fix the problem helped make mammograms more accurate.

鈥淲e are explorers by nature,鈥� Nitschelm says. 鈥淚f we didn鈥檛 have the audacity to look up 鈥� if we were in a village surrounded by mountains thousands of years ago and hadn鈥檛 looked over that peak, we鈥檇 still be stuck in that village.鈥�