The Overview — Liftoff
Fueling the next generation of aerospace engineers
Liftoff
The transition from the ground to becoming airborne, embodying the culmination of hard work and the beginning of exploration.
In this newsletter, you’ll find:
🚀 A technical introduction to GNC: guidance, navigation, and control
🎓 Tips on landing the graduate school of your dreams
🗞️ Aerospace news: air travel safer than ever, becoming an AsCan, and updates on ‘the big ol’ rocket’
🚀 Featured Technology
A Trajectory into Guidance, Navigation, and Control Anshuk Shares Some Tips and Personal Experiences on How to Get Into GNC 🚀
On December 21st, 2015, SpaceX accomplished something that had never been successfully done before with an orbital-class rocket. The booster stage autonomously returned to Earth and performed a vertical landing. Nine years later, rocket landings have become commonplace, increasing reusability and decreasing launch costs. One of the key technologies involved in making this a reality is GNC Engineering.
GNC stands for Guidance ("Where does the vehicle need to go?"), Navigation ("Where is the vehicle? What's around it?") and Control (”How do we get the vehicle where it needs to be?"). With hundreds of rockets flying yearly and satellite constellations becoming a reality, GNC engineers are now a sought-after resource. Here’s a brief overview of some steps towards becoming a GNC engineer:
Learning the prerequisites and fundamentals: Mastering calculus, linear algebra, and software tools like MATLAB/Python is crucial for aspiring high schoolers/college freshman. Then in college, understanding feedback loops, PID control, and block diagrams are fundamental to mastering controls engineering.
Being proactive as an undergraduate: Hands-on projects through engineering teams can take you beyond the theory and bring your GNC concepts to reality by teaching you implementation: hardware, integrating sensors, modeling system dynamics, and coding servos.
Research experience: Getting involved in GNC-related research can expose you to cutting-edge GNC tech, teach you to analyze results, and teach you to present your work in a coherent format.
Internships and Graduate School: With experience in building GNC projects and/or research experience, you have the leverage to reach out to GNC/Robotics engineers about career opportunities. Graduate school is also a common choice to further develop your GNC knowledge with advanced control and optimization.
This field is only going to grow in necessity and capability. Wouldn’t it be epic to design the algorithms that land humans on Mars?
🗞️ Aerospace News
Air travel safer than ever; gravity unimpressed
Despite a rocky start to 2024, 2023 has been one of the safest years for commercial air travel. A couple of important statistics:
To experience a fatal commercial air travel accident, you’d have to travel by air daily for 103,239 years.
The all-accident rate (including non-fatal accidents) was 1 for every 1.26 million flights. For reference, the odds of being struck by lightning in your lifetime in the U.S. is 1 in 15,300.
Looking north of the stratosphere are NASA’s newest class of astronauts, who graduated during a ceremony on March 5th at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson described the astronauts as “pioneers who will help us embark on [a] new era of exploration … [exploring] the cosmos, including future missions to the Moon, on to Mars, and beyond”.
And be sure to keep an eye out for Starship Flight 3, which is tentatively scheduled for March 14th. Check out this wicked shot of the colossus at night during a fueling test in Boca Chica, Texas … 10 million pounds of liquid methane and oxygen propellant!
👥 Personal Experiences
Top 3 Tips To Land the Graduate School of Your Dreams 🎓
Getting into a graduate program in aerospace engineering can be a career-defining moment. Here are Tagg’s top 3 tips to land the graduate school of your dreams:
Choose the correct research advisor as early as possible who publishes with student authors.
Establish meaningful connections and friendships to get impactful letters of recommendation from those who can attest to your drive and character.
Craft your authentic story. Dig deep and connect the dots so that each piece of your aerospace journey supports why you’re where you are now and where you want to go.
Check out the full article online (click below) to get the knowledge and tools needed to land the graduate school of your dreams.
🔗 Links to Resources
Awesome Aerospace Engineering resources — a Github repository of technical aerospace learning materials, including fluid mechanics, structures, dynamics, and more
Everyday Astronaut — a popular YouTube channel that covers aerospace news, talks, and mission livestreams
Payload Space — a newsletter with the focus on aerospace business
💬 Quote of the Week
"From space, I saw Earth as a precious, fragile ball of life hanging in the void of space, and I became more convinced than ever that we must protect and preserve it."
— Edgar Mitchell, an Apollo 14 astronaut who spent over 9 hours walking on the Moon in 1971
Thanks for reading our first issue of The Overview—the Liftoff edition. Stay tuned to our newsletter as we bring you the latest aerospace news, advice, and technology.
Stellar vibes,
Tagg, Anshuk, Maggie, Isaac