• Question: What's it like being an engineer?

    Asked by 251spcc35 to Rhys, Mike, Katie, Dan, Camilla on 15 Jun 2015. This question was also asked by 925spcc29, Unknown......, 374spcc29.
    • Photo: Katie Sparks

      Katie Sparks answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      I spend most of my time making a computer model of the spacecraft on a computer. I need different bits of information, so I work with other people to make sure my model can answer the questions we want. I also don’t know everything there is to know about spacecraft and computer modelling (I’m not sure anyone does!) so I ask lots of questions from other engineers there too, as well as trying out different ways of doing things. There is a lot of thinking involved, sometimes involving lots of maths (we try and get the computers to do the really hard stuff, but the computer needs to know what you want) but in the most part it is really creative.

    • Photo: Camilla Weiss

      Camilla Weiss answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      Varied and hardly ever dull (yes, I’m afraid there are the occasionally dull bits of paperwork)! Being a satellite engineer is almost always interesting mainly because you’re working with so many different teams of people. I work in a team that designs and builds the data handling components, so computers, data storage – the bits that talk to the rest satellite – and this means I have to know a bit about how everything else on the satellite works which is why I enjoy it so much. I’m always learning something new either about my work or about engineering in general.

      There isn’t really a typical day – the day might start out with a plan but sometime problems pop up so you have to be quite adaptable. Problem solving can be fun too though and is a big part of being an engineer.

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