I'm not someone who posts on Reddit often, but this caught my attention.
I worked on missions like Curiosity, SMAP, and Mars Sample Return for 15 years at JPL right out of college, and I'm far from a math expert. Case in point: I almost failed my college ordinary differential equations class and my math GRE, and I was still hired. There were other things going on my life at those times that contributed to the poor results, and I put in a lot of work to recover (got a B in partial differential equations!), but still: grades aren't everything.
I had the privilege of going to a really good school in my small hometown, but, even there, I hadn't taken physics or calculus by my sophomore year. I did get to take both my Junior year, followed by AP Physics and AP Calculus as a senior. It took some convincing and extra assignments to get me into those classes, and I definitely wasn't the best in the class once I was there.
Through all this, what got me to JPL was that I really, really wanted to be a rocket scientist. Without natural genius, I turned to the next best skill I had: grit. I had to work twice as hard (or more) as my peers for a fraction of the result, but it came together in the end.
The best piece of advice I can give you about math is this: math is just a means to an end.
No offense to the mathematicians, I truly envy your skills, but to an engineer, math is a tool. Just like a wrench or a hammer. You do not have to love it, you do not have to like it, but you do need to know where to find it when a problem comes up. You use math when you need it, and you use just enough of it to get the job done. Any more and you're just wasting time (the planets wait for no one).
More important than knowing a lot of math is to understand the principles and relationships behind the physics. You can always look up an equation, reach for a calculator, etc. I can count on two hands the number of integrals I had to solve on the flight projects I mentioned above. You know what I did end up using a bunch that I never thought I would: Taylor series expansion. I definitely had to relearn those when they came up...
The point I want to make is that even with all the education afforded by a BS and MS degree in Astronautics, you still won't have all the answers at your fingertips. There is no solution manual when you work on advanced spacecraft. You often have to invent. That means constantly returning to the fundamentals and being willing to learn (and relearn) the math to pull it all together. Once you've solved that one critical equation, the rest is "just" execution, like any other job on this planet.
Keep your head up and stick with it. Seeing something you designed and built sitting on another planet is well worth it! Also, as many have said, if engineering isn't your path, there are still many ways to contribute!
mhendry t1_j9iq9rb wrote
Reply to want to work at nasa but math is not my strong suit, any tips? by jiraiya_myoboku
I'm not someone who posts on Reddit often, but this caught my attention.
I worked on missions like Curiosity, SMAP, and Mars Sample Return for 15 years at JPL right out of college, and I'm far from a math expert. Case in point: I almost failed my college ordinary differential equations class and my math GRE, and I was still hired. There were other things going on my life at those times that contributed to the poor results, and I put in a lot of work to recover (got a B in partial differential equations!), but still: grades aren't everything.
I had the privilege of going to a really good school in my small hometown, but, even there, I hadn't taken physics or calculus by my sophomore year. I did get to take both my Junior year, followed by AP Physics and AP Calculus as a senior. It took some convincing and extra assignments to get me into those classes, and I definitely wasn't the best in the class once I was there.
Through all this, what got me to JPL was that I really, really wanted to be a rocket scientist. Without natural genius, I turned to the next best skill I had: grit. I had to work twice as hard (or more) as my peers for a fraction of the result, but it came together in the end.
The best piece of advice I can give you about math is this: math is just a means to an end.
No offense to the mathematicians, I truly envy your skills, but to an engineer, math is a tool. Just like a wrench or a hammer. You do not have to love it, you do not have to like it, but you do need to know where to find it when a problem comes up. You use math when you need it, and you use just enough of it to get the job done. Any more and you're just wasting time (the planets wait for no one).
More important than knowing a lot of math is to understand the principles and relationships behind the physics. You can always look up an equation, reach for a calculator, etc. I can count on two hands the number of integrals I had to solve on the flight projects I mentioned above. You know what I did end up using a bunch that I never thought I would: Taylor series expansion. I definitely had to relearn those when they came up...
The point I want to make is that even with all the education afforded by a BS and MS degree in Astronautics, you still won't have all the answers at your fingertips. There is no solution manual when you work on advanced spacecraft. You often have to invent. That means constantly returning to the fundamentals and being willing to learn (and relearn) the math to pull it all together. Once you've solved that one critical equation, the rest is "just" execution, like any other job on this planet.
Keep your head up and stick with it. Seeing something you designed and built sitting on another planet is well worth it! Also, as many have said, if engineering isn't your path, there are still many ways to contribute!