Sarah Walker
Interview Posted By: Ashley Smith
1. Can you tell us a little about your background? i.e. Where you grow up, what education do you have, a summary of your resume, did you always want to do what you are doing now, when did you start to become interested in STEM, what internships/ volunteering
For as long as I can remember, my mom says age 5, I've been fascinated with the sky. The stars, the moon, the universe - it's like the greatest frontier yet to be understood by mankind. And it's so beautiful! So vast. So incomprehensibly complex and perfectly orchestrated - how orbits and chemical reactions and all of it work together to keep stars and planets and ecosystems in balance. Whoa, sorry, geeked out there for a moment. I always dreamed of going up there one day, just to feel weightlessness and catch a closer glimpse of the cosmos for myself. I was always interested in legos and k'nex growing up, and anything where I got to assemble or construct something electrical or mechanical, like those build-your-own-radio kits. I was good at math and science, but I can't say I thought solving equations was FUN per say - it got WAY more fun when I got to college, and saw all the cool things I could design and build now that I knew HOW to do the math and science behind it. So I think the thought process "Do you enjoy math and science? Great! Then you should be an engineer!" is somewhat deceptive. I'm sure some people truly enjoy pure math homework for itself, but for me, I knew I wanted to be an engineer because I liked to figure out how machines worked, and build massive k'nex towers that were strong and stable. Come to find out, it's math and science that's behind it all, but if you're not begging your calculus teacher for another differential equation problem, that doesn't mean you aren't wired to be an AMAZING engineer - you just have to wait until the pieces fit together and you can see the application of all that work. Anyway, when I got to college, I studied Aerospace Engineering for both my Bachelors and Masters. My masters "specialized", I guess you could say, in Space Systems design (as opposed to Airplanes or Helicopters).
2. What exactly IS your job? What do you do on a day to day basis?
At SpaceX, I'm a Mission Manager. It's basically being the "Project Manager" for a mission/flight - for me at the moment, a Cargo Resupply Mission to the International Space Station. Ever since the Space Shuttle retired, NASA has paid SpaceX to be a cargo resupply service for the astronauts on-board the international space station. So NASA's is one of our biggest customers (with 6 of these resupply missions complete and many more left in the next few years). I am the mission manager for the 6th resupply mission (which launched on April 14th and just returned to earth for a parachute-assisted landing ("splashdown") in the pacific ocean on May 21. I'm also the mission manager for 9th resupply mission, which is scheduled to launch less than a year from now, and the 2nd demonstration mission under the Commercial Crew Program, which will be the first SpaceX flight with astronauts on board. For that matter, it will be the first fully private/commercial vehicle in history to fly humans to the International Space Station - I can't wait! My role is twofold. External-facing, I'm NASA's primary SpaceX point of contact during the 2 years leading up to a particular mission as we build the spacecraft and launch vehicle for them, throughout its time on orbit, and all the way through its safe return to earth when we handover the cargo to them. I coordinate all major milestone reviews with them to brief them on the status of the project, sit on console in mission control for all major operations to keep them aware of how the vehicle is performing, etc. etc. Internal-facing, I'm the project manager working with the team at SpaceX through the design and build of the vehicle, troubleshooting any issues, performing all mission-specific analyses and testing, and ultimately just responsible for ensuring the mission goes off without a hitch. I work hand in hand with the hundreds of design, manufacturing, and operations engineers across the company - they really make the magic happen, and my job is simply to come alongside them, ensure they have the information they need to scope the problem correctly, and support however I can to ensure we reach a great solution!
3. How does STEM relate to your job?How do you use the information you learned from your degree in your job?
At SpaceX, we design and build both the launch vehicle (the rocket, which we call Falcon9) and the spacecraft (the capsule carrying the cargo, which we call Dragon) that brings over 2 tons of food, supplies, and research up to the orbiting laboratory, and then returns just as much cargo from space back to earth. The science they're doing up there is paving the way to prepare astronauts and robotic explorers for future missions to Mars - things like learning how to combat the effects of microgravity on human muscle deterioration, the effects of space radiation on the human body and genome, how to grow plants and other life-sustaining organisms in zero-g, and so much more! They also do so much up there that's directly helping improve our lives here on earth - for example, it's been found that cancer cells grow significantly faster in space than on earth, so the research they can do up there could literally cure cancer faster than our best scientists here on the ground might be able to. Some really amazing stuff! One funny thing that's been all over the media that we sent up on my last mission, CRS-6, was an expresso machine (ISSpresso), the world's first expresso maker that works in zero gravity. Sam Cristoforetti (Italian astronaut on-board the space station right now) was so stoked! Just look at her twitter! Oh! One other crazy cool thing about my recent mission (CRS-6) is that SpaceX as a company is progressively working toward being able to "recover and reuse" our rockets. Imagine how expensive a plane ticket would be if every airplane was single-use, and had to get thrown away at the end of the flight? No one would be able to afford to travel by air! The same is currently true of space flight - we (humanity) haven't yet advanced enough to successfully launch a rocket to space, then fly it back to Earth, do a little refurbishment perhaps, refuel it, and launch it again, over and over. But that's exactly what SpaceX is VERY close to achieving! On CRS-6, the first stage (the most complex and expensive part of the rocket) delivered the second stage and payload to its desired location in space, flipped nearly 180 degrees, flew back to earth toward a tiny floating platform we had positioned in the middle of the ocean, slowed itself down from supersonic speeds to nearly a hover over that platform, and landed! It tipped over a few seconds later because it had a little too much lateral (sideways) speed when it landed, but the fact that we navigated precisely to this target, slowed down enough to land safely, and landed was a REMARKABLE achievement - and one of the most exciting days any of us here at SpaceX had experienced yet! The future is here, and soon space travel will be made affordable, and thus an everyday thing for humankind. Check out SpaceX's facebook and twitter pages for cool videos of the launch and landing. Ok... so did that make it abundantly clear how CRITICAL STEM is to my job? Everything about what we do is solving complex problems in innovative ways - it requires a STRONG understanding of vehicle flight dynamics, loads and dynamic environments, electronic power and computing systems, software, and so much more!
4. How do you balance your work and personal life? Any secrets or advice you’d like to share?
This is certainly been a very difficult lesson for me to learn. I still learn every day how to maintain this balance well. I feel the great weight of responsibility that goes with the amazing opportunity my role at SpaceX affords, and I often feel overwhelmed. Am I really ready for this? It feels so HUGE! What if I screw up? What if, in a multi-million-dollar milestone review, NASA asks me a question about "my" vehicle and I don't know the answer? What if I overlook something and, heaven forbid, the rocket explodes during launch? How will I live with myself? Could I ever recover from that? When these thoughts begin to infiltrate my mind and heart, the impulse is to become a workaholic, work longer and harder to be sure I control every variable of my circumstance. And I'm not saying that I shouldn't give this job my very best, working diligently and sometimes tirelessly to ensure it's done right. I'm just saying that your career is only one aspect of what makes up who you are, and it's vitally important to keep that in the forefront of your mind - to be grounded in who you are both inside and outside of the workplace. With that said, in my mind the most important way to figure out a work/personal life balance that works for both you and your company is to set fair boundaries, be forthright about them, and consistent in them. Of course it helps to have as incredible of a boss as I do, who helps us navigate when it's really important to push for a deadline, and when I should go home to have dinner with my husband and save it for tomorrow. I could tell you all the ways I'm grateful to have the manager I do until the cows come home, but at the end of the day, know that its up to you to figure out the detailed logistics of how you can both do your job well and thrive as a person who does more than work. And it's your responsibility to draw those lines, discuss them with your manager, come to a mutually beneficial agreement, and then stick to them. Of course, there's always going to be a few crazy times here and there where you and your team are pushing hard together for a really important goal and you have to give "more than reasonable" for a stretch, but I consider "consistency" what you do 80-90% of the time.
5. What is one personality trait that you think is universally important for a successful career?
Working well with people! I know, coming from someone talking about an engineering job, that seems counter-intuitive. But if there's one thing I've learned in the corporate workplace, it's that people are everything. How well you approach, solve problems with, understand, respect, and sometimes critique, those people has everything to do with the success of your career and the trajectory of your life. I was really grateful in college at Georgia Tech to be a part of a wonderful Christian sorority called Alpha Delta Chi. And as I stepped into leadership roles within the group, and ultimately was President my last year, it became the perfect training ground for how to interact with (and lead) people. Being a part of such a diverse group of girls teaches you how to learn from each others' differences and honor one another. Especially by taking on leadership roles, I became acquainted with how to adeptly navigate the real mess of human relationships in the most forgiving possible environment. It was a safe place to learn about people and how to honor, respect, listen to, guide, direct, sometimes disagree with or provide constructive criticism to, encourage, and work together with them. My job requires so much judgment/interpretation of what others want, need, and feel... and then delicacy and skill to understand/respect those needs and desires while also steering them to align with the needs and objectives of the company and the mission. It requires me to sometimes disagree with someone's approach to a problem or their calculations/results, and ADChi was the best training I could imagine on how to have those types of conversations with grace and humility.
For as long as I can remember, my mom says age 5, I've been fascinated with the sky. The stars, the moon, the universe - it's like the greatest frontier yet to be understood by mankind. And it's so beautiful! So vast. So incomprehensibly complex and perfectly orchestrated - how orbits and chemical reactions and all of it work together to keep stars and planets and ecosystems in balance. Whoa, sorry, geeked out there for a moment. I always dreamed of going up there one day, just to feel weightlessness and catch a closer glimpse of the cosmos for myself. I was always interested in legos and k'nex growing up, and anything where I got to assemble or construct something electrical or mechanical, like those build-your-own-radio kits. I was good at math and science, but I can't say I thought solving equations was FUN per say - it got WAY more fun when I got to college, and saw all the cool things I could design and build now that I knew HOW to do the math and science behind it. So I think the thought process "Do you enjoy math and science? Great! Then you should be an engineer!" is somewhat deceptive. I'm sure some people truly enjoy pure math homework for itself, but for me, I knew I wanted to be an engineer because I liked to figure out how machines worked, and build massive k'nex towers that were strong and stable. Come to find out, it's math and science that's behind it all, but if you're not begging your calculus teacher for another differential equation problem, that doesn't mean you aren't wired to be an AMAZING engineer - you just have to wait until the pieces fit together and you can see the application of all that work. Anyway, when I got to college, I studied Aerospace Engineering for both my Bachelors and Masters. My masters "specialized", I guess you could say, in Space Systems design (as opposed to Airplanes or Helicopters).
2. What exactly IS your job? What do you do on a day to day basis?
At SpaceX, I'm a Mission Manager. It's basically being the "Project Manager" for a mission/flight - for me at the moment, a Cargo Resupply Mission to the International Space Station. Ever since the Space Shuttle retired, NASA has paid SpaceX to be a cargo resupply service for the astronauts on-board the international space station. So NASA's is one of our biggest customers (with 6 of these resupply missions complete and many more left in the next few years). I am the mission manager for the 6th resupply mission (which launched on April 14th and just returned to earth for a parachute-assisted landing ("splashdown") in the pacific ocean on May 21. I'm also the mission manager for 9th resupply mission, which is scheduled to launch less than a year from now, and the 2nd demonstration mission under the Commercial Crew Program, which will be the first SpaceX flight with astronauts on board. For that matter, it will be the first fully private/commercial vehicle in history to fly humans to the International Space Station - I can't wait! My role is twofold. External-facing, I'm NASA's primary SpaceX point of contact during the 2 years leading up to a particular mission as we build the spacecraft and launch vehicle for them, throughout its time on orbit, and all the way through its safe return to earth when we handover the cargo to them. I coordinate all major milestone reviews with them to brief them on the status of the project, sit on console in mission control for all major operations to keep them aware of how the vehicle is performing, etc. etc. Internal-facing, I'm the project manager working with the team at SpaceX through the design and build of the vehicle, troubleshooting any issues, performing all mission-specific analyses and testing, and ultimately just responsible for ensuring the mission goes off without a hitch. I work hand in hand with the hundreds of design, manufacturing, and operations engineers across the company - they really make the magic happen, and my job is simply to come alongside them, ensure they have the information they need to scope the problem correctly, and support however I can to ensure we reach a great solution!
3. How does STEM relate to your job?How do you use the information you learned from your degree in your job?
At SpaceX, we design and build both the launch vehicle (the rocket, which we call Falcon9) and the spacecraft (the capsule carrying the cargo, which we call Dragon) that brings over 2 tons of food, supplies, and research up to the orbiting laboratory, and then returns just as much cargo from space back to earth. The science they're doing up there is paving the way to prepare astronauts and robotic explorers for future missions to Mars - things like learning how to combat the effects of microgravity on human muscle deterioration, the effects of space radiation on the human body and genome, how to grow plants and other life-sustaining organisms in zero-g, and so much more! They also do so much up there that's directly helping improve our lives here on earth - for example, it's been found that cancer cells grow significantly faster in space than on earth, so the research they can do up there could literally cure cancer faster than our best scientists here on the ground might be able to. Some really amazing stuff! One funny thing that's been all over the media that we sent up on my last mission, CRS-6, was an expresso machine (ISSpresso), the world's first expresso maker that works in zero gravity. Sam Cristoforetti (Italian astronaut on-board the space station right now) was so stoked! Just look at her twitter! Oh! One other crazy cool thing about my recent mission (CRS-6) is that SpaceX as a company is progressively working toward being able to "recover and reuse" our rockets. Imagine how expensive a plane ticket would be if every airplane was single-use, and had to get thrown away at the end of the flight? No one would be able to afford to travel by air! The same is currently true of space flight - we (humanity) haven't yet advanced enough to successfully launch a rocket to space, then fly it back to Earth, do a little refurbishment perhaps, refuel it, and launch it again, over and over. But that's exactly what SpaceX is VERY close to achieving! On CRS-6, the first stage (the most complex and expensive part of the rocket) delivered the second stage and payload to its desired location in space, flipped nearly 180 degrees, flew back to earth toward a tiny floating platform we had positioned in the middle of the ocean, slowed itself down from supersonic speeds to nearly a hover over that platform, and landed! It tipped over a few seconds later because it had a little too much lateral (sideways) speed when it landed, but the fact that we navigated precisely to this target, slowed down enough to land safely, and landed was a REMARKABLE achievement - and one of the most exciting days any of us here at SpaceX had experienced yet! The future is here, and soon space travel will be made affordable, and thus an everyday thing for humankind. Check out SpaceX's facebook and twitter pages for cool videos of the launch and landing. Ok... so did that make it abundantly clear how CRITICAL STEM is to my job? Everything about what we do is solving complex problems in innovative ways - it requires a STRONG understanding of vehicle flight dynamics, loads and dynamic environments, electronic power and computing systems, software, and so much more!
4. How do you balance your work and personal life? Any secrets or advice you’d like to share?
This is certainly been a very difficult lesson for me to learn. I still learn every day how to maintain this balance well. I feel the great weight of responsibility that goes with the amazing opportunity my role at SpaceX affords, and I often feel overwhelmed. Am I really ready for this? It feels so HUGE! What if I screw up? What if, in a multi-million-dollar milestone review, NASA asks me a question about "my" vehicle and I don't know the answer? What if I overlook something and, heaven forbid, the rocket explodes during launch? How will I live with myself? Could I ever recover from that? When these thoughts begin to infiltrate my mind and heart, the impulse is to become a workaholic, work longer and harder to be sure I control every variable of my circumstance. And I'm not saying that I shouldn't give this job my very best, working diligently and sometimes tirelessly to ensure it's done right. I'm just saying that your career is only one aspect of what makes up who you are, and it's vitally important to keep that in the forefront of your mind - to be grounded in who you are both inside and outside of the workplace. With that said, in my mind the most important way to figure out a work/personal life balance that works for both you and your company is to set fair boundaries, be forthright about them, and consistent in them. Of course it helps to have as incredible of a boss as I do, who helps us navigate when it's really important to push for a deadline, and when I should go home to have dinner with my husband and save it for tomorrow. I could tell you all the ways I'm grateful to have the manager I do until the cows come home, but at the end of the day, know that its up to you to figure out the detailed logistics of how you can both do your job well and thrive as a person who does more than work. And it's your responsibility to draw those lines, discuss them with your manager, come to a mutually beneficial agreement, and then stick to them. Of course, there's always going to be a few crazy times here and there where you and your team are pushing hard together for a really important goal and you have to give "more than reasonable" for a stretch, but I consider "consistency" what you do 80-90% of the time.
5. What is one personality trait that you think is universally important for a successful career?
Working well with people! I know, coming from someone talking about an engineering job, that seems counter-intuitive. But if there's one thing I've learned in the corporate workplace, it's that people are everything. How well you approach, solve problems with, understand, respect, and sometimes critique, those people has everything to do with the success of your career and the trajectory of your life. I was really grateful in college at Georgia Tech to be a part of a wonderful Christian sorority called Alpha Delta Chi. And as I stepped into leadership roles within the group, and ultimately was President my last year, it became the perfect training ground for how to interact with (and lead) people. Being a part of such a diverse group of girls teaches you how to learn from each others' differences and honor one another. Especially by taking on leadership roles, I became acquainted with how to adeptly navigate the real mess of human relationships in the most forgiving possible environment. It was a safe place to learn about people and how to honor, respect, listen to, guide, direct, sometimes disagree with or provide constructive criticism to, encourage, and work together with them. My job requires so much judgment/interpretation of what others want, need, and feel... and then delicacy and skill to understand/respect those needs and desires while also steering them to align with the needs and objectives of the company and the mission. It requires me to sometimes disagree with someone's approach to a problem or their calculations/results, and ADChi was the best training I could imagine on how to have those types of conversations with grace and humility.