Drei Ratschläge an Dein 14jähriges Ich!

Something I learnt throughout the years, the decision I have to take is very important to take risks, things will in the end will happen if you take risks. It’s also very important not to, especially when you are in your studies and trying to decide on your career and trying to study on a university degree or something like that, it’s very important that you don’t get stuck with a stiff decision, I mean, there are so many different options that can lead you to the same way, to the same end goal. University is very important but it’s because of the mind set, this is like critical thinking that develop. It’s not like to pick one degree or the other, like anything you pick is going to be fine but keep an open mind, that’s very important.

Was steht auf Deiner Visitenkarte?

My name is Izan and I am an aerospace engineer.

Was ist das coolste an Deinem Job?

For me working space is so inspirational, having this over view that we are not alone in the universe and having this exploration spirit, it’s so cool. I mean, ’it’s really cool to work in an environment like that where you can actually make a difference. Like across all industries, space is the only one that can actually make real what you look in the planet from outside and you realize all the differences that we have in the end we all are like travelling in the same space ship, it’s called space ship earth, we are all travelling in the same direction so this is very exciting and I think it’s very inspirational for the rest of the industries and to the rest of the world. Being a systems engineer is so much fun because instead of only focusing in one sub system and doing only structure analysis for example, you are doing only proportion and focusing on engines, you have this overview, you see how all these component s interact between them you have such a holistic view of the engineering problem and enjoying the solution that you are proposing, that is really cool.

Welche Einschränkungen bringt Dein Job mit sich?

A challenge and limitation at the same time, for my position is a general aspect in this industries that its highly politically influenced because of these programs are so expensive, there’s a lot of political influence on what positions or where the research is going or where these concepts are going. So that’s both a limitation and a challenge the ... from this industry the government controls really move it to the privatized sector where you have more freedom to innovate because in the end if the politicians are deciding what research you should do, then you are not really doing innovation and that’s a limitation of our industry sadly but we are seeing a new wave from silicon valley where seeing that is called the new space, so there private companies doing space rockets, satellites and all space power and we hope to bring that to Europe soon and that’s something that’s going to be really inspirational for the years to come for sure.

Worum geht es in Deinem Job?

At the German Space Agency I work in a department that does conceptual design of space transportation systems that means that we study naval concepts about rockets and other vehicles that could provide access to space and our goals to lower the costs to the space. On a daily basis we research on a conceptual level, different concepts, we are studying the advantages and drawbacks and see how we can improve the technology to bring, so on my daily basis, I do mostly calculations of like different existence of this novel vehicles. What we do is we study concepts that are already out there so we do analysis of every sub system of the concept. We also investigate new concepts that the industry could maybe adopt in the future, it’s called systems engineering, it’s what we do, we take every component of the vehicle for example how the structure is, the aerodynamics, the proportions, you study the interaction of all these systems in a high end higher level that is conceptual base.

Wie sieht Dein Werdegang aus?

I was born in Spain, I come from a city in Spain called Valencia, I studied there, I did my first three years of undergrad, I did there and then I did an exchange program in the US University of Illinois in Chicago. I really learnt a lot from my experience and enjoyed it so much that I applied for another exchange program and I ended up in a city near Cologne in Germany called Aachen, I did another exchange there, even that was not enough so I applied for a third exchange program to finish my master thesis, this is at the German Space Agency in Bremen, which is my current location now.

Ginge es auch ohne Deinem Werdegang?

Having a space background gives you a good overview of the conceptual design level of this space vehicles but I have to say that the space industry is nothing that is only restrictive to space and engineers. It’s a very multi disciplinary environment with all kinds of inputs are really needed and especially when you are working at this conceptual levels. It’s very valuable to have feedback from people that have completely different backgrounds that look at the problems from a very different perspective, that’s really valuable. So you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to work in space. My position is very important to have good team skills to be able to work in a team because these projects are so big but you always end up collaborating with a lot of people. In our industry, it’s also very important to have a good inter cultural skills because these projects are usually based in different countries so you usually end up with an international team and it’s very important to know how to deal with cultural differences at some point.