Posted on 10/23/2014 2:14:54 PM PDT by Jack Hydrazine
Mario Anzuoni/Reuters Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla. While it's certainly impressive that Elon Musk has bachelor's degrees in physics and economics from the University of Pennsylvania, it's an absurd understatement to say that prepared him to run SpaceX, his spacecraft company.
Jim Cantrell, who was an aerospace consultant at the time, became SpaceX's first VP of business development and Musk's industry mentor when the company launched in 2002. He says that Musk literally taught himself rocket science by reading textbooks and talking to industry heavyweights.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
In real life, professionals have to study on their own to stay current. I see no reason why somebody who already had a BS in Physics from a good school could not pick up rocket science from books and talking to rocket scientists.
Concur. Physics gives you a fundamental grounding in just about everything, well, physical, outside of Chemistry/Biochem. And I’m not a Physics major.
Exactly. Rocket science is just applied physics. With that grounding and rocketry text would be pretty clear and understandable. At least enough for a manager/owner. It is not like his designing a combustion chamber himself.
A good engineering (and most sciences) degree just gives you the ability to learn more. With my ME degree I am confident if I had that needs that I could grab some rocket science books and learn enough. Heck I probably already know 80% of what would be in them.
In the 70s and early 80s, I taught myself computing.
Heck, I have a philosophy degree and ended up in nuclear weapons effects work.
LANL?
No, but I have done work with Sandia. It was SAIC when they still did interesting stuff. Worked with guys who went all the way back to the atmospheric tests. I just did tunnels and later, simulators.
Ever heard of AFTAC?
Had to google it, but I have done a number of things for the AFRL (formerly AFWL) at Kirtland in Albuquerque.
The real issue here is that YOU DON’T NEED A DEGREE. A DEGREE is overated. If you’re a smart person, you could learn it yourself
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