
A Day in the Life of a Principal Space Architect - cbcowans
https://elpha.com/posts/54dfau67/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-principal-space-architect
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cbcowans
Hi HN! I'm the founder of Elpha.

One of our members, Isa Peterson, is a Principal Space Architect at Tesseract
Space. I noticed her job title on her Elpha profile and had no idea what her
job was, but I was intrigued. So I asked if she'd write up a post telling us a
more about it. As it turns out, her job is pretty interesting. Hope you enjoy!

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tesseractspace
Hi HN, I’m Erik CEO at Tesseract. Tesseract went through YC in Summer 2017 and
builds in space propulsion. Please reach out if you have any questions

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isacpeterson
Hi HN readers! If you have any questions, I'll be lurking and here to chat :)

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FigmentEngine
nice! i have job title envy now :-) have you seen
[https://youtu.be/THNPmhBl-8I](https://youtu.be/THNPmhBl-8I)

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isacpeterson
I say go for it and make it your title too ;) That YouTube link made me
literally LOL - bookmarking.

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photonios
Fascinating!

Do you get to watch launches on-site for satellites that carry engines that
you worked on? :-)

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isacpeterson
Hopefully! I've always wanted to go to Launch Base, but haven't had the
opportunity yet.

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oh_sigh
It seems fitting that someone who works on rocket engines would be called Isa.

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isacpeterson
Agreed - and the pronunciation is the same as ESA!

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milin
So is he an aerospace engineer or a principal space architect? His first
sentence seems contradictory.

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panzagl
In a space agency a Principle Space Architect would be responsible for
constellation design and acquisition- they'd rarely get their hands dirty with
constructing their own powerpoint slides, much less chemical handling.
Presumably this is much further down the stack, so to speak.

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isacpeterson
That's honestly one of the reasons I moved out of "old aerospace" \- it's so
easy to get pigeonholed and it becomes easier for people to stop learning.

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gridspy
I agree, at least when it comes to overspecialized roles in large companies.

If you didn't get to actually _Do_ anything, are you really a rocket scientist
anymore? Does it feel the same? Does it make you excited to do your job?

Your day sounded pretty amazing to me. Well done!

