The Unanswerable Question

People have asked me many times why I decided to be an Aerospace Engineer (glamorous term: Rocket Scientist).

There are so many questions you just don't know the answers to. But to survive, to make progress, you're supposed to come up with those answers, and repeat them until you start believing them.

The official college application answer is usually: "Even when I was a child, I loved taking things apart and seeing how they worked. I always knew I was destined to be an engineer." Yes, genius, but how does the Aerospace aspect come in? And why not become a mechanic?

The job-interview answer is usually: "I have always been fascinated by space missions." Boring, but it normally works.

The unofficial one classmate to another answer is: "My high school advisor was after my life to pick something, so I just chose the first major listed alphabetically in the college application."

The nerdy exchange usually involves Star Wars. Or Star Trek.

For the longest time, I had assumed I would never know what my inspiration was - and this became the unanswerable question. Perhaps it was the hype surrounding the NASA Mars Exploration vehicles when I was in high school. Or the Columbia Accident. Or something someone said about how great it must be to become a rocket scientist.

This afternoon, in the spirit of whiling away time, I sat down at the familiar ancient computer desk in the house, and started a game of 3-D Pinball. Ever since we acquired a computer (our first was in 1996 - and I was one of three kids in my class who had one), I had become obsessed with the game (the other two - Solitaire, and Minesweeper weren't as great). It was the game I played in secret when I should have been studying for my board exams, the game in which I competed against my own high scores, the game that I thought predicted my SAT scores even before I'd taken the tests.

As I started my space cadet training, ran through re-entry and launch missions, accumulated hyperspace bonuses, opened wormholes and gravity wells, destroyed xenographs, and repelled aliens, I suddenly knew the answer.

Who would've thought?