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Neil studied Physics with Philosophy at York and has been working at the European Space Agency since 2002. His full job title is Parabolic Flight and Drop Tower Coordinator and Payload Systems Engineer. Listen to the episode to find out more about exactly what he does, how he managed to get the job and his advice for students wanting a similar career.

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Useful links:

• Careers at European Space Agency
• Short video about Zero gravity project
• Aerospace engineer job profile
• Careers in Aerospace
• Careers resources for Science students
• Careers in research

To hear more science sector related podcast stories:

• Medicine
• Clinical science
• Data Science
• Computing
• Pharmaceuticals
• Atmospheric chemistry

Transcript:

Kate:

You’re listening to the ‘What Do You Actually Do?’ podcast. Each week we want to bring you an inspiring interview, a useful tip or encouraging message to help you find your place in the professional world. Hello and welcome to this episode of ‘What Do You Actually Do?’ My name’s Kate Morris, and I’ll be your host today. In today’s episode we will be talking about working in the aerospace sector. 

Today we’re joined by Neil Melville, who works as a Payload System Engineer and Parabolic Flight Coordinator at the European Space Agency. So, Neil, that is a long title. What do you actually do? 

Neil:

Well, actually, I effectively have two jobs, that’s why it’s such a long title. So my main job, I guess, is the Parabolic Flight Coordinator. Parabolic flight is a way that ESA uses a special type of airplane to get zero gravity, so that we can test some of our experiments, we can test some human subjects, we can test our technologies in zero gravity before we send them to space. And my job, about half of my job, is to run those flights and coordinate that programme. And then the other half of my job is to work as a systems engineer, developing various different projects and payloads. So it’s kind of two titles in one, really. 

Kate:

So do you get to go up on those flights then? 

Neil:

I do, yes. If there’s any ESA experiments on board, then I have to be there, it’s a tragic shame, but someone has to do it. 

Kate:

So what would you say are the sort of key elements of your role then? If you’ve got this kind of dual aspect to it, and you’re going up into space and those kinds of things, what are the key tasks that you’d say make up the bulk of your roles? 

Neil:

Well, I should clarify that I don’t go into space, I’m not an astronaut. I would love to be, of course. The parabolic plane flies actually a little bit lower than most planes normally. It’s an Airbus A310. it’s not actually so different to the ones that you would have flown in commercially, but it’s got most of the seats taken out, and the floor, walls and ceiling padded, so that we can’t hurt ourselves. And the experiments are all bolted to the floor, and for each parabola, the plane pulls up and gives like 20 seconds of 2G, while it aims itself up into the sky, like 50 degrees nose up. And then the pilots let it fall over the top, you get 20 seconds of 0G, where we do all of our work, and then another 20 seconds of 2G to level back out. That’s like one minute in total, and we do that every three minutes for two hours. So that repetition allows us to do lots of tests. So my job, while that is going on, is to make sure all the experiments are running well, that all of the scientists and engineers are able to do their jobs and have everything they need to do their jobs, that test subjects are available when they need to be, the timing is being controlled – all that kind of stuff. And the plane doesn’t actually belong to ESA, the plane belongs to a company called Nova Space, which is a subsidiary of the French Space Agency. So I run the contract with them, so I’m also basically the customer in that regard. So I’ve got to make sure that they are delivering to us what we need in terms of the quality of the flight, of the zero gravity. Again, the timing of the parabolas and that everyone has the power for their experiments, and all of the safety measures of being controlled properly to make sure that everyone is safe and healthy on board. So it’s quite a lot of different things that I could have to do on board, but if we plan very well and it’s going smoothly, then it’s actually very easy and everything should just work. But that depends on how we’ve prepared in advance. So most of my job is the six months before that, making sure that everything is going to go well. 

Kate:

You’ve mentioned before when we were chatting that you travel about meeting different people in different countries in Europe quite a lot. Is that kind of meeting people who are involved in the experiments, and that’s part of this getting your ducks in a row by lining these things up with these different people? Or is that working on different contracts? 

Neil:

No, that’s absolutely right. So typically we will have 10 or 12 research teams on board, for each parabolic flight campaign, and they could come from anywhere – any of the ESA member states. Any academic institution can apply, and if we like what they’re proposing to do, then they get selected, they get to fly for free. And then quite often I will need to go and visit them with Nova Space, the company that operates the flight, and see what their hardware looks like, see what their planning is like, make sure that they understand all of the safety constraints that they have to work within. And yeah, as you say, get all the ducks in a row, make sure that they are all ready, so that when we finally come to Bordeaux, which is where the plane is operated from, it goes well and they can get the experiments on board the plane, demonstrate that all the safety and verifications have been met, and then be ready for flight on time, because, of course, delays are very, very costly once we have everybody there. 

Kate:

So given that there’s so many different people involved, from a lot of different countries, and you’re in certain locations. How has the pandemic impacted on your work? 

Neil:

That has been very challenging, of course, as it’s been for everyone, no doubt. Typically, our campaigns are twice a year, maybe three times if we’re feeling flush. There is one in the spring, one in the autumn, and it takes about six months to prepare, so there’s always one on the go. At the beginning of the pandemic, we did have to cancel a campaign that was going to be May 2020, and we weren’t ready for that. The testing facilities weren’t available for us to find a way to make that happen safely, and there were so many travel restrictions all over Europe we couldn’t manage. After that, we managed to carry on more or less as normal. The way that we did it was to have a few different possible locations identified, because, of course, this is on a plane – we can go wherever we like. So we identified a few different airports, there was Bordeaux in France, Attenberg in Germany, or Zurich in Switzerland. We basically made arrangements to run the campaign in any of those three, and then all participants kept track of the travel regulations from their home station to each of those three options. And then we, basically trying to plan three campaigns in parallel, one month in advance, we took a vote of which location would get the most people there and therefore the most scientific return, and committed to it as late as we could, because the travel regulations kept changing. So that was a logistical nightmare, because it meant that we didn’t always manage to fill the plane. And then when we were there, of course, everyone has to work with the distancing, which is very difficult with proper surgical grade masks, and flying with the masks as well, which is difficult. And we tested everyone every day. We bought a set of machines, and we had dedicated medical staff on site, and we tested all participants every day, which gets tiresome after a while, as I’m sure everyone knows by now, but it was the only way we could be sure to keep people safe. It certainly had an impact, but I’m very pleased that we managed to keep going. 

Kate:

Yeah, it’s amazing that given all of that, you were able to still continue, because I guess the easy route would have been just like – Oh, we’ll just pause everything and come back to it. But to find a way to make it work with all of those different people – that is an achievement. But I agree, it does sound like a logistical nightmare, it sounds like a right headache to try and do all of that. 

Neil:

Because at the beginning it was quite tempting. You know, we all hoped the pandemic wouldn’t last very long. We said – ok, let’s just pause. But you know, we had a suspicion in mind that it would go on this long. And if we had paused for this long, I don’t know how the other company that runs the plane would have survived, for example, this is their core business. And we’ve got a great deal of scientific work to get done. So just pausing it for two years would have been a real problem, a real tragedy, actually, for our scientific programme. 

Kate:

So just sort of thinking about yourself and your starting point in this, you did an MPhys degree in Physics and Philosophy here at York. So there are obvious links between your work and the physics element of your degree. But do you think the philosophy aspect impacted on your career at all, or gave you any particular transferable skills that have proved useful? 

Neil:

Oh, that’s a good question. I think it did. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t go into metaphysics too much in my daily job, of course, but definitely in terms of analytical thinking, logical sequential progression of the work – yeah, I do think it helped. These things are not always straightforward, following procedure ABCD. There’s often quite a lot of debate and discussion, there’s often difficult decisions to be made about the right way to go ahead. And I think logical and analytical thinking is really very important. And that’s the kind of philosophy I did. I did philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of physics, philosophy of quantum mechanics, that kind of stuff. So perhaps a little further from the softer side of philosophy that a lot of people might imagine, which of course I had to do in my first year as a core subject. But definitely the ability to debate and discuss, and logically construct arguments to make decisions – I’ve taken from the degree into my work. 

Kate:

And sort of, also breaking into it, because I guess working for ESA has got to be a dream job for many physics students. How did you actually make it happen? Did you get any work experience, or do any extracurricular projects as a student that sort of helped you break into it in those early years? 

Neil:

It was a dream job. I suppose I was always interested in space. I never really believed I would end up doing this. When I was in my third year at university, I saw a poster from the ESA education office advertising a student parabolic flight campaign, and if you could propose a student experiment that was good enough, then you might get selected to fly. And that’s what we did in 2001. So I first went on these parabolic flights as a student and loved it, of course, and looked at what the ESA education office were doing and thought – oh that looks quite interesting and I’d quite like to come back on this plane again, and a traineeship opened up in that group. So I applied for that and it was just going to be a year to start with. And I got it, luckily for me, and I was also halfway through a second project with them. On the basis of our parabolic flight experiment we got selected to put a more complex version onto a Russian orbital capsule for two weeks. So I was halfway through preparing that at the end of my fourth year, at the end of my masters, in parallel with my masters, it wasn’t anything to do with my degree, it was quite hard work, actually. And just before the launch was when I got my traineeship. So yeah, those extra curricular activities, of course, put me in a good position, because then the education office knew me, half of the interview panel knew me already, and I was kind of a shoe in really for the role, which was great for me. I only went for one year. I moved to the Netherlands immediately from York, came for one year and I’m still here nearly 20 years later. Having done that traineeship for two years, and then I got a contract of four or so before becoming a staff member. 

Kate:

Did you have to speak any other European languages in order to work for them? 

Neil:

No. The working languages of the agency are French and English, you need to be fluent in at least one of them. It is a bonus to speak something else, but languages is certainly not my strong point. I can kind of get by in Dutch, but everyone else’s English here is so much better, so I don’t really get much chance to be honest. 

Kate:

Yeah, I can imagine. So that’s pretty amazing that you just happened to see that poster, because that kind of built your whole career from seeing that poster. 

Neil:

Yeah, it’s ridiculous, to be honest. That we got selected for that, and then got selected for the Russian capsule, and then I got selected for the traineeship. And normally then ESA trainees who just finished their traineeship, the idea is that they go into industry, they go and work for one of the companies that support ESA and get more experience, then come back – that’s the normal route. But through chance, or perhaps slightly through design on my part, my projects that I was doing, which were quite a few different types of project, were always out of sync with my contracts. So I was like – “Well, I can finish now if you like, but who is going to take over?”. And I kept getting these contracts renewed. And it just gave the opportunity, I think, for people to see what I could do. And a couple of people noticed, and in 2008 someone in one of the other departments in ESA said – “there is this staff vacancy that you should apply for”. And I had already been sharing my time with them as a contractor on some of their projects, so I knew them very well. Yeah, I was kind of internally headhunted, I suppose, on the basis of managing to hang around long enough. 

Kate:

I think that’s an interesting point, though, because I think in any work experience, internship, placement opportunity – if you stand out from the crowd, if you make yourself useful and take the opportunity to build these different relationships, it can help to actually get a job with that place. Rather than if you just do what you’ve been asked, do the minimum and keep quiet. If you make more of that impact, it’s easier to stand out from the crowd. 

Neil:

I’ve definitely found that, and I don’t want to imply, by the way, that I’ve been working on parabolic flights the whole time. That was how I started, and that’s what I’m doing now. But my career in between was nothing to do with it. So I was assigned to quite a lot of different things. I was systems engineer for a student spacecraft, and then for a ground station network, and then for payloads on the International Space Station, and payloads on sounding rockets, which are like suborbital rockets that just get 10-15 minutes in space. And on all of those things, like it was a wonderful experience to have all these challenges, especially since I didn’t have any qualifications or experience in engineering to start with. I learnt how to be a systems engineer by doing it, and actually mostly by doing it wrong, to be honest – that’s where you really learn. And having made all of those mistakes myself, I really understand why we work the way we do and how it’s meant to be done. But I always made sure I put everything into it, because I’m passionate about it. I mean, if you’re, you know, if you love what you do, then you never work a day in your life, that’s the saying, isn’t it? And I always manage to throw myself into these projects and find ways to really love it, and gave it my all. And that’s the best way to get noticed, whatever you are doing. And even though it’s not necessarily directly related to my parabolic flight role now, it is what enabled me to get noticed and be offered the position that I’m in. 

Kate:

Is that quite a typical career path within ESA then? To do different roles, and kind of build up a collection of experience, and kind of work your way up that way? Or are there more people who are from a pure engineering background, and are kind of doing a specific role and just stay in that lane kind of thing. 

Neil:

It’s a bit of a mixture. I think the latter is probably more typical – to have a specialisation, to have a particular engineering or scientific specialisation and to get hired for that. But of course everything we do is project-based, because we’ll have different missions, different spacecrafts going different places, doing different things. Most of those big missions that you would have heard of, like spacecraft going to my Mars Express and the rovers that they’re working on, and the Moon project that they’re working on – those are decade long. So if you get assigned to those projects, you may only have the opportunity to do two or three projects in your whole career, because it takes so long to do it. I’ve been very lucky. Somehow – I don’t really know how – somehow I got a reputation for being good at the awkward, quick little things where – “oh, we just want to fly such and such to the space station next year”. And to be honest, it doesn’t matter how small and simple it is, you’ve still got to go through the same process, the same safety process, the same acceptance process, and I learnt that by doing it. But I managed to get a bit of a reputation for doing it quite fast, for weird little things that no one else wanted to take on. So in contrast to that, only having two or three projects in your career, I’ve already had like 12-13 small, much simpler ones. But that’s given me a breadth of experience, which is what you want as a systems engineer. I’m not a specialist in anything. I’m not an expert in anything, and that’s correct. So underneath my technical role, there will be an electrical engineer, and a structural engineer, and a software engineer, and a thermal engineer and blah blah blah blah blah. And I’m the one that has to give all of them their requirements, and make sure that they design and build and test something that fulfils those requirements. But I’ve got to make it all fit together, I’ve got to have the overall engineering layer to make sure that what we all build together will function to do the job the scientists want. And if I were an expert in any of those tasks, I would get too distracted by the nuts and bolts and some computer chips and code. So it’s actually just right for me to stay a level above that, let them do all of the complicated hard work that I don’t know how to do, while I kind of orchestrate on a technical level. 

Kate:

So it sounds like there’s a real sort of project management, but sort of leadership aspect to the role that you do as well. 

Neil:

Yeah, it is a weird mix in the end, because you have to convince all these people to do what you want them to do. And of course we’re paying for it, which helps. But it’s often messy in that you’ll have to have a group of scientists that say – Okay, I want an experiment on the International Space Station that does X, Y and Z. And being scientists, they’re used to having these experiments in the lab where they’ve got large amounts of equipment, and large amounts of money, and can take months to do it. And suddenly, I’ve got to build something that’s miniaturised, something that has a very low amount of power, that has a low amount of data output, that you can’t go and fix because it’s in space, you can’t go and tinker with it and change it. We have to find a way to take what the scientists want and reduce it to a set of technical requirements that we can actually build. And sometimes the stakeholder management of explaining to the contractors that are building the stuff for me what it needs to do and finding out from them what is possible, and going back to the scientists and saying – There is a weird mix of people management and technical management, but I quite enjoy that. 

Kate:

It sounds like there’s loads of aspects to the role that you really love, especially that variety. What’s the worst bit of the role? 

Neil:

Ha! Hmm. I’m not very good with bureaucracy. Paperwork in terms of all of the documentation about the hardware, the technical documentation, that’s all grand, but the contracts and change notices and budgets and all of that stuff is not my favourite. It has to be done, it’s part of it. And of course, it takes a significant fraction of the time to do all of that. I mean, in the end, the contractual stuff has to really be done properly. We are spending the European taxpayers’ money. Everything has to be traceable, and everything has to follow the proper procedures to make sure that we’re optimising it, and we can show the delegations from each country that we are doing it properly, and that they should be trusting us with the taxpayers money. So it’s very important to do right, but that’s certainly not my forte, if that makes sense. 

Kate:

Yeah, paperwork is never going to be as fun as going at G-force…. 

Neil:

And of course, it may sound terribly exciting that I fly around in this plane and I go to rocket launches, and play with these cool bits of hardware. But, of course, 90% of my time is sitting behind a computer sending e-mails, it’s the other 10 percent that’s really exciting. 

Kate:

What do you think will be the key challenges for the aerospace sector over the next few years? You’ve already mentioned it’s funded through EU, or European taxpayers’ money, I’m guessing Brexit has added some challenges in with that, but what should people be thinking about if they want to break into this sector? What are the key things on the horizon that might impact on it? 

Neil:

For a start, actually, Brexit hasn’t affected it very much at all, in that the member states of the European Space Agency are completely distinct from the member states of the European Union. So the UK is still a member of ESA, that hasn’t changed. The amount of money the UK puts in hasn’t changed. A couple of projects the UK is no longer allowed to be involved in, because they have links to the European Commission. But overall the UK is still just as involved as ever. I think the biggest changes in the sector is probably the commercialisation of it, and through to the public consciousness, perhaps, you may have seen the stuff like Jeff Bezos and his Blue Origin Rocket, and Virgin Galactic and all of that. And that’s not irrelevant, but it is not as groundbreaking as the press often makes out, because it’s not orbital. It does go to space, kind of, but just for a few minutes. It’s not going into orbit. It’s not going to make a massive difference yet. But it is a good first step. The commercialisation of space is going to happen, and these early steps are important. Perhaps a company like Space X is more impressive. The fact that their rockets are reusable is massively driving down the cost of putting something into space. They can now undercut almost everyone else. And of course, if you reduce the cost of going to space, then you increase the amount of stuff you can put there, how quickly you can do it, the mass of it. You know, they are building bigger and bigger rockets. So I think in the next couple of decades, we’re just going to see kind of an explosion in the accessibility of space, because of the commercial aspects driving the cost down. As long as the politics doesn’t get in the way, that’s going to be difficult. Though, of course, as the European Space Agency were meant to be using European launchers, and Arianespace, that build our launch vehicles, are working on a reusable version, but it’s a long way behind, to be honest. There’s definitely some big challenges there. I would love to see the European commercial space sector try and catch up, because it really is falling behind, and that’s going to impact us. I guess I would say in contrast to when I started 20 years ago, because of the commercialisation, there are going to be opportunities in aerospace companies and in start up aerospace companies, that are going to take people much further than they would have done a couple of decades ago. When I started, basically, ESA was the big player in the game and there was a couple of big contract companies that supported ESA, and that was kind of it. Now I think we’re going to see more and more companies that have their own access to space. So I think there will be more opportunities for people, and you could look around much more, you could cast your net wider. And in terms of standing out from the crowd, I think this accessibility is going to create start-ups that want to do things that sound a bit mad to start with, like asteroid mining and that kind of stuff. All right, that’s a long way away, but now is the time to start thinking about it. And it is going to be the people that innovate towards doing new things like that, and manage to demonstrate some small successes, that are going to be the successful start-ups that go a long way in the end. I think there’s a lot of potential for innovation in the space sector to create new opportunities for people. 

Kate:

Wow. It sounds really fascinating… I was going to say a fascinating space to be working in, but you’ll have to excuse the pun. Well, for more information about those different career areas and some of the organisations that we’ve mentioned today, I’m going to add some relevant links to the show notes and a link to the full transcript of today’s show. But Neil, thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us. It was really, really interesting. Much appreciated. 

Neil:

You’re very welcome. It was a pleasure to meet you. 

Kate:

Thank you for joining us this week on ‘What Do You Actually Do?’. This episode was hosted by me, Kate Morris, edited by Stephen Furlong and produced by both of us. If you love this podcast, spread the word and follow us. Are you eager to get more tips? Follow University of York Careers and Placements on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. All useful links are in this episode’s description. This has been produced in the University of York Careers and Placements. For more information visit york.ac.uk/careers