Find your Compass

Welcome to Star Compass!

What’s inside this week:

🧑‍🚀 This Week’s Mission: What’s more important than your title?

🌌 This Week in Space: Three things worth your attention this week.

🚀 Ask a Rocket Scientist: Answering one question sent to me this week.

🔭 Next Step: What’s your next step in the week ahead?

“I regret to inform you that you have not been selected for the NASA astronaut program.”

Two months after my interview, those words ended the dream I’d spent a lifetime building toward. First-generation college student. Four engineering degrees, including a PhD. 19 years in aerospace. The career mountain I had spent my lifetime climbing was gone.

But I had confused my why with my what. Astronaut is a title. It is a what, not a why. My why was increasing human spaceflight opportunities.

Within a year, I was helping lead the Dream Chaser, competing with SpaceX and Boeing to replace the Space Shuttle. We didn’t win the crew contract.

We pivoted. We won a cargo contract, and the development of Dream Chaser continued. While Dream Chaser is still waiting to fly, I learned that persistence is critical to any career path.

A year ago, I joined the University of Colorado as a Scholar in Residence. My why has shifted to sharing what I have learned in my aerospace career with the next generation. My classes and Star Compass are how I will do that.

Simon Sinek puts it simply: people don’t buy WHAT you do or HOW you do it, they buy WHY you do it. Sinek’s golden circle is a series of concentric circles with WHY (purpose) in the inner circle, HOW (process) in the middle circle, and WHAT (result) in the outer circle.

While most organizations start from the outside with WHAT, and maybe get to HOW, few know their WHY. Sinek argues in his TED talk and book that success comes to those who start with the WHY in the middle.

As Sinek points out, the Wright Brothers beat Samuel Langley in the race for human flight not because they had better resources. Langley had the Smithsonian, a government grant, and the best engineers money could buy. Langley had everything to be successful.

The Wright Brothers had a bicycle shop and a belief that they could change the world. They started with the why. On December 17, 1903, they were the first to fly. Langley quit the day after the Wright Brothers flew. The Wright Brothers never stopped because they had a why.

Answer your three Golden Circle questions:

My WHAT (title/role): ___________________

My HOW (skills/approach): __________________________

My WHY (purpose): _____________________

Each week, I will share an Opportunity (a job posting, program, fellowship, or other opportunity), a Resource (a book, article, podcast, or tool), and a Community (a group, event, organization, or network) worth knowing more about that you may not have seen anywhere else. If you have suggestions, send them to me.

📡 OPPORTUNITY: President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science

📚RESOURCE: Three videos from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) ASCEND Conference that I helped organize with Teasel Muir-Harmony and Jennifer Levaseur of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum on the Why, What, and How of preserving the International Space Station (ISS).

🌎 COMMUNITY: NASA Announces Artemis 3 Crew, June 9, 2026, 11:00 EDT

Do you have any thoughts on the New Glenn explosion?

- Luca D’Entrone, Brooklyn, NY

On May 28, 2026, the New Glenn rocket exploded during a static test fire of the vehicle’s engines at Launch Complex-36 (LC-36) located in Florida. The explosion destroyed the rocket and damaged the launch infrastructure on the ground.

The most important results: no injuries reported, and all personnel accounted for.

SpaceX had a Falcon 9 explode during preparations for a static test firing at Florida Launch Complex-40 on September 1, 2016. It took 15 months to rebuild the pad.

But SpaceX had other launch pads. They officially returned to flight 4 months and 13 days later.

On January 14, 2017, they launched from the Space Launch Complex 4-East (SLC4-E) pad in California. For Blue Origin, LC-36 is their “Herbie.”

In Eliyahu Goldratt’s book The Goal, he tells the Boy Scouts hike parable to illustrate the Theory of Constraints. In the story, Herbie is a slower scout who struggles at the back, holding up the whole troop from reaching the campsite. He is the system’s “bottleneck.”

The solution is to have Herbie lead the group and lighten his load by moving his heavier gear to the faster scouts backpacks. By doing this, the troop maintains a consistent pace and reaches the goal faster.

As one of Jeff Bezos’ favorite business books, The Goal is required executive reading at Amazon and Blue Origin. With the Blue Origin road to space blocked by their dependence on a single pad, they will have to lighten its load (likely accelerating their plans to build more launch pads), while also rebuilding LC-36.

Before the next issue, write one sentence:

“My why is not [your job title]. My why is ____."