During the week, Tom Martin designs rockets. As an aerospace engineer at Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), he has worked on the capsule for re-supply of the International Space Station, large-scale structures for communication satellite launches and lift vehicles for upcoming NASA missions. “When we’re going to geo-synchronous orbit, the acceleration forces are pretty amazing and we need to get up to 17,000 mph, so working with speed and pressure is kind of a day-to-day thing,” says Martin. “But honestly, being in a race car is much more exciting. After all, I’m not on the spacecraft and anyway, the flying is done by computers.”
