I really feel space tech is gonna be the next big thing going forward, but I have zero clue about how to get involved. It seems like one of those things where you really need to either be some government agency or have a PhD in it or something.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/gxb7j1/we_are_the_s...
Insanely hard - from an engineer prospective - because there is a big gap between software disciplines and, ughm, "the real world". When you're pushing bits, today it's easy to forget about the times when computers were quite unreliable, from the hardware point of view. Bad contacts? Unreliable memory bits? Overheating parts? Magnetic tape which loses data and paper media which breaks? Today most of this is factored away and engineers largely operate with logic. Try to do hardware projects - even easy Arduino-based designs will give you a glimp of difficulties you're going to get with space technology, and if you're trying something modestly interesting...
Pretty easy is because "rocket science isn't rocket science". It's technology invented more than a century ago - converging-diverging nozzle was invented about 150 years ago, about 120 years ago Tsiolkovsky wrote about liquid hydrogen fuel and multistage rockets, more than 90 years ago Goddard flew his first rockets, almost 80 years ago von Braun was already working on V-2, and this year we're celebrating 60th anniversary of Spootnik. A great deal of efforts went into perfection of rocketry, and now we know a lot - that's a big part of the reason why SpaceX moves so fast - and can do a lot.
Now you can have a nano-launcher startup for less than 100 million dollars - may be way less - which just couple of decades ago is unheard of. More, there are competitions - X Prize for flight 100 km up, Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, Google Lunar Prize, and now, say, NASA's https://breaktheicechallenge.com/ - where you can participate with much smaller barrier to entry. The webinar from this last challenge - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXgdEDBTPJE - contains references on other competitions NASA is hosting.
So, to conclude, if you're an engineering mind, especially capable of working outside of applied math of programming, the possibilities are certainly there to try in growing space industry.
Gagarin's flight, of course.
In a lot of threads about this people seem to think Boeing, Lockheed, etc are finished because they can’t compete with SpaceX. On the contrary, the demand for their skills at building payload hardware is about to expand massively. Somebody’s going to need to build all the infrastructure and systems for these Moon and Mars cities.
A PhD isn't as necessary as you might think, it really depends whether you're doing front-line engineering or a more abstract work - e.g. I would assume the people specifying SpaceX's self-landing system will have PhDs in control theory or similar but the people making it happen beneath are mere mortals.
That being said, I am currently applying to do what I believe would be referred to as a paid-internship in the US, and it's quite difficult breaking into traditional engineering roles from my background as it's quite difficult to prove you'll be useful as a Theoreticsl Physics student (/ Compiler person) because I don't have any formal credit in a lot of the things I do have non-trivual knowledge about.
Jim Keller doesn't have a PhD, and he "only" went to Penn State and he is now a god amongst men, so there's hope for us all (hopefully).
Advanced degrees help. Operational experience helps. I have a master’s and flight hours, for example.
If you’re serious about aerospace, you’ll make your own way. Piece of advice though: don’t tell an interviewer you’re getting into this field just because it’s the next big thing.
Want to get into the applied side and build/test aerospace equipment? You don’t even necessarily need an advanced degree. Don’t discount how many contractors do this work for the government either. Lockheed, Boeing, Honeywell, Jacobs, etc. all need engineers to do the applied science. Don’t overlook tangential roles like quality either because the industry is littered with them.
If you want to do research, you’ll probably need an advanced degree and possibly time in academic research.