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‘They’re just like us’: Hawthorne middle-school girls get unique SpaceX visit

Female students from Prairie Vista Middle School in Hawthorne were the first to celebrate International Women In Engineering Day with SpaceX Women’s Network, a volunteer professional-development group of 300 female employees. From left, Layla Godoy, Casmiria Turton, Anny Ning SpaceX structures engineer and Bella Freire. Photo credit SpaceX

It’s rare to get a tour of SpaceX’s rocket-making Hawthorne headquarters, let alone one-on-one chats with its engineers.

But some Hawthorne middle-school girls who got just such an invitation recently were in awe of the work being done in their neighborhood.

“It was pretty surreal,” 13-year-old Bella Freire said. “Usually, you see rockets in magazines but not up-close and personal. Seeing people work on them is amazing. It makes me feel really small.”

A new volunteer group of female SpaceX employees — the 300-member SpaceX Women’s Network — welcomed Freire and two dozen other Prairie Vista Middle School students on a Saturday afternoon this month for some lessons on engineering and tips about life.

The company offers some local high school internship opportunities and school tours, but is otherwise usually off-limits.

The visit was organized in recognition of International Women in Engineering Day, which is Friday.

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TOO FEW WOMEN IN FIELD

“Because you have few women in this field, we’re trying to empower women to be vocal for themselves and have confidence in their technical abilities,” said Damaris Toepel, the lead integration and test engineer for SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft. “In all of the positions I’ve held, it was very common for me to be the only female in the room and, sometimes, I would hold myself back from speaking.”

Toepel founded the volunteer Women’s Network a year ago. She hoped to empower females at the company, which — like many other tech and aerospace companies — is dominated by male workers.

One of the students who attended their first community-education event, Daniela Jimenez, 14, said she has an A in science at Prairie Vista but hadn’t considered a career as an engineer.

“I’m more interested in engineering now. Before, I wouldn’t have thought of doing it in my future life,” Jimenez said. “It was pretty interesting to go and see them build these incredible things that go up to space.”

SpaceX moved to Hawthorne as a startup company in 2008, and now is an established global leader in commercial space exploration. Its Dragon spacecraft was the first commercial space-transport vessel to dock at the International Space Station in 2012.

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Now, the company is putting the finishing touches on a craft that can ferry astronauts to orbit and, ultimately, land on Mars.

During their visit, the Prairie Vista students took apart and investigated everyday electronics like phones and cameras, built toy solar-powered cars, and assembled circuit boards.

Freire said she enjoyed doing hands-on work with the engineers. Even though it sounds “kinda cheesy,” she said she was inspired by what she saw and heard.

“I was expecting them to be nerds, but they’re just like us,” she said. “One of the SpaceX girls reminded me of myself, and she was able to go to college and do engineering, and build a race car. That was pretty cool.”

Students got to take home their creations to tell their families about what they learned.

Toepel said she hoped to inspire young women in the way she was inspired by former NASA aerospace engineer and astronaut Susan Helms.

“Ever since I was young, I knew I wanted to become an astronaut,” Toepel said. “When they’d send a crew up, I’d sit there watching the Earth rotate in complete awe. Susan Helms became my mentor growing up because I thought: ‘There’s nothing special about her. I can do what she’s doing.’ ”