Kristin Bale

Kristin always knew that she wanted to be a part of making space travel safer. She started her journey at Spartan College in the Nondestructive Testing Technology program, and now works at Space X.

Transcript:
My name is Kristen Bale and I work in the non-destructive evaluation as a technician for SpaceX.

I've always had his passion for space travel, but I knew it wasn't safe and so a lot of what I wanted to do with me, and with my career, with my talents, is I wanted to work to make space travel safer. One of the best things in the world is watching the launch from Mission Control. There's nothing like watching your overtime hours, your hard work, your sweat, just the gratifying feeling that comes from, you know, watching this rocket go into space and knowing that you did your mission.

Spartan trained me in you know visual, penetrant, mag particle, eddy-current, radiography. I came with all the works, and so it was just that much easier for SpaceX to hire me. They could put me in any environment, and I'd be able to figure myself out.

For anyone that's interested in NDE (nondestructive evaluation or testing), for my experience I would definitely recommend it. It's an amazing career. There's a lot of opportunity for advancement [and] cross-training. There are a bunch of different methods.

As far as what I would tell another woman getting into this industry, I would say go for it! I mean if this is what you want to do, and this is what your heart leads you to do. I mean do it! You're gonna be amazing at it because it's what you love to do.

“I leave you this quote from the one and only Elon Musk, the CEO of the company I now work for, SpaceX. He once said, “I believe that ordinary people can choose to be extraordinary.” I, too, believe that we can all choose to be extraordinary.

I never pictured myself – 20 years old, graduating valedictorian of my class, with my bachelor's degree, working at SpaceX. This is not how I pictured things but it's ten times better!