I was elated when I saw hardware I built go to space for the first time in January. I had worked for my current employer for a bit over a month and had never imagined it would happen so quickly. However, in that mix of emotions was a deep-seated discomfort: this was a rocket headed to orbit — it could have very easily been headed to a war zone. Nearly everything in aerospace is considered “dual-use,” meaning it has direct applications for civilian and military use. It’s the reason — aside from math being hard and me hating school — that I dropped out of my aerospace engineering degree two and a half years ago. I couldn’t stomach the fact that the technology I would be developing could be used both to land on the Moon and take the life of another person.

And yet, here I am — in the industry anyway. Crawling back not as an engineer, but as a technician. Not building missiles, but orbital rockets. The distinction matters to me, even if it’s a blurry one. I didn’t return to aerospace because I made peace with the dual-use problem. I came back because I want to further our reach into the cosmos, and because this job lets me put my hands on the machines that leave Earth. That’s magic. It still feels like magic.

But magic doesn’t erase morality.

The rockets I build are peaceful, at least that’s what I tell myself. They launch satellites that improve life on Earth, Moon landers, and probes studying the cosmos. That distinction matters to me, but it comes with a single, very large, caveat: the Department of Defense is probably our largest customer. Lol, perhaps lmao. Whether it be an early-warning missile defense satellite for the Space Force or a [REDACTED] for the National Reconnaissance Office, these are all tools for war that my beloved “peaceful” rocket launches.

With the same rocket — just a different payload, a different customer — a technology of wonder becomes a technology of war. The lines between NASA, commercial space, and the DoD aren’t lines at all — they’re gradients. And if I’m being honest, there are days I’m not sure where my values fall along that gradient.

This isn’t an abstract problem for me. We have contracts with the DoD, I have friends and coworkers that work on things they can’t talk about, and we launch our rockets from a Space Force base. Hell, when someone asks me what I do for work and I want to keep it vague I tell them I work in defense. It’s the truth, but sometimes the truth isn’t what we want it to be. I’m all for strengthening the might of the U.S. military when it’s resources are helping Ukraine target Russian assets on occupied land, but when kids in Gaza are being turned to pink mist by airstrikes, it’s hard not to feel complicit in something monstrous.

There’s no easy resolution here. I don’t have a tidy moral calculus that tells me it’s okay to keep doing what I do. I just know that this industry, this work, still calls to me. I believe in space — not in some capitalist, “space economy” kind of way, but in the old-school dreamer sense. I want us to explore. To learn. To connect people and maybe one day stand on another planet not as conquerors, but as caretakers, explorers, and innovators.

But wanting that future means wrestling with the present. It means acknowledging that space isn’t neutral — it is political, strategic, violent. The same boosters that launch telescopes launch targeting systems. The same companies bidding for NASA science missions are bidding for Pentagon contracts. I’m part of that ecosystem, whether I like it or not.

Maybe that’s why I’m writing this. Not to absolve myself, and definitely not to condemn others in the industry — many of whom are just as conflicted as I am. But to name the discomfort out loud. To refuse the luxury of ignorance and to remind myself that even if the lines are blurry, my values still matter in how I show up to this work.