Benjamin Logan High School graduate Derick Endicott is a lead test engineer for SpaceX, which designs, manufactures and launches the world’s most advanced rockets and spacecraft.
Saturday, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft atop a Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center headed to the International Space Station, the first piloted launch to orbit from U.S. soil in nearly nine years. It was also the first flight of a SpaceX rocket carrying astronauts and the first new crewed spacecraft to fly in space since the first shuttle mission 39 years ago.
At SpaceX, Endicott works with some of the most advanced rocket engines in the world and “witnesses the incredible power and complexity that space travel entails,” he said.
In 2015, he moved to Texas to fulfill his career dreams, where he began with SpaceX as a test engineer. Over the last five years, the area native has advanced in the company as a senior test development engineer and presently serves as a lead test engineer.
Last fall, Endicott visited Benjamin Logan High School as an alumnus from the Class of 2008 to share his career path with students. He shared that he developed an aptitude for math and physics while taking advantage of College Credit Plus courses in calculus and physics that were offered at BLHS through a partnership with the University of Findlay.
After high school graduation, he chose to pursue engineering as a career and earned a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering from Ohio Northern University in 2012.
While at ONU, he developed a strong interest in the fluid mechanics and thermodynamics areas, as well as computational fluid dynamics.
Endicott obtained a master of science in aerospace engineering from the University of Cincinnati in 2014 and continued as a graduate student researcher involved in various research ventures related to gas turbine combustion.