Fund strategy: how one student found extra financial support to pursue a career inspired by Apollo 13

Have you seen Apollo 13? I know it’s a Hollywood blockbuster with an A-list cast but I watched it when I was 12 after a visit to NASA in Florida and I knew then that I wanted to be an engineer.  There’s a bit in the movie where there is potentially deadly levels of carbon monoxide filling up in the space ship.  They can’t change the filters as they only take square cartridges and the ones the astronauts have are round. The engineers at NASA literally have to work out how to fit a square peg in a round hole. So they get a box of different equipment they know is available on the spacecraft and sit around a table together to solve the problem. I remember watching that thinking how creative, inventive and important their jobs were. It opened up my mind and I realised that I had taken everything for granted. There is so much that is engineered in our lives and I then wanted to know how things were put together and why they worked.