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Quinn Morley

Fabricator, Writer, Innovator 

      At 16, frustrated by an odd learning disability (and adults telling me what to do), I dropped out of high school and started a company. Basically, I ended up falling on my face. I worked a variety of dead-end jobs, some full time, some part time, some on commission. Eventually I got into Boeing as a duct fabricator, and enrolled at Olympic College just a few months after getting hired (in the middle of a strike). I borrowed textbooks and learned how to weld, and went on to get a vocational degree in welding. I continued my education and got two associates degrees, all on Boeing’s dime, using union benefits that didn’t back-charge me if I failed a class. I kept pushing, learning as much as I could from the “old guys” around me.

 

      During a transformative period in my life, I landed a four-year apprenticeship at Boeing, and became a jack-of-all-trades journeyman known as a Bluestreak Mechanic—our specialty is “making any part for any airplane with nothin’ but a 2D drawing,” and making it fast. I worked with some truly amazing journeyworkers at the peak of their career, including one guy in his 70s who could 3D model a hydroform block faster than anyone alive, but could hardly type his own name (a humbling experience for a cocksure computer nerd like me). After working in my trade and growing to love making custom tooling and parts, I left in 2020 when Boeing went into safe mode.

 

      Three weeks later, I submitted a proposal to NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts solicitation, and in 2021, I became the first undergraduate to win NIAC Fellowship. The concept was to use self-driving drilling robots called “borebots” to drill into the polar ice on Mars, in search of liquid water deep under an ancient glacier. In 2023, I won a second NIAC Fellowship award to investigate a way to “drink” rain through the skin of an airplane wing using capillary action, and search for life in raindrops—on Saturn’s moon Titan.

 

      A few months later, fifteen years after enrolling in that welding class during the 2008 strike, I graduated with a Mechanical Engineering degree from a satellite campus of Washington State University, which was on the same physical campus where I took that first welding class. I consider Olympic College my alma matter, and becoming a journeyman and NIAC Fellow to be my biggest accomplishments—so far.

 

      Now ask yourself: “What can we accomplish, together?”

 

      Drop me a line: quinn at quinnmorley dot com.  

A futuristic-looking spaceplane

Awards and Certifications

IAM Union Crest
NASA NIAC logo

Journeyman Bluestreak Mechanic

Issued February 8th, 2017 by Washington State Apprenticeship and Training Council (WSATC)

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NIAC Fellowship, 2021

Fellowship award (grant) to study autonomous self-driving drilling technologies for a period of nine months. Awarded April 19th, 2021.

First undergraduate Principal Investigator in the history of NIAC.

 

NIAC Fellowship, 2023

Fellowship award (grant) to study the collection of precipitation using capillary technologies incorporated into aircraft structure for a period of nine months. Awarded April 19th, 2021.

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Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering,

Washington State University

Awarded May 2023.

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