> I'd love to work for NASA

i doubt it's that great, NASA is a huge government organization. There may be a handful of people/teams doing cool things but I suspect much of it is infuriating slow and bureaucratic. However, it's probably a good place to retire from if you're willing to put in the 30-40 years.

I have a buddy at JPL who loves it. It's a reasonably fast paced atmosphere where you can have a lot of responsibility relatively early in your career. Unfortunately everything is mission centric so there's pretty much always a Sword of Damocles hanging over you if the mission gets axed due to budget cuts. Good place to work on cool stuff, bad place for job security.