That's really nice. I remember when I was 8 or so, I phoned up NASA and told them I'd drawn up plans for a spaceship. The lady on the phone sweetly took me very seriously and asked questions about where such a thing would launch (answer: any big airport). She encouraged me to send them in.

Around the same time (1988) my best friend and I started making our first game in HyperCard. Getting more immediate results from that is probably how I ended up a SWE instead of in aerospace.