Ah, that's a long story

Maybe I should confess you're right, it's wasted time. But... you're Northwestern, right? Imagine you tried the mount ski and then it was forbidden or all snow melted. Or you liked Nirvana-style rock from Seattle and then it was forbidden or all music market was occupied by disco with little margin for any rock. As Lemmy Kilmister once said: you will stick with the music you've heard in childhood no matter what music you will play after. That was the case: in my 17 I've been told that any aviation is closed for me by medical causes - broken nose from youth boxing and being two meters tall incompatible to ejection seat in fighters. I went to naval college with hope to possess the job that is very similar to one of NFO's in Mercury, namely Radio/ECM Officer on ASW/RadioRelay Bear of maritime naval aviation, for which the AF colleges had no pipeline and all such officers, very small pool though, came from naval colleges, but in a year before I graduated, that billet was substituted by enlisted one. Then USSR fall and almost all naval aviation, steb-by-step, was merged with AF
Well, aside of my personal experience, generally: interest is a horse. Living wage is a wain. One can ride the horse in a cowboy's style (don't give a fuck to wain) or draw the wain by oneself with no horse (sad people), or attach the wain to horse and go along. You're from the latters? Nice. For a living I run the logistics operations. Interestingly enough to keep me in that business.Little pony, big wagon. But as for my "childhood music": I'm still in a saddle, and while it seems childish, I can devote some time to it. Yeah, just like those funny Japanese you mentioned.
Yet there is more serious thing that matters. No one outside USN understands how your aircraft carriers work. As for a types of organisations, there are just two possible paralleles: airports' air control and energy grid system, but a carrier is unique in a speed of hangar/deck operations and a the price of a mistake. Yet your carriers operate mostly smoothly. Is that unique culture rooted in USN as such or is there something in US society that makes it possible? This time it is my managing experience which is driving this interest. A pool of very experienced enlisted personnell is in each navy, let alone the elder one, a Royal Navy, but your LDO/CWO Mustangs are quite unique. And despite the clear roles of CPO corps and dedicated NA\NFOs who run the carriers, it seems to me that carrier Mustangs are the core for that success. Is there people similar to naval Mustangs in US Army? Air Force? To be an absolute analogue - no, I think. Is there something similar in civilian society of big US of A? Probably yes - those are LE officers of state's police. By the way, quite unique for LE organisations around the globe, too. Thinking about it forces me to pay extra attention to a logistics terminal operators, customs managers and even truck drivers who are older, demonstrate some integrity and stick with the firm for a long time. Sometimes I think that I as a managing director am less important for business than they are (though I never say it aloud, at least yet). And I should tell you that I'd never came to this without some attention to USN aircraft carrier as organisation. Someone else who is more clever than I could drew it, maybe, directly from the college course, but not me.
Hope this all makes it clearer.