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| Taken September 2015 at the Swiss Embassy in Washington, D.C. |
I received the email
the same day I got engaged. I had been waiting months for this email,
wondering if it would ever really happen. I've had unofficial job
offers dangled in front of me in the past, only to become
disappointed when they never materialized into paper. Live and learn.
It was a Saturday
evening in Florida in May 2013 when I accepted a LinkedIn invitation
and struck up a conversation with a stranger in Hong Kong who was
part of a team creating a “new space” start-up in Switzerland. It
was ambitious and intriguing. He asked me for assistance setting up a
meeting in Florida. I was happy to help.
I met the team for a
pre-meeting breakfast in July, then again at the Florida office grand
opening in March 2014. I met with the man who would head the U.S.
subsidiary, my future boss, twice one-on-one. The delays in the start
of operations worried me only slightly. I took it as a sign that they
were being extra cautious before jumping into the U.S. market.
On August 29, 2014,
Swiss Space Systems' US subsidiary S3 USA asked me to run their
Florida office. With a shiny new ring on my left hand, I said yes to
both the marriage proposal and the job. I finally began two months
later. The intent was for me to start hiring employees for the office
right away in preparation for parabolic “Zero G” flights that
would begin out of Kennedy Space Center's huge SLF runway the
following year.
The business plan
seemed solid to me. With investments and partners, S3 would purchase
and modify a large plane to begin parabolic flights for research and
tourism. With that income, funds would be available to build their
spaceplane which would fly suborbital flights across the world.
Eventually, a small satellite launcher would be added to the
suborbital vehicle to launch small satellites into orbit. They even
had a smallsat customer lined up. The Swiss are known for their
meticulous attention to detail and deep pockets. They sold me on the
dream.
Up to that point, I
had worked for two space start-ups, both with varying degrees of
challenges and successes. I entered into the position eyes wide open.
I knew there was a high risk of failure. At that stage of my career,
I was willing to take the chance. And I lost.
Hiring a staff never
happened. Financial troubles began to trickle down to me in February.
It wasn't long before previous months' of paychecks were added to the
list of company promises. I was kept out of the loop for the most
part. I started part-time tutoring math, physics, and exam prep on
the side. I hadn't even reached a year with S3 before being
encouraged by my boss to look for other opportunities. The difficulty
was, I was pregnant and far along, so beginning a new full-time job
at that time was impractical.
December 2015. The
sweet front desk administrator at Space Florida's Space Life Science
Lab gave me a surprise baby shower gift around the same I was
clearing out the S3 Florida office. It wasn't pregnancy hormones that
caused me to cry in my empty office. It was only because my immediate
boss is a truly decent, protecting, generous human being was I able
to give birth with health insurance that S3 HQ had cut off the month
prior. As 2015 came to a close, so did my employment with the Swiss
space start-up that wasn't meant to be.
With notice of its
bankruptcy last week, I'd like to take a moment of silence to reflect
on the short life and long decline of Swiss Space Systems. As I
unpack my belongs in my new home this month, I find reminders: a
stack of holographic bookmarks, a bomber jacket, a spaceplane pin,
and a high-quality print-out of a graphically rendered spaceplane
that hung in the S3 Florida office. Long gone, S3 will always hold a
place in my memory.
Lesson learned. By
wary of start-ups. But it's okay to take that chance sometimes. You
never know what will happen if the dreamers succeed.
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