A Moment of Silence for Swiss Space Systems

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.

Swiss Space Adventures in Washington, D.C.

Proud to represent Swiss Space Systems at the Swiss Embassy in Washington, D.C. on September 16, 2015.

On Wednesday, I was privileged to be a guest at the Embassy of Switzerland in Washington, D.C. with my boss Robert Feierbach as representatives of Swiss Space Systems (S3 USA). The only other time I had been in an embassy was very briefly during my Presidential Classroom program in high school and, to my embarrassment, I can't even remember which embassy it was. I was looking forward to immersing myself in Swiss culture.

Thank you to the Swiss Embassy for welcoming us!

The morning meeting was interesting. It was a small gathering of Swiss-related aerospace companies and aerospace/aviation-related Swiss government officials such as the Swiss department of defense. Aside from my current company being Swiss headquartered, I have no connection to Switzerland and therefore don’t know much about the country and its defenses. Switzerland is a famously neutral country surrounded by European allies; I don’t typically think of the Swiss military at all. I learned quite a bit!

After the mid-morning break, five companies gave short presentations. Swiss technology company RUAG went first, followed by my boss presenting on our company, followed by an American UAV insurance company that works mainly with Swiss clients. Silly me, I didn’t know that Swedish company SAAB doesn’t make cars anymore; mostly they’re into defense-related products now. Finally, Swiss transportation company Panalpina wrapped up the meeting, focusing on their remote shipping services for emergency disaster relief.

Robert presenting S3 to the Swiss representatives at the embassy.

Meeting breakfast spreads in the United States are pretty standard pastries, coffee, and sometimes fruit. The breakfast spread at the Swiss Embassy (legally Swiss soil) had lots and lots of chocolate! Lunch was just as yummy with amazingly delicious chocolate pastries from a local Swiss bakery. My baby gave me the perfect excuse to go back to the table for second and third helpings.

Present was Swiss astronaut Claude Nicollier who flew in space four times. He also has an astrophysics background as I do. He is also the chairman of the expert team for our company. He is astronaut #44 that I've been honored to meet. He talked to me for a few minutes about suborbital spaceflight dynamics and the challenges of human spaceflight.

Robert and me with Swiss/ESA astronaut Claude Nicollier.

We returned later in the day for the evening activities. I had never been to an embassy party before. I had no idea that it would be so extravagant and huge! The embassy was full of Swiss-related space displays, including our own lined up outside along the red carpet leading to the party.

Next to our display out front was a model of the Mars InSight rover which will launch next year. There was a large printout of the Lagoon Nebula as observed by a telescope in Chile for a European Space Agency project. There were mock-ups of Switzerland’s first cubesat, a larger small satellite, and the Rosetta observatory. They had a rotating exoplanet detection model which showed a large planet transversing a star. There was a photo booth with a green screen to display spacy backgrounds.

A huge printout of the Lagoon Nebula greeted us and beckoned the astronomy geek in me to pose.

Posing with the alphorn players and flag waver.

Check out the Mars InSight lander model! Insight will launch in 2016 to study seismology on Mars.

Hello Rosetta! A model of the comet explorer.

Robert and me posing with the photo booth astronaut.

Dinner was well worth the wait. I don’t know what I ate but it was all delicious and I later went back for seconds. Swiss chocolate was aplenty, especially near the Swiss travel and tourism displays. Amongst the crowd of 1,200 people, I ran into astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria who I knew from previous interactions. You never know who you'll meet at a Washington gathering!

Six months of pregnancy has taken its toll on my feet and I discovered the hard way that my pumps no longer fit me as they did. As we exited for the evening, I walked the red carpet barefoot. I'm classy like that. Thank you to the Swiss Embassy and Ambassador for being such gracious hosts and showing us a time to remember!

Bouncing, Floating, and Being Sick: Adventures on Parabolic Planes

In my line of work, I'm asked about my “zero G” reduced gravity parabolic flight experience often. I've been privileged to fly twice so far, both times as a researcher. It was one of the coolest, most exciting things I've ever done. I'm looking forward to flying again! I highly recommend it to anyone, as a joy ride or as a microgravity experience. It was exhilarating.

Graphic courtesy of my company, S3

As a physicist, I can't bring myself to ever call these flights “weightlessness” and I hesitate to even write “zero g.” I commonly use the term “microgravity” when discussing payloads and experiments, but even that can be inaccurate. NASA uses the term “reduced gravity” and ESA uses the term “parabolic,” both of which are more accurate. Companies such as my own who cater to a more general public tend to use catchphrase Zero G.

During these flights, the aircraft is in a state of temporary freefall. To gain perspective, human-made satellites including the International Space Station, the Moon, and everything that orbits Earth is in freefall around Earth. Earth's gravity always exists but can be canceled out, so it's more accurate to speak in terms of net gravity. We drop the word “net” for convenience.

Weightlessness or zero g (0 g) can only be achieved in perfection. Near to perfection, microgravity (0.000001 g) conditions may exist in space, but not on aircraft flying through Earth's turbulent atmosphere. The most these flights can hope to achieve is centigravity (0.01 g), or if they're really good, milligravity (0.001 g).

“Reduced gravity” is accurate and accounts for lower gravity analogs such as lunar gravity or Martian gravity, but ignores the hypergravity conditions when the plane is flying upward at nearly double normal gravity (1.8 g). “Parabolic” is the most accurate term of them all because it describes the motion of the aircraft as being large parabolas or arcs.

My first flight was on a Zero G Corporation plane here in Florida in November 2011. At the time, I was studying for my doctoral candidacy exam and preparing our experiment for flight, so I was preoccupied with technical details and not focused on the flight itself. The closest I got to contemplating my upcoming adventure was riding a theme park ride that threw around my body and thinking, “Wow, these sudden G force changes are good practice for next weekend.”

There is no sideways, not on this plane! - November 2011

It was very cold on the plane. I soon learned that this was done on purpose to minimize overheating which can lead to being sick. These aircraft weren't given the nickname “vomit comet” for nothing. My flightsuit was huge on my petite frame, but I pinned it well enough to be able to move in it. I quickly learned that agility was beneficial while floating around nearly uncontrollably as a first timer.

Microgravity isn't like flying. It's not like swimming or scuba diving, even though astronauts practice underwater to train for it. It isn't like being at the top of a roller coaster. It was like someone flipped a switch and gravity just turned off.

I had very little control over my movements. Each move I made was exaggerated and counter-intuitive. I felt like a rubber ball that had gone out of control and was bouncing off of the floor, ceiling, and walls, only in this case there was no difference between the floor, ceiling, and walls, all were the same. I expected to fly like Superman or do somersaults or just hover, but those maneuvers take practice. It was all I could manage to keep control of my movements. I had a blast!

Houston, August 2012

About to board the plane - August 2012

My second flight was in August 2012 at Ellington Field in Houston with NASA's Reduced Gravity Program. I felt a lot calmer right off the bat because I knew what to expect and how to react to reduced gravity. I was like a flag blowing in the wind, only without wind. I held on to the experiment with one hand while my legs stayed together and swayed horizontally (for the most part) and my other hand worked.

Unfortunately, I personally learned about the nickname “vomit comet.” I had declined the optional anti-nausea medication for both flights, and this time, the changing gravity caught up to me. By parabola 22 of 40, I was down and out. When we landed and I finally escaped the plane, I literally got down on my knees and kissed the ground! But, as sick as I was, I would sign up to do it again in a heartbeat.

Whether you're a scientist or an engineer with an experiment or payload to test in microgravity conditions or an average person with an adventurer's spirit, I highly recommend signing up for a flight if you get the chance. I'm so grateful for my flights. It'll be an experience you'll never forget!

Swiss Space Systems... in Florida!

You've heard me mention Swiss Space Systems in passing and may be wondering what a Swiss company has to do with Florida. That, too, is what I wondered two years ago when I received a message from a new LinkedIn connection telling me about the educational and outreach components of his company S3 and mentioning a visit to Florida. Thankfully, I was familiar with S3 already. At the time, I was the lead analyst for the industry analysis company NewSpace Global and had just completed a study of S3 after the company's public announcement. Their interest in Florida surprised and excited me. I immediately put my new connection in contact with some business development people in Florida who I knew would be able to assist them in their activities.

They did indeed visit Florida in July of that year. I had breakfast with the Swiss cohort when they arrived, meeting my online connection and his colleagues. The excitement they exhibited to be in Florida was palatable! I would be excited to visit Switzerland, but this was to a different level. Florida's Space Coast is synonymous with space exploration, and these were all space enthusiasts like myself. We talked about NASA's historic achievements and the recently ended space shuttle program which hit the area hard when it ended. I told them about the surrounding universities and the space-related research being done. I briefly described some of the spacey locations and facilities in the area. I urged them to see the really cool things that the area has to offer during their tour later in the day.

One year ago today, S3 hosted a Florida office inauguration event at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Speeches were given, presentations were explained, and the milestone was celebrated with food and socialization. I hung out in the KSC rocket garden (yes, that's what we call our collection of old rockets standing vertically) with some of the Swiss, enjoying the lovely Florida evening. We went out for dinner after. They spoke in English for my benefit, and now that I think about it, my French isn't any better today than it was one year ago!

In November, I became the Manager of Florida Operations. This means that I'm handling everything that we need to do to make S3 successful in Florida. We have our upcoming “zero G” microgravity parabolic flight campaign which I'm really excited about. In Florida we will take off and land on Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF), the huge runway where the space shuttle orbiters used to land. We are working on a spaceplane that will fly suborbitally and launch small satellites into orbit.

(As a physicist, I can't in good conscious use the terms zero G or weightless without quotes, because the force due to gravity G is always there. It's really a net zero G due to the freefall acceleration, but even that isn't accurate because there's some tiny bit of residual force at any given time due to the imprecision of technology and the interactions with the air current outside. I prefer the term parabolic flight which describes the shape of the plane's trajectory and makes no judgment on the experience inside the plane. NASA prefers the term reduced gravity, which is also accurate but broader, describing other plane trajectories that can produce analog lunar or Martian gravity conditions, for example.)

This diagram of a plane flying a parabola is taken from one of our company presentations, because it is said a picture is worth a thousand words. I haven't had the opportunity to look out the window during one of these parabolas, but I have been told that the horizon becomes nearly vertical as the plane nearly nosedives to the ground. A scary sight! But the plane is specially modified and the pilots are specially trained to make these roller coaster moves over and over and over. I've been on two parabolic flight campaigns previously, though that's a topic for anther entry.

As you can imagine, flying on one of these flights is a ton of fun! It's one of the most exciting things I've done in my life. In full disclosure, I did get horribly sick during the second half of my second flight (which is why they nicknamed it the vomit comet), but I did decline to take the motion sickness medication before we took off so I am partly to blame. I would go up again in an instant, over and over and over!

In addition to being fantastically fun, there are scientific benefits to certain experiments. I intend to write about microgravity experimentation at great depth in the future, but for now, I'll just say that the approximately 20 seconds of microgravity per parabola is enough time for certain well-conceived experiments to do some real science that couldn't otherwise be done on Earth. These flights are also a good stepping stone to longer suborbital or orbital flights where the microgravity time ranges from 5 minutes to years.

The parabolic flight campaign on our wide-body Airbus jet is the first stage of our air-to-launch space system (hence the company name, Swiss Space Systems). In a few years, we will fly the SOAR spaceplane on top of the Airbus. Once the SOAR is released in the air, it will ignite and launch to suborbital space. A third-stage launch module will send small satellites and cubesats into orbit around the planet. Eventually, many years from now, the goal is to send people into suborbital space to transport passengers very quickly across the globe. See this diagram from our website.

If you thought you'd get juicy details from me, sorry, I'm being vague on purpose. But you can find out more at our website at www.s-3.ch. If you see French and have as much French ability as I have, click on EN on the top right corner. I also recommend following our Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts for the latest information. I'll try to answer any questions in the comments but be forewarned that I may not be able to fully answer them, but I'll try.

To clarify because I get this question a lot: no, I am not Swiss. I am Philadelphian, born and raised, and undeniably Floridian now. I have not yet had the opportunity to visit the land of beautiful mountains and delicious chocolate, but I hope to one day. I sent this to my boss before publishing it, so you know I'm hinting pretty hard.

The Sights Around Swiss Space Systems

Today was a sunny day, nearly 80 degrees! Driving into work was easy. For those of you not familiar with the Space Coast, I present to you: The Sights Around Swiss Space Systems.

Coming from the west as I usually do, I take NASA Parkway. Signs guide the journey along the way as far back as highway I-95. Kennedy Space Center gets so many visitors, the area does its best to spell out the route for travelers. The cities of Titusville and Cape Canaveral are very close by.

As I drive down NASA Parkway, I pass the Astronaut Hall of Fame. I've been there twice, once for Yuri's Night and once for a space shuttle launch party, and I keep meaning to go back one of these days. I pass the old, closed NASA badging station and cross over the NASA Causeway, which the rest of the world would call a bridge.

The cool thing about the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) is that it can be seen from a distance. It's a constant sight off to the side down the long stretch of road. It's so big, I can even see it when landing into the Orlando Airport 45 miles away. I've been inside many times and I even got to go half-way up it once, though I haven't yet been to the roof.

Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station are on the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. This is a protected area where nature and technology both thrive. I've seen alligators, turtles, and wild pigs wandering around. I once saw a dolphin jump in the water. I haven't seen any manatees at KSC, but I have seen the manatee hangouts elsewhere in the refuge and surrounding area. Welcome to Florida.

Before reaching the Kennedy Space Center security gate, there is a road appropriately called Space Commerce Way. Just beyond this road is the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Ever since the new Space Shuttle Atlantis exhibit opened up, the view from the road has been much more interesting! The space shuttle mock-up visible from the road reminds me of the Saturn V mock-up in Huntsville.

The Swiss Space Systems Florida office is located in a building called the Space Life Sciences Laboratory (SLSL) in Exploration Park. My previous company CASIS also has an office in the SLSL, and my summer 2012 grad school project with Kennedy Space Center took place in that building as well. Much goes on around here!

I just love these road names. Space Commerce Way leads to Exploration Parkway which leads to NewSpace Drive which leads to Odyssey Way. Someone had fun with his/her job.

The SLSL currently hosts several universities, companies, and institutions. I count 14 on that sign. I posed with the S3 USA Florida sign.

The building itself is very nice. I snapped this photo of a turkey two years ago because, hey, a turkey! This is a wildlife refuge, after all.

Our office is modest right now because we are a small operation just starting out. We will grow with time. For now, we have a quiet corner for ourselves. My boss and I hung photos and these are my two favorites.

I decided to exit east this afternoon to drive toward Merritt Island. If I had driven to work from Merritt Island, I would have seen this Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex sign direct me to Space Commerce Way.

They made the sign big so that tourists don't miss it and try to go through the security gate. Tourists wander around here all the time. Just this afternoon, I saw two separate families get turned away at the SLSL front desk because they arrived at the wrong place. The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex is fantastic, the best space museum I've been to (and I've been to many), and I do highly recommend it for visitors to the area!