Meet Kirsten Whittingham, the President of Max Space, a company committed to lowering the cost of doing business in space through innovative ‘expandable’ habitation modules.

Kirsten’s journey from a space-obsessed child in rural Tennessee to leading a company at the forefront of space habitation reflects her relentless dedication and passion for the space industry.

With an aerospace engineering degree and experience as a flight controller at NASA for both the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station, Kirsten brings invaluable insights into the future of space exploration and the role of cost-effective solutions in expanding humanity’s reach into space.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

• Kirsten’s journey from space camp to NASA.

• The significance of Max Space’s modular habitats.

• Challenges women face in a male-dominated industry.

• How space technologies benefit everyday life on Earth.

• Plans for Max Space’s 2026 mission with SpaceX.

Quote:

“We can’t limit ourselves with what we think can be accomplished… we need people who can innovate, who can come up with these big, maybe crazy ideas, and work with a team to figure out how to make it work.”

- Kirsten Whittingham

Episode Links:

• Connect with Kirsten Whittingham on LinkedIn

• Follow Max Space on LinkedIn

• Explore Max Space

• Embry‑Riddle Aeronautical University

• Raytheon (now RTX)

• Redwire Space (Made in Space)

• Axiom Space

• NASA

Credits:

Production by CxS Partners LTD 

Executive Producer: Toby Goodman

Audio & Sound Design: Lee Turner

Artwork: Ryan Field

Find your place in the business of space: https://interastra.space

We can't limit ourselves with what we think can be accomplished. And so it's, we need the people who can innovate, who can come up with these big, maybe crazy ideas, and take those big crazy ideas and work with a team to figure out how to make it work. That's the best advice I think I can give.

Hi. I am Kirsten Wittingham, and you are listening to 'Your Business In Space'.

I am president of Max Space, and that means that I am part of lowering the cost of doing business in space.

Our modules are the most cost effective habitation modules, hands down.

Modules are the platform in which we do work in space.

So the International Space Station is constructed of several modules, and the commercial destinations that are going to be replacing the International Space Station will also be constructed of at least 1, if not more modules.

Those modules will have human habitation structures in it, the crew sleep recorders, they'll have places for the crew to eat, but they will also have places for the crew to conduct research, to do manufacturing operations for the benefit of humanity here, and to to do other things that we probably haven't even thought of yet. When I was 3 years old, I told, my aunt that I wanted to be an industrial. And she would tell me about this later and she would say, even at 3 years old, you were so persistent that I knew you would end up in a space industry. So she was telling me this story around the time that I went to space camp as a kin. So I I lived in Tennessee. I was able to go to a space camp in Huntsville, Alabama. And I I remember her telling me this story.

We were sitting on our couch in the living room and I thought, well, that's so cool. This is just all I've ever wanted to do. And by the time I went to space camp, that's when I realized, you know, I don't really care about being an astronaut. That was just the language I had as a 3 year old. That's the hero. That's the celebrity. But once I got to space camp, I understood more about what flight control is, and I thought, oh, that's really what I wanna do.

Those people are leading the mission. They're calling the shot.

They're helping to troubleshoot when things go wrong, and I wanna do that. So that's from then on, that's what I said I wanted to do. I got my aerospace engineering degree and then I did do that. I actually got to go be a flight controller at NASA. I was a flight controller in both the space shuttle and the space station programs. Wasn't my first job at a school, but that was the I sort of the first real one that I had. I stayed at for a long time.

And, yeah. I just I lived out my childhood dream and I'm proud to be able to say that I did that. So when I was in high school, I was in high school in rural Tennessee. You know, while other people probably like had AP classes and things like that, we didn't tweet. We barely had computers. It was not a great place for me to be supported in my dreams. We didn't have even, like, engineers, you know, where I grew up. Everybody was farmers or factory workers or that type of thing.

So I didn't have a lot of role models. But again, I knew what I wanted to be, so it doesn't really matter. And I just forged ahead. Like I said, I went off to Embry Riddle, studied aerospace engineering, and that was my first understanding that this career, that I had chosen was was not one that was very balanced from a gender diversity aspect. I showed up to my first class at Embry Riddle, and it was a liberal arts class, like an English class where, you know, at a normal university that would be pretty 50 50. No. At Every Riddle, it was 2 girls, myself being one of them and 30 guys. And we were sitting in a circle and all the guys were just staring at the girls.

Looking for, oh, this is really an interesting mix. I didn't really understand that because it was such a technical university that this would be every class that I was in. If I had more than 3 girls in a class, it would be strange. What was interesting, my first job out of college actually was in a at an air force space. And I took that job because the Columbia accident had had happened. They weren't hiring a lot of flight controllers at that time so I needed to to do something for a few years while they figured that out. I was the only woman in the facility. I had a bathroom to myself.

I never counted it up, but I felt like most of the beatings that I were at, that I was in as a flight controller, they were very balanced. The flight control discipline, if you watch it on TV, you will see a lot of women in the room. You will see women as flight directors. And I just felt, like I said, balanced. I never really felt singled out or or had issues. But that was the last time. I mean like, in the rest of my career, I can point to many times where I have been the only woman in the room. Or maybe not the only woman in the room, but the only woman at the table.

You know? The ones that are making the decisions, I might be the only woman there. Definitely have been in training classes where I'm like, oh, it feels like I'm back at Embry Riddle. It's me and a bunch of guys. And so it's interesting. I'm glad I had the Embry Riddle experience in some ways because again, I felt very saints there. Embry Riddle did a nice job. I never felt like I was singled out or I I didn't felt scared or anything. So that was a great way to be introduced to, hey, it's gonna be uncomfortable sometimes.

You're gonna be the only one that looks like you in that room. And you just have to sort of work through it and find ways to be able to say the things that need to be said and to have those be heard. I've also been just very lucky though that throughout my career that there have been a lot of male advocates at each of these places. I talked earlier about Arnold Air Force Base. I've just been lucky with men who will say, 'No no no, wait! You know, let her finish. She wasn't done yet'.

That's great. And I hope that men and women will do that for each other because it's not always just a gender thing, it can be a race thing. Making sure that people have, have voice is important.

Alright. So after NASA, I went to a very cold state. If you're familiar with the US, I went to Minnesota, and I actually helped Cirrus, which is an aviation a general aviation, manufacturer.

I helped them produce a business jet, the 1st of its kind, got that to market, and then I wanted to warm it up a little bit so I convinced my husband to move.

And I took a job at Raytheon, which is a major defense contractor. I worked in their Pratt and Whitney military engines division. I led a nearly $1,000,000,000 P and L there. 22 International Air Forces plus the United States Air Force. That's where I learned how passionate I was really about profit and loss or P and L management, customer relationships, leadership, all of those things were a big part of my job there.

Then I moved on to Axiom Space because I wanted to get back into the the space business because that's what I grew up wanting to do. And so I felt the call during COVID to move back into the space industry.

And at the time, Axiom was hiring and I was really intrigued by what they were doing and I thought, hey, you know, I have all this business background. So not only do I have the space flight background because I was a a flight controller for several years. But now I know how to run a business. Now I know how to work with international governments. I know how to lead teams and bell strong teams. And so I wanted to bring all that experience, to Axiom, which was great. I was able to help them sign contracts with international governments and manage the first commercial missions there.

And, you know, now I've transitioned to Max Space.

I'm so excited about being part of this because I think what is really necessary in this industry is finding a way to do what we wanna do in space in ways that don't cost 1,000,000,000 and 1,000,000 of dollars. Nobody has that kind of money to fund those businesses or the ones that do, you know, it's still tough and looking at how do we lower the barrier to entry for everyone? Because even billionaires who might wanna take a trip to space, that's all nice. That's great. And I support space tourism, but I wanna be able to see the small businesses who are manufacturing things like the retinal implants. You know, those types of things are just so interesting to me. They do so much good on earth. But these small companies, and make no mistake, it's small companies that are doing these things, they need a lower cost of entry into this field. So by joining MaxSpace and seeing how much they can reduce the cost of the architecture that's in space, I'm super excited about what that further enables in the space economy.

I think when it comes to people who aren't super tied in to space, when it comes to the business of space, the biggest misconception is that nobody cares except for the people that are in the space industry. But those of us who are in it know that your cell phone wouldn't work without space. There's so many things that we use today. I just posted the other day on on LinkedIn about it. Like, we could all be using our Rand McNally paper atlases to navigate but we're not. We're using our phone and we're not we're not having to do that because of space and the GPS satellites.

There's communication satellites. There's things that help us monitor the climate, make better decisions about what to plant, when to plant them from an agricultural standpoint, monitoring fires, making sure that those get put out more quickly and saving money in the economy.

So there's just so many ways that space touches all of the world. And those cell phones are probably the biggest example of it. To be successful in space, I believe that companies really need to have the right leadership team, and that probably is a mix of people who have a space flight background. It is a mix of people who have the technical expertise to qualify and do things in space because it is very different than on earth. But it also includes people who understand how to run businesses. It under it includes a lot of other roles. There's space lawyers, there's financial people. So having the right leadership team that is not only passionate about space but also knows their stuff and can work together really well is what it takes to be successful.

I'm sure there will be companies that are successful that don't meet those criteria but I I think there's already evidence of companies that are struggling because they don't meet that criteria. So that's what I think it takes to be successful. And I think we're doing a really good job with that right now at Max Space.

Our leadership team includes our chief technology officer. He built the first two expandables that are on orbit. Genesis 1 launched in I believe it was 2,006 and it's still in orbit. So that's great. And she that it speaks to our heritage.

Aaron, our CEO is co founder of Made in Space. People who follow the space industry will be familiar with Made in Space that sold to Redwire Space, and it did the first three d printing on the International Space Station. So, yeah, Space Station. So he has some really good, strong technical background, a bit of business background, both of them have owned their own businesses. I bring in a bit more of that in the spaceflight operation. So that's an exciting start to it. And then hopefully, as we began to attract more investment, more customers, we'll just continue to round that out.

I think definitely keeping an eye on how does it all work together? How are these people supporting one another and yet advancing Rackspace in some specific area? Whether that's a lawyer with the spaceflight background or whether that's, additional engineering staff, that type of thing.

And I just making sure it's cohesive and that these are people that are truly experts in their area. Keith, the advice that I got early in my career said that I carried forward with me today is that you have to speak, in this instance, to the flight director, the person that's in control. You have to speak to them like you would speak to your parents. So when you think about that, that means your parents, you probably talk to them about your work quite a bit. You're not using acronyms. You're not using big, heavy, technical jargon, but there are certain words that they're gonna hear come up over and over and over again. Sync can use those because they'll be familiar with that. But beyond that, you need to assume that that person in charge really doesn't know a lot about what you're doing.

And it's interesting because the flight directors, they go through classes that teach them about every system on the space station or the space shuttle, whichever you were working. But the point was, they have a lot to think about. And you can't you can't trust that they remember all the things. So you really have to sort of scale it back and explain things in clear, simple English. And so I've used that pretty well throughout my career. I can't say I'm always perfect about it, but it helps you address with your audience, whoever that is. Maybe it's an executive or maybe it's a customer, and just connect better. We can't limit ourselves with what we think can be accomplished.

Right? So that is our first expandable. And just for definition purposes, you might also hear it called an inflatable or a soft good structure is kind of what NASA sometimes called it. Try not to use the inflatable term too much because for some people outside of the space industry that triggers this like popping image and we don't want that. These are made of of materials like Kevlar, which is a bulletproof material. This is a very, very strong, multilayered, soft good structure that can pack up in into a very compressed I call it like an umbrella when you see umbrellas when they're first sold. It's very tightly wrapped up. And then when you wanna deploy it, it goes way far out. Right? It's similar.

And far off in the future, we would like to be part of lunar habitats and Martian habitats and those types of things. But right now, I do think that there's other opportunities for us in low earth orbit today. And I think it's more than people might think on the surface, right? So looking at what are those possible applications, who do I need to talk to in order to understand their requirements for that, and to see if that's a good fit for us to to sort of plan.

I'm Kirsten Whittingham and you've been listening to Your Business in Space. All the ways to connect with me are in the links in the show notes. To discover more, head to InterAstra.Space

____ AI Transcript____