Hey Papi Promotions Network member Sabrina Thompson makes the news with her Girl In Space Club.
Despite having a full-time job at NASA, Thompson runs the direct-to-consumer label Girl in Space Club. Girl In Space founder Sabrina Thompson at work wearing one of her designs. Read more about the Girl In Space Club on website https://girlsinspaceclub.com
June 23, 2022, 4:26 PM Press Release by Rosemary Feitelberg
EDITOR, READY-TO-WEAR & SPORTSWEAR NEWS
https://wwd.com/eye/people/nasa-engineer-girl-in-space-founder-1235225630/
Somehow Sabrina Thompson is completely at ease with the unlikely trifecta of art, aerospace and entrepreneurism.
Aside from being a full-time NASA employee and atmospheric scientist, she is an artist, founder of the streetwear brand Girl in Space Club and is developing a prototype suit for female astronauts to wear en route to space or underneath Extra-Vehicular Activity suits.
Wannabe space travelers will be able to buy the $600 flight suit she has designed for consumers and will soon be produced in her home base city of Baltimore. It has been developed with the incubator Sew Bromo and Belvidere Terrace Atelier. Through Girl in Space Club’s nonprofit arm, Thompson plans to use art and fashion to offer STEM education to high school girls.
Having joined NASA in 2010, she now designs orbit trajectories for space missions. Translation? “I don’t want to sound like a GPS, but I basically calculate how much it costs in terms of fuel and then the path that we’re going to take to get from Point A to Point B. So if we leave Earth to get to another planet, I design the trajectory to get to that other planet, and then the orbit, the fly-by or whatever path we take to get to the target destination,” she explained.
Unlike generations of children who have dreamed of becoming astronauts, Thompson said working for NASA wasn’t something that she ever envisioned. “I didn’t know my job existed until I started working there,” she said. “To be honest, I stumbled upon this.”
As a child growing up in Roosevelt, New York, she was either in her bedroom with the door closed — music blasting — drawing her own characters or out on the basketball court. Her mother worked as a nurse and her father drove charter buses. As “a pretty good student” and the valedictorian of her class, Thompson said her high school art teacher helped her choose a major at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. “She said, ‘You’re good at math and science, and you’re very creative. Why don’t you try mechanical engineering?’” Thompson said.
That advice eventually led to internships, including one at NASA. Before joining NASA full-time, she earned a graduate degree in aerospace engineering at Georgia Tech. More recently, she completed a second graduate degree in atmospheric physics from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Nike, Free People and Lucky Brand are a few of her favorite brands. She said “she also likes ethnic clothes,” and buys fabric during occasional trips to India to make her own styles. A bit of a sneakerhead who had practically every pair of Air Jordans in multiple colors, Thompson said she has tried to grow out of that “but it’s not happening.” She has, however “slowed down a lot” and has sold some of the 75 pairs, due to necessity. “I sold them because I was running out of space,” said the Baltimore-based Thompson.
In 2018, she started Girl in Space Club, after realizing that something was missing from her life. “I had a great job that was satisfying my curiosity about how things worked. It allowed me to grow in technical areas. But that artist inside of me was internally starving,” Thompson said.
Having not taken the brand too seriously initially while still searching for a niche, in early 2020 that switched, with Thompson gaining some mentoring. Now the direct-to-consumer label is starting to consistently be profitable through online sales and pop-ups. A $125 jean jacket, a $40 “Eva T-shirt” and the $25 “Universe Inside Me” digital art print are some of the offerings.
The space suit prototype that is being developed for female astronauts is to be worn during missions for launch and entry. Extensive research and development will be needed, according to Thompson, who is in the early stages of connecting with partners, speaking with potential investors and applying for grants. The design could potentially be modified to be customized for the launch requirements of companies in the private sector of aerospace.
Still in the research and design phase, she said the aim is to create something stylish and for the female form. “If you look at all the astronaut suits that have been designed, they were designed with the male in mind, not the female,” she said, noting how an all-female space walk had to be postponed in early 2019 due to the lack of spacesuits to fit the women astronauts.
Taking into account research and development, testing, sourcing different materials and replacement items, the development of a spacesuits requires millions of dollars. The in-flight suit that is in development will “definitely be cheaper than that,” Thompson said.
Having twice applied to go to space with NASA, including in the summer of 2020, Thompson is planning to try again in 2024. “They say it takes two or three tries before you get selected,” she said.
With South Korea becoming the seventh nation to use a homegrown rocket for a successful satellite launch earlier this week, NASA continues to set the standards despite an influx of private companies getting into aerospace. “You have so many companies that have popped up in the space industry in the last couple of years. It’s insane,” she said. “It’s partially because, when you work for the government, there are rules and regulations. There is a lot of bureaucracy and things that need to take place before you can move forward with initiatives. When a new administration comes in, everything you’ve worked for, maybe for the past four years or eight years, those programs could be pushed off to the side to focus on something else. When you have people from private industry working on space, you don’t have those issues.”
Noting how many SpaceX employees previously worked for NASA, Thompson said other private companies have been inspired by how successful SpaceX has been and are following suit. “Globally, this is happening. A lot of people are coming together in different countries — in Africa, all over Europe, in India and of course in China. I strongly believe this is the future. We will see more astronauts outside of NASA astronauts.”
To learn more information about her fundraising campaign, please support her on the Kickstarter at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/girlinspaceclub/bring-to-life-the-first-womens-space-travel-suit?ref=ksr_email_creator_staff_pick
Read more of her news articles at https://www.cnbc.com/video/2022/11/01/37-year-old-aerospace-engineer-designing-a-spacesuit-for-women.html
