Kellie Gerardi prepares for her first space flight with Virgin Galactic

Billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos aren’t the only novice astronauts excited to go to space.

Millennial mom, TikTok star and citizen astronaut Kellie Gerardi is heading to space with Branson’s Virgin Galactic, and she is “just beyond enthusiasm for training astronauts.”

Gerardi took one step closer to realizing a “lifelong dream” of going to space when Virgin Galactic announced in June that Palantir Technologies project leader and amateur bioastronautics researcher, aged 32 years old, would participate in an upcoming research not yet named. mission aboard one of the spacecraft of the private space company.

But perhaps the most exciting part of the trip is that Gerardi isn’t a professional scientist, and she hopes her trip of a lifetime will help pave the way for a wider range of space enthusiasts, to various backgrounds, to reach space.

Gerard, who lives in Florida with her husband, Steven Baumruk, and their 3-year-old daughter, Delta, works in a customer support team at Peter Thiel’s software company. She’s also a popular science influencer who regularly posts space-focused and STEM-focused content on social media, including to nearly half a million subscribers on TikTok.

Gerardi says she never really considered being an astronaut herself until she started participating in public science campaigns over the past decade.

In 2012, Gerardi began working as a media specialist with the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, an industry association that lobbies on behalf of commercial spaceflight companies. From 2014 to 2020, Gerardi worked in business development for the aerospace company Masten Space Systems.

Meanwhile, Gerardi joined the Explorer’s Club, which “promotes scientific exploration of land, sea, air and space,” according to her website, in 2012. She decided to join after meeting club president Richard Garriott, a video millionaire video game developer who had already paid $ 30 million to go to space for 12 days in 2008. Gerardi called this his “aha moment” in which she realized that the commercial space flight industry was opening the door for more people to go into space.

In 2014, Gerardi also spent two months as a crew member at the Mars Desert Research Station, a prototype laboratory in Utah that simulates conditions on Mars, after being accepted into the Mars One mission, a company which had planned to send the first people to Mars by 2025, but was ultimately shut down. (The mission had been criticized by scientists for not being feasible, and the company filed for bankruptcy in 2019.)

In 2017, she joined the International Institute of Astronautical Sciences (IIAS) to study bioastronautics in her spare time and be part of an IIAS program that trains private citizens in spaceflight and space research. Gerardi has completed an IIAS program called “Project PoSSUM,” which offers courses (starting at $ 4,000 for a five-day in-person course, plus three weeks of webinars) that include lessons on topics such as bio-astronautics and atmospheric studies, as well as training in space conditions in high-altitude flights (where trainees experience weightlessness and even train to move in a spacesuit).

IIAS now funds Gerardi’s space flight and training. The institute’s primary mission is to promote the democratization of space by training private citizens to go to space and conduct research there. Thanks to IIAS, Gerardi has already performed several parabolic or gravity-free search flights, which simulate space conditions in zero gravity for a few seconds at a time while flying at high altitude. She will be conducting experiments on behalf of IIAS on the Virgin Galactic space flight, such as donning the Astroskin Bio-monitor system, a “smart underwear” that monitors astronauts’ vital signs.

Gerardi revealed his big spaceflight news on TikTok with a series of short videos, including one with Delta noting that less than 100 women have been in space, which has been viewed over 1.6 million times.

After Virgin Galactic and IIAS announced his flight in June, Gerardi spoke to CNBC Make It about his long-held dream of going to space and why his ultimate goal is to pave the way for more citizens. private, like her – especially women – to reach for the stars. .

CNBC Make It: As a wife and mom, how cool has it been to share this exciting news with your daughter, Delta?

Kellie Gerardi: Without a doubt, the most rewarding part is talking to our 3 year old daughter, Delta.

I get moved when I think about what it means for her to see her mom become an astronaut, because it is meaningful. And, in her little mind, she thinks that flying in space is just another thing moms do.

And it’s so cool.

How did the Virgin Galactic opportunity come about?

I worked with IIAS on microgravity [the state of weightlessness in space] research, research in astronautics … And I have also been very involved in raising awareness and engaging the organization, especially with young women.

Providing access to space for this research community has been a long-standing goal of IIAS. So it really is an exciting honor to be given the opportunity to simply show how all researchers can use the space environment and these human research fights on platforms like Virgin Galactic as a laboratory for the benefit of all of humanity.

When did you officially find out you were going to space and what was it like?

He formalized just a few weeks before the announcement. And, you know, it’s euphoria, right?

And, I certainly don’t want to minimize my excitement; I was and remain overwhelmed by the excitement. But I feel like sometimes people expect me to say something like, “I could never have dreamed of this. “

But, that wouldn’t really be true. The reality is that I have dreamed of this exact opportunity every day in detail for a decade or so. It’s as if it had always lived in my head, rent free.

The flight will last approximately 75 minutes in total and you will only have a few minutes of weightlessness to conduct your experiments before returning to Earth’s atmosphere. How do you plan to use this time?

I will choreograph every second [of the flight] while I’m here on Earth. I’m going to make sure every second is taken into account to maximize scientific feedback, but also to take into account that this is the most exciting time of my life.

I want to plan for the reality that I am going to be overwhelmed in the best way. So, I really want to mark 30 seconds to a minute, specifically, to look out the window and digest the fact that I’m in the space and depth of this moment.

What kind of training or preparation do you need to undergo before you can perform this space flight?

“I like to joke that I increase my dose of ‘Vitamin G’ [aka g-force].

So, I’m going to choreograph all of my movements in the cabin and I’m going to practice this choreography on a series of acrobatic or High-G flights. [where she’ll be subjected to high levels of gravitational force] and parabolic [zero-gravity] flights in a test flight suit which is an exact replica of what I will be wearing in space.