The Birth of Epsilon3

My name is Laura Crabtree, and I’m the Co-Founder and CEO of Epsilon3.

I’ll never forget the silence in the control room as we watched data come in and out from Dragon after the video feeds from Falcon 9 cut out. I could see the color drain from my friends’ faces, as we experienced yet another total loss. Months of hard work and sleepless nights gone in an instant. 

Of course, I wasn’t worried that we couldn’t come back from this. I knew we could. What terrified me to my core was whether or not we’d be able to fulfill the mission I’d set forth for myself, my team, and our country: to bring back manned spaceflight to the USA. 

With another setback, I was concerned about our progress and the amount of time it would take to get back on track. Fundamentally, I knew the problem didn’t stem from bad science or poor planning. Every mission failure was preventable with the use of enhanced traceability and process management tools to enable efficient spacecraft operations and communications. Of course we had our Jira tickets, our checklists and more to complete our operations. Training for each and every mission, I witnessed numerous mistakes that could have been prevented with a single piece of technology to tie all of these disparate components together with live mission data. We didn’t have an OS for spacecraft operations, and that fundamentally could have prevented mistakes from happening. 

But I’m not one to give up. I fight to solve what I believe in, and 6 years after I met Bob and Doug, they called down to me from Dragon and said the words “Laura! It is outstanding to hear your voice FROM SPACE!” when they finally reached space aboard Dragon Demo-2. After spending over 5 years preparing operations and leading their training to fly on the first human-carrying commercially-built spacecraft, I felt like one of my major goals had been accomplished. 

But I was hungry for more.

I had spent 10+ years working on operations for satellites, rockets, and commercial spacecraft carrying cargo to the space station. I spent 4 years working operations at Northrop Grumman, then 5 years working spacecraft operations for both Cargo Dragon and Falcon-9 operations and training. I had trained multiple astronauts on SpaceX’s cargo Dragon vehicle.

But I knew it was time to pursue the next challenge. Space was a childhood dream of mind, growing up dreaming of being an astronaut. But as I learned more about my strengths, I realized that the best thing I could do to fundamentally further humankind’s ability to explore the cosmos was to go off on my own and build the tools that will enable centuries worth of aerospace operations.

I left my decade-plus career to build exactly that.

Say hello to Epsilon3. We are the OS for aerospace operations, and our software will speed up the exploration of space.

Epsilon3 is the toolkit I wish I had during my years at SpaceX. From talking to industry colleagues, academics, and astronauts, I realized that an interconnected operations toolset specifically built for the space industry is sorely needed. So I decided to make it.

Alongside my cofounders Max and Aaron, we are looking forward to building all the tools I have been dreaming of and those that my colleagues have told me they need. We are building the best, most efficient software suite we can imagine to power the space industry and beyond.

If any of this resonates with you, we’d love to hear from you! We are looking for amazing people and engineers to join our team to build the future for generations to come!