What I Do

Name: Mike Swift
Title: Associate Design Engineer
Employer: ILC Dover
Degree: BS Aerospace Engineering, 2008, Prescott campus

I work in the space inflatables group at ILC Dover, a softgoods designer and manufacturer. That includes decelerators, deployable booms, inflatable habitats, and planetary airbag landing systems. We built the airbag systems for Pathfinder and both Mars Rover landers.

My duties cover design, material testing, 3-D modeling, technical drawing, production support, and occasionally manned testing.

Right now, I’m supporting production of an inflatable aeroshell, IRVE II (Inflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment), to be launched from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility next fall. I’m also helping with a Defense Department-funded project for which we’re designing and building an inflatable aeroshell to protect a deployable high-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle through atmospheric entry. I designed a manufacturing aid to be used for webbing proof testing on a deployable softgood lunar habitat.

I also work in our spacesuit division. We made the softgoods portions of the Apollo and Skylab suits, and we still make and constantly improve suits for the Space Shuttle and International Space Station. I’ve been helping with tests of the newest Phase VI shuttle suit gloves, including pressurized suit testing.

We have a personal protection equipment group that makes respirators and gas masks, including the mask used by the U.S. military. I’ve done manned testing on a new aircrew mask for chemical biological nuclear protection.

ILC Dover always has something new and exciting, and they pay me to wear a spacesuit. It doesn’t get much better than that.