France
After his internship ended, the direction Reijnen headed toward was Toulouse, France. With his freshly earned Delft master’s degree, Reijnen started in 1997 as a project management office manager at Airbus on what would eventually become the A380 passenger airliner. fascinating
time and project
“It was a because
all over Europe and beyond, people in the industry were talking about how our European aircraft would be bigger than the Boeing 747,” he recalls. “It was a great time and place to be a young engineer.”
During that great time Reijnen was schooled (in a good way) by Jurgen Thomas, a senior German aerospace manager known as the godfather of the A380 program. “He was a real engineer’s engineer and we don’t have those type of managers like him anymore,” Reijnen reminisces. “He always had a little Casio calculator he typed on to confirm computer models he was given. I asked him why he did that. He answered, ‘If their models are within 5% of what I get on my calculator here, they are right. If they are outside 5%, they are wrong.’ He regularly caught some errors, and he taught me you have to really understand the figures you are working with. I remember that lesson to this day and emphasize it to my team.” Yet, as great as those Toulouse teachings were, by the year 2000, Reijnen had an important decision to make: “Did I want to stay in France or return to Germany to my girlfriend, Saskia?”
Germany
He chose well because three decades later Saskia is not only his wife, but also mother to their two teenage daughters. “Personally, I think we as parents have raised two daughters to a stage where we can say they’re on their way.” he says. “They haven’t yet graduated, but we’re very proud of them and their accomplishments. I’m a proud dad of two lovely daughters.”
In addition to his family, the decision to go back to Deutschland also worked out career wise. Reijnen became executive assistant/ chief of staff to a foundational mentor, Rainer Hertrich, at the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS). Reijnen explains, “I had access to all the
information he had while he was running the company. I sorted out the papers that came to him and preformulated responses that he would either approve, amend, or reject. I got to see how he thought: what he would do and why he did it. Over a couple of years of working with him, I developed such an intimate relationship with him to where he would come into my office and I knew what he was going to ask or say before he spoke. I was so young, not even a manager, but he let me learn from him. That relationship prepared me to take my first CEO job.”
Netherlands
EADS agreed that Reijnen was indeed ready, and offered him the chance to return to his native land in 2006 as CEO of a fascinating small company that EADS acquired
from the Dutch government,
comprising the space activities of the bankrupt Fokker Aircraft Company. Known then as Dutch Space (now known as Airbus Netherlands), the acquired company manufactured subsystems and equipment for satellites and launcher rockets. “I had no background in space or in building satellites, but leadership thought my being Dutch with good knowledge of the Group made me a good fit. Like in the past, I was given a fantastic opportunity and took it,” he says. “I was tasked with integrating Dutch Space into the big Airbus company. Yet, when we were able to closely look into the company after the sale (to EADS, which later became Airbus), it looked less rosy and involved turnaround management. We put a new strategy in place that made the company grow again that worked very well. We also successfully lobbied politicians in the Netherlands to increase their institutional budgets for space during that time. Our accomplishments with Dutch Space were a great achievement. I learned a lot during my seven-year term as CEO. I was still early in my career and gaining a lot of experience.”
Germany (again)
That experience prepared Reijnen for his next assignment. Airbus sent him to the “nice, old city” (as he describes it) of Bremen in North Germany, where Reijnen was put in charge of all human space flight and exploration at Airbus Defense and Space. “We had sites in Germany, France, and Houston, Texas, and it was
very fascinating work,” he says. That allure included NASA’s Artemis program. Not only does this program plan to take humanity back to the moon (“humanity” meaning that this time the program astronauts include women, people of color, and internationals); the program’s goals also include building a long-term moon base for manufacturing and research, as sustaining water has likely been detected in lunar craters. It’s the original Apollo program of the 1960s-70s on steroids with the ultimate goal of using the moon to get to Mars — and this century Uncle Sam invited friendly nations to actively participate. Reijnen explains, “The European Space Agency-ESA and Airbus are providing the service module, and NASA and Lockheed Martin/SpaceX are manufacturing the capsule and rocket.” A 10-day lunar flyby, Artemis 2, is pegged to launch in September 2025. It will test high- definition communications and search for a suitable landing site near the moon’s south pole for Artemis 3’s crew to land on in late 2026.
Reijnen considers his role in this project as one of his proudest professional achievements. “Signing that contract with NASA and ESA for Airbus Defense and Space to develop the so-called service module to bring Americans back to the moon was a great achievement. It was the result of hard work by a big team around me, and I was proud to be a part of it.”
In 2016, Reijnen answered a phone call that would take him from outer space to Scandinavia for yet another adventure. Airbus leadership wanted to know if he was interested in being a CEO candidate for Satair, an Airbus services company based in Denmark that is a global distributor of aviation spare parts.
He explains his thinking at the time, “I was in my 40s and 10 years into the space business and I really loved it. We were in the forefront of innovation and working in a small, tight-knit community in which there was much international collaboration. Yet, if I turned down opportunities like Satair, I would likely remain in the space sector for the rest of my career. I decided to make a change and took the opportunity to return to my aerospace roots.”
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