Karsten Eric Braaten

Karsten Eric Braaten was born in St. Cloud, Minnesota, on October 5, 1970, to Lois (Fisher) Braaten (Head as of 1982) and Karsten Ole Braaten.

A Celebration of Life service will be held on what would have been his 55th birthday, Sunday, October 5. Pizza will be served at Noon, immediately following the regular 10:30 a.m. Unitarian Universalist Fellowship meeting at 3226 Maine Prairie Rd. St. Cloud, MN, with the Celebration of Life service starting at 1:00 p.m., followed by cake and ice cream.

Karsten attended St. Cloud State University’s Campus Lab School and then Technical High School, graduating in 1988 at the top of his class of 425 students after completing 4 years of high school in only 3 years. While in junior and senior high school, he participated in the University of Minnesota’s Talented Youth Mathematics Program (UMTYMP).

He was a Red Cross Certified Lifeguard and a member of the Tech High Swim Team and lettered in Music, playing saxophone (band) and bassoon (orchestra). During his high school summers, he participated in the All-City Marching Band. He studied piano with Olive Bernard, Sandra Keith, and Paul Wirth and earned a green belt in karate from the Gustafson’s Karate School.

In addition to traveling to marching band concert events in such places as Florida, in 1987, he also traveled to Germany with the Concordia Language Village Travel Abroad program.

While studying at the University of Minnesota as a National Merit Scholar as well as a University of Minnesota Presidential Scholar, he served as a teaching assistant for the UMTYMP program, and he was a participant and tutor for the University of Minnesota IT Honors program. In 1992, he earned a B.S. in Physics and Astrophysics with a Mathematics minor, graduating Cum Laude.

He was a Rice University (Houston, TX) Graduate Fellow and, by 1997, he had earned his M.S. in Space Physics, having also completed all of his Ph.D. course work and qualifying exams. As a Graduate Research Assistant, using Rice University's radiation belt computer simulation, he worked on numerical modeling and derived, coded, and tested physics models, comparing results to analytic theory and data. He also held the part-time position of night-time DJ for the Rice University radio station, KTRU (96.1FM), making friends with the student fans who phoned into his night-time show. Appropriately enough, Sammy the Owl is the Rice University mascot.

In the summer of 1995, he was selected by the Texas Space Grant Consortium to fly a Zero-Gravity fluid mechanics experiment aboard the zero-gravity aircraft NASA 930. (Frequently known as “The Vomit Comet.”) He successfully designed, built, tested, and flew the experiment as part of a student/faculty team, subsequently presenting the results and experiences at various talks and conferences.

He was also taking flying lessons, and he did numerous recreational parachute jumps.

After his studies at Rice University, he was employed as a Software Engineer at Visual Numerics and Schlumberger-GeoQuest until he joined the Engineering Staff at United Space Alliance (a subsidiary of NASA) where his major tasks involved Space shuttle avionics simulator development, for which he was honored with a Space Act Award, and the development of a distributed C++ application for astronaut flight training and rapid display prototyping.

When he ventured to California during the dot.com rage, he was employed as a Software Engineer or Consultant for a variety of companies, including RateStream.com, Xigo, Maxis / Electronic Arts, The Sims Online, Opt4 Derivatives, Amaranth, and The Ziba Group Consulting

Then he made his home in New York, where he was employed by Morgan Stanley.

He died in May 2025 from complications of his adult-onset epilepsy condition.

Survivors include his mother, Lois Head, and his father, Karsten Ole Braaten (Nancy), as well as maternal and paternal extended family members.