Swiss Space Systems (S3) was a company that planned to provide orbital launches of small satellites and crewed sub-orbital spaceflights. The company was based in Payerne in western Switzerland, near Payerne Air Base, where it planned to build a spaceport in 2015. Suborbital spaceplanes were to be launched from an Airbus A300, giving the spacecraft more initial speed and altitude than if it were launched from the ground. The spacecraft, in turn, would release a disposable third stage.