On December 5, the world watched the unmanned spacecraft Orion, a white capsule mounted atop United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV Heavy—a bundle of three Broncos-orange rocket boosters—take off from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Ascending 3,600 miles above the earth, traveling through radiation fields, the capsule sized just over 300 cubic feet circled the earth twice before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego some four and a half hours after leaving its launch pad.
“If you think about every journey, it starts with a first step,” said Lockheed Martin Space Systems External Communications Director Matt Kramer.
The Unites States’ first step into a new era of human space exploration starts with Orion. And it wouldn’t have been possible without the technology and expertise of hundreds of Coloradans.
“It was a historic moment and an amazing thing to be a part of,” Kramer said.
From the design and build at Lockheed Martin Space Systems to the launch on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) rocket and the communication through video and array antennae built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Colorado took the lead.
The information gleaned from this test flight will help develop plans for manned flights that will go beyond low-Earth orbits for the first time in more than 40 years. Now the Orion team is examining the craft’s 1,200 sensors and all the data it collected. Although three of its five “uprighting” bags, which push the capsule right-side up during landing, did not deploy, the initials results show that it was “a very clean test flight,” Kramer said.
Colorado has long been a hub for aerospace, home to some 400 space-related firms, but the industry is known for more than space exploration. Its central location, coupled with its connection to military bases, national labs and research universities also makes the state ideal for developing other technologies like GPS satellites, remote sensing and geospatial imaging.
“Colorado is perfectly positioned to grow its leadership role in enabling national security, science and commercial space activities, including human spaceflight and space tourism,” said ULA’s Government Affairs and Communications Director Chris Chavez.
Although our state boasts the second-most educated workforce in the country (just behind Massachusetts), many of those workers gained their degrees from out of state. Locally, there’s a strong focus on educating students with the skills they need to work for Colorado’s companies.
“I think the success of Orion … there was so much positive buzz about it … it sort of reinvigorated in the public how critical that economic cluster is to Colorado,” said Dr. Stephen Jordan, president of Metropolitan State University of Denver (MSU Denver).
MSU Denver has worked closely with companies like Lockheed to rethink how it has structured its degree programs that serve this industry. In fall 2016, the university will launch an academic program that features six tracks covering aerospace and aviation, industrial design, engineering, computer sciences and physics in its Institute of Advanced Manufacturing.
Public and Private Sectors Working Together
MSU Denver is collaborating not just with the aerospace industry but also with the state, which has already pledged over $5 million toward a new building to house the program.
“In order for institutions to really be successful and to be relevant in the future, they’re going to have to partner,” Jordan said, adding that the university is beginning to examine a similar approach for studies in health care.
Likewise, government agencies like NASA are working more closely with private-sector companies to move missions like Orion forward.
“The Orion test flight was a great example of innovation in both technology and business models,” Kramer said. “It’s important to demonstrate the value to the American people of their investment in the space program.”
ULA is collaborating with Blue Origin, led by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, to develop a new American-made rocket engine. The goal is to make it more affordable and capable, Chavez
said. It’s anticipated the rocket engine will be ready for testing by next year, followed by a test
flight in 2019.
“It will propel our next-generation launch system,” he said.
Meanwhile, Lockheed is expanding its presence in Colorado.
In October, the company opened its new commercial space headquarters at its Jefferson County campus. There the next generation of communications and remote sensing satellites will be built. The company can receive up to $15 million in incentives over the next eight years if it creates 500 new jobs.
“I think the good news for Colorado is that it further centralizes more of that talent and more of that technology and more of that manufacturing capability here,” Kramer said.
As home to the most private aerospace workers per capita in the U.S., there’s plenty of opportunity in Colorado.
“There are a number of new start-up companies that are really starting to come into their
own in commercial aerospace,” said Oakman Aerospace President and Chief Systems Engineer Stan Kennedy.
In fact, there are 160 private aerospace businesses in Colorado, and of those 55 percent employ 10 people or fewer, compared to the 14 percent that employ 250 or more. Kennedy cut his teeth at Lockheed and then moved to other organizations before starting Oakman Aerospace two years ago.
As a small company, they often partner with others to win new business. Their agility and speed makes them desirable when they bid. And, Oakman is growing—by as much as 30 percent.
But, Kennedy says his company is not the only one. When looking at growth of private aerospace companies, “there are 50 or 75 Oakman Aerospace-like companies,” he said.
“The rate of growth of the commercial markets is far out-pacing the growth of Department of Defense and civil markets.”
The Next Generation
For Jordan, keeping the momentum and interest around STEM studies is crucial. By 2020, it’s
estimated that 81 percent of “top jobs” (those projected to grow, have high openings and offer a living wage) will require some education after high school—that’s the third-highest share in the country. At MSU Denver, about one-third of students major in a science, technology, engineering or math discipline, and of those almost 30 percent are students of color, Jordan said.
“What a great way to begin to solve the Colorado paradox by creating skillsets in students from Colorado who can be hired by Colorado companies,” he said.
Industry leaders agreed.
“It helps having that kind of pipeline in our own backyard,” Kramer said.
Meanwhile, the industry is focused on doing more.
Oakman Aerospace recently expanded its facility and is working with international clients, such as Canada’s Magellan Aerospace and Sweden’s AAC Microtec to provide spacecraft and offer engineering support.
ULA already has 13 launches planned for this year, including two for NASA, several GPS and communications satellite launches and a launch for Mexico, Chavez said.
and leak testing. The lander, which will record measurements of the interior of the planet, is being
assembled and will undergo testing this summer. Photo courtesy Lockheed Martin Space Systems.
Lockheed, too, is looking to its next missions. First, they’ll build the spacecraft for OSIRISREx, a research mission to the asteroid Bennu slated to launch in September 2016. In 2018, Orion will take off from Kennedy Space Center for its first unmanned exploration mission. Over 22 days, the capsule will go further than any Apollo spacecraft, traveling some 275,000 miles beyond Earth.
But Orion’s test flight will be remembered as the start of this generation’s next great leap for America’s space industry.
“We are looking forward to that day when an astronaut leaves the first footprint in the red dust of Mars and we’ll look back and say that journey started here,” Kramer said. “There’s a great opportunity for the state to continue to play a leadership role.”
Sara Crocker is the communications manager for the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce.