Space missions start with a roar of a rocket engine. But here in Colorado, where aerospace has grown 17 percent over the decade to involve 400 companies that create substantial components of many missions, the surprise is not in how volatile the business is, but how reliable. Plenty of boom without much risk of a bust.
“This is absolutely a much more stable environment, compared not just against other industries, but also the past,” says Tory Bruno, new president/CEO of Centennial-based United Launch Alliance (UAL), the joint venture between Boeing and longtime Colorado rocket builder Lockheed Martin that oversees launches of both of America’s most reliable vehicles, the Atlas and the Delta.
Fifty years ago, when Martin’s plant in Jefferson County was making Titan missiles, aerospace was about Cold War defense – running hot and cold as planners picked between weapon systems to counter the Soviet threat.
Now, with the nation’s second-largest aerospace economy, the industry here is wrapped not just around defense, but government and commercial uses few could have imagined then. Defense-related missions tend to involve national security of such priority that missions are beyond risk of sequestration. “When they consider what’s going to be preserved, these are at the top of the list,” Bruno says.
However, that doesn’t mean that space in Colorado isn’t competitive. Last year, Boeing and California rocket maker SpaceX were pitted in a three-way rivalry to design a replacement for NASA’s mothballed Space Shuttle, matched against Sierra Nevada Corp.’s Space Systems division in Louisville – an upstart in the heady world of manned spacecraft. Sierra Nevada survived an initial bout between two dozen firms with a daring vehicle design: “Dream Chaser,” a Shuttle-type craft that would re-enter the atmosphere like a plane and land on an airport runway, rather than as a capsule parachuting into the ocean.
Boeing’s and SpaceX’s more conventional capsules won the round, getting contracts to take the next step to return America to manned space flight – but the dustup was no loss for Sierra Nevada, says Space Systems chief Mark Sirangelo. “Twenty-five companies started that effort and we made it to the final three despite being the most unknown,” he says.
In the course, Sierra Nevada took contracts totaling over $300 million, mostly going to Colorado contractors.
Meanwhile, Colorado aerospace touts success rates that stand out from 2014’s more sensational space stories, including the unreliability of Russian rocket engines that now power many U.S. launches. In UAL’s nine years they’ve boasted 91 perfect launches, on time. 2014 was a great year for Colorado aerospace,” says former Air Force General Jay H. Lindell, appointed a year ago by Gov. John Hickenlooper as “champion” for Colorado aerospace and defense development.
After Colorado’s high-profile involvement in the December test of NASA’s Orion deep-space craft, Lindell sees even more opportunities coming Colorado’s way.
