Hello, I'm Deborah Wang. The Seattle area is home to hundreds of tech companies
and some are looking far beyond tech and into space.
Not that long ago, only nations had space programs. Now tech billionaires are
building rockets, hauling cargo and satellites and offering space travel.
Seattle is a launch pad for this effort. Producer Stacy Jenkins considers whether it's
a viable commercial industry or just science fiction.
JENKINS: Jeff Bezos. Paul Allen. Elon Musk. These billionaire moguls all have ties to Seattle and big dreams of
revamping the space industry.
Amazon's Jeff Bezos owns Blue Origin Space Company, and plans to launch
rockets into orbit by the end of the decade. Stratolaunch Systems, a space
airlaunch company is backed by Paul Allen, and Elon Musk recently completed an
engineering complex in Redmond with plans to build a constellation of
satellites. But beyond the glitter of the billionaire space race, Seattle has
quietly held its own as a space hub and it's on a steep growth trajectory.
HOYT: At Tethers Unlimited a lot of us are real science fiction fans and what we like to
do is kinda take the ideas that are in the science fiction domain and figure out
how to drag them into the domain of science reality. JENKINS: Tethers Unlimited in
Bothell, WA has been creating and manufacturing space related equipment
for over two decades.
HOYT: Right now we're working with NASA to develop this recycling system for the
space station. Astronauts will be able to take the plastic waste on the space
station, they can put the plastic waste into the hopper here and then the
machine will melt it down and extrude it to make very high quality filament for
the 3D printers that are on the space station. JENKINS: Those 3D printers can then go on
to build new pieces of equipment in space. Tethers' in-space manufacturing
technology helps save waste and saves money. HOYT: On a typical cargo resupply
mission to the space station there's something like 25 pounds of plastic
waste that's sent up. Normally they would have to stuff that in a return vehicle and
burn it up in the atmosphere to get rid of it, but that mass on orbit is worth
about $10,000 per pound, so that's almost a quarter million dollars worth of just
raw material that we can recycle into feedstock for building new space systems.
UPTAGRAFFT: If we look at 3D or
additive manufacturing 10 years ago, 20 years ago, that was all sci-fi stuff.
JENKINS: Bob Uptagrafft from the Northwest Aerospace Alliance says the lightspeed
advancements in technology combined with its aerospace roots is what makes
Seattle a perfect space hub. UPTAGRAFFT: We look at at local companies like Rocketdyne
as an example, used to be called Rocket Research, they have for the last 30
years been producing booster jet rockets that drive satellites to space.
JENKINS: Aerojet Rocketdyne was the first space company to set up shop in Washington State.
It recently played a key role in the historic fly-by of Pluto with NASA's new
Horizon spacecraft. FELIX: We had 16 rockets, 16 different thruster engines. It
works like a baby grand piano that's mounted in as part of the spacecraft
aperture. The satellite itself is powered by 100% pure Aerojet Rocketdyne Redmond power.
Aerojet Rocketdyne continues to report positive growth. There are also a number of new
players on the field including Planetary Resources, whose mission is to mine
asteroids; and Spaceflight in Tukwila, who focus on small satellite launches. All this
growth is also attracting talent. MUHLBAUER: A lot of people I know have moved to the Pacific
Northwest. I actually have a group of friends who came out here that are all
from Georgia. JENKINS: Dr Rachel Muhlbauer moved here about a year ago to work at Tethers
Unlimited. MUHLBAUER: Especially in the Seattle area there's just been the boom for the space
industry. JENKINS: With no end to this growth in sight, it seems that the possibilities
for space in Seattle are infinite. FELIX: We're a very proud space community that's at the
beginning of the forefront, right, space is big and vast and there's plenty of
room for us all to maneuver and it's
really a function of how we work together with the same common cause
which is exploration.
IN Close on KCTS 9 is made possible in part by BECU. You can join our
conversation about the Seattle space race by going to KCTS9.org/in-close