The Spaceship Company recently opened an $8 million hangar, where it will build sub-orbital space vehicles to take passengers and scientific missions into space. The hangar, located at the Mojave Air & Space Port, will accommodate the final assembly and post-flight maintenance of SpaceShipTwo and carrier vehicle WhiteKnightTwo . The company considers the facility the first of its kind in the world to be dedicated to making private commercial space vehicles. It also represents California’s dominance in the research and development phase of the emerging NewSpace industry. With the final assembly hangar open, the Spaceship Company is on a hiring spree for the business office, production engineers and technicians, quality assurance inspectors, material handlers, and mechanical, avionics, and structural engineers. Company recruiters attended the National Business Aviation Association convention in Las Vegas in October to find job applicants. The Spaceship Company is a joint venture between Virgin Galactic, the space tourism arm of the business empire of billionaire Richard Branson, and Scaled Composites, the aircraft development company founded by Burt Rutan and now owned by Northrop Grumman Corp. The final assembly hangar was built in 10 months and is one of two in Mojave the Spaceship Company will use. A 48,000-square-foot building serves as the fabrication and sub-assembly facility. “The opening of the hangar is a realization of moving to the advanced stages of production,” said The Spaceship Company Vice President of Operations Enrico Palermo. “This shows we are serious and we are in the production business.” In the NewSpace industry, The Spaceship Company and Virgin Galactic are furthest along in the development of manned space flight. Space X, based in Hawthorne, leads in developing rockets for satellite and cargo flights. Mojave has emerged as the center of activity through its combination of low-cost rents at the space port, unrestricted air space and a remote location in the desert some 100 miles north of Los Angeles. Just as important, said Greg Autry, an observer of the NewSpace Industry, is the deep pool of aerospace engineering talent found in Southern California. Without companies like Space X, the Spaceship Company and others these engineers would leave the state, he said. “It creates a beachhead of opportunity,” said Autry, an author working on his doctorate at the University of California, Irvine. Manufacturing jobs, such as at the Spaceship Company, are as vital as the engineering positions because those workers spend paychecks at retail establishments, restaurants and for housing, Autry said. “They are more valuable to the economy than a service job,” he added. As the company ramps up to full production of its space vehicle, flight testing continues with SpaceShipTwo. NASA announced this month it selected SpaceShipTwo to take researchers and technicians on three sub-orbital charter flights to conducts experiments. The contract is valued up to $4.5 million. On Oct. 17, Branson and New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez dedicated the Virgin Galactic Terminal at Spaceport America, located in Sierra County and north of Las Cruces. “We’ve never wavered in our commitment to the task of pioneering safe, affordable and clean access to space, or to demonstrate that we mean business at each step along the way,” Branson said at the dedication.
The Spaceship Company Flying Closer to Production
