These giant white structures called radomes at Buckley Space Force Base in Colorado house massive satellite dishes.
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This story is a component of CNBC’s quarterly Cities of Success series, which explores cities which have transformed into business hubs with an entrepreneurial spirit that has attracted capital, corporations and employees.
Within the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, with an elevation one mile closer to space than sea level, lies an area that is home to a burgeoning cluster of aerospace businesses.
It may not be obvious to someone driving around Denver and Boulder that there are a whole bunch of corporations actively working on a few of America’s most complex national security needs and constructing progressive products like those who is perhaps seen in a sci-fi film.
However the local industry’s liftoff has been undeniable: Aerospace grew 88% over the past 20 years, greater than every other emerging industry within the Denver and Boulder metro areas during that point period, based on a CNBC evaluation. Now, 191 aerospace businesses are supporting 29,000 jobs within the region, the Colorado Space Coalition reports.
“After we were creating Voyager and pondering through the very best growth markets where we could have access to talent … Denver really rose to the highest,” Dylan Taylor, chairman and chief executive of Voyager Space, told CNBC’s Morgan Brennan in an interview on CNBC’s “Manifest Space” podcast. He founded the privately held multinational space conglomerate in 2019 in Denver.
Voyager Space CEO Dylan Taylor traveled to space on a Blue Origin flight in 2021.
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“I believe talent coupled with alignment from the federal government were really vital considerations, after which also for those who have a look at other elements of Denver, whether it’s access to capital, that is an emerging enterprise capital market, especially the Boulder corridor,” he added.
The region’s corporate roster ranges from the most important, oldest, prime contractors comparable to Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman to the most recent industrial space and defense tech startups comparable to Ursa Major and True Anomaly. United Launch Alliance, BAE Systems and RTX even have a presence within the area, as do private space stalwarts along with Voyager comparable to Sierra Space and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, which has been expanding its local footprint aggressively in recent times.
Follow and hearken to CNBC’s “Manifest Space” podcast, hosted by Morgan Brennan, wherever you get your podcasts.
“I believe aerospace has turn into a fulcrum of our whole economy now,” said U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., who previously served as Colorado’s governor and before that as mayor of Denver.
“It is a community that works together when it comes to aerospace,” said Hickenlooper, who’s cited by local business executives as being a key space proponent for the region and the state. “It is not dog eat dog. It’s all dogs working together. It’s hunting like wolves.”
For Voyager, that is been true. The corporate has to this point made seven acquisitions — the primary two of which were local startups. “We’re circa 700 employees now and, , quite a little bit of revenue, seeking to enter in the general public markets sooner or later,” Taylor said.
Its most high-profile project, Starlab, is an effort to interchange the aging International Space Station. Voyager has teamed up with Airbus in a three way partnership to construct the industrial space station, with Mitsubishi recently announced as a strategic partner and equity owner. The space station is anticipated to launch to orbit on SpaceX’s powerful Starship rocket system, which is under development.
For Taylor, who has been to space himself after a visit on Blue Origin’s Latest Shepard, the Denver-Boulder space story extends beyond Voyager too. He’s spent years investing within the sector personally, as an early backer in greater than 50 startups, including Orbit Fab.
Orbit Fab employees manufacturing the corporate’s refueling ports for satellites.
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Backed by neighboring Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, Orbit Fab moved right into a roughly 60,000-square-foot manufacturing facility after relocating from California in 2021.
“We began the corporate in Silicon Valley. We moved to Colorado mainly due to the workforce. There’s a much bigger aerospace workforce here,” said Daniel Faber, Orbit Fab’s CEO and founder.
Since making the move, the corporate has grown from six to 60 employees, and is targeted on constructing “gas stations” in space to refuel satellites. Historically, many satellites have been decommissioned not because their payloads or hardware now not work, but because they’ve run out of power.
“For those who ran out of fuel on a highway, AAA can come and deliver you fuel. That is actually the standard way that we’ll do it in space,” Faber said. The startup recently revealed a refueling port — or gas cap — that is been flight qualified and is commercially available for $30,000 per unit.
Denver area startup Orbit Fab is constructing refueling ports for satellites that can allow them to fuel up in space.
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Like many corporations within the area, Orbit Fab counts the U.S. military, specifically the Space Force, amongst its biggest customers. One thing that makes the broader Denver-Boulder region so unique is its robust military presence, including three separate U.S. Space Force bases, the U.S. Space Operations Command and the U.S. Air Force Academy in nearby Colorado Springs.
“I believe the placement matters greatly,” said Col. Heidi Dexter, commander of Space Base Delta 2 at Buckley Space Force Base in Aurora, Colorado. “The partnership that now we have with the entire local defense contractors and the startups allow us the chance to drive down the associated fee of space operations, in addition to innovate in a short time in order that it’s crucial to national defense.”
Colorado now boasts more private aerospace employees per capita than every other state, based on the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation.
“What an executive, a CEO for a rapidly growing company, wants to listen to is that young people can be attracted,” Hickenlooper said. “When you attract young people, eventually the entrepreneurs come, the companies start.”