we were up at the maintenance shop and
we were waiting for it to go off and
when it went off you know I was like
everybody was real happy for the first
couple of seconds and then after that
it’s like oh no something’s not right
kind of a hopeless person I work on
rockets and I also tend to do them for
fun to build several rockets have tried
to send some 150,000 feet they’re all
microscopic compared to the ones we do
here we are at the Pacific spaceport
Complex Alaska and this is where we
launch rockets on the narrow Cape of
Kodiak Island putting Excel in the
middle of nowhere
Alaska’s nowhere Kodiak is even further
out here on the island the primary
industry is commercial fishing there is
a huge fishing fleet here and there’s
Coast Guard as well to support that
fishing fleet it’s pretty interesting to
live and work on this type of equipment
in this environment we’re a maritime
community and so it poses different
challenges that you wouldn’t see in a
lot of other places we support customer
launches of vehicles where they deploy
satellites and stuff like that we are a
relatively young range in the United
States we put a huge priority on safety
and even though the chances of a rocket
hitting anything are astronomically
small we don’t take any chances and so
one of the requirements we have when we
launch rockets in the United States is
you’re not allowed to launch over land
and advantage of Kodiak is we have the
Pacific Ocean the largest ocean in the
world right below us and so this gives
us one of the widest launch Asmus in the
entire industry
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so the weather closely resembles the
Pacific Northwest up here and we
actually get fewer weather-related
delays in either Vandenberg or Cape
Canaveral because you know we rarely get
lightning which is actually one of the
most common ways to scrub our mission
and we don’t get hurricanes ever yeah I
was born here and I guess I’ve never
really experienced anything different I
remember as a kid we would take field
trips on launch days that we knew that
about we watched a couple launches from
here and always wanted to work here my
family’s been commercial fishermen for a
very long time like this boat is
actually the same age as me and I used
to fish on a set net sight we’d only
fished two or three days a week so I had
a fair amount of spare time that’s
actually how I first found out about
here was I read a spacing cyclopædia
from cover to cover this happened to be
one of the entries in there’s like wow
we have we have rocket launching
facilities up here I grew up in Alaska
and so I was a little disappointed that
we didn’t have much beyond natural
resource extraction looking around
landscape I was excited to find out that
they were actually building this
someplace that would engender
higher technology engineering something
beyond cutting trees catching fish
drilling for oil Alaska suffers from
brain drain because there’s not a many
opportunities in high-end technology
fields doing resource extraction there’s
only so many resources you could
distract fishing you know that’s of
course you know always renewable but
it’s a boom or bust there as well some
years you have great years fishing some
years you have terrible years fishing
and if not everyone wants to work in
that area
I’m the facilities manager I’m in charge
of the maintenance crew I’ve been the
crane technician they’ve said their
Rockets on the stool without the live
ordnance I work on the range
instrumentation so everything that
communicates with the rocket
I support the telemetry where I track
satellites flight safety where we verify
our transmissions up to vehicles we have
both communication facilities and we
also have the preparation facilities for
the rocket usually it’s a three month
process before we actually launch the
rocket to make the launch happen you
know we have to spend at least 60 hour
weeks that’s all the time away from the
family we’re a small team it takes a
great effort from all of us what appeals
to me most about working on Rockets
it’s one of our biggest challenges it’s
one of the hardest things to build
Rockets are extremely unforgiving of any
mistakes it’s all normal stuff people
always think that some magical rocket
technology but you know it’s all normal
stuff that you might encounter in
everyday just in a really specific
application and if anything goes wrong
everything usually goes wrong
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my personal stuff
I’m always slowly increasing the
complexity of what I’m doing I’m slowly
getting to bigger things going higher
going faster still the explosion in 2014
we really didn’t know what was gonna
happen
could have been shut down there’s a cost
too much to rebuild if I lost my job my
family and I would have to move off
island to find a better job we were not
working all the time or having to pick
up two or three jobs these are complex
projects they’re big they don’t always
work for even the best Rockets in the
world they work 96% of time and then
when it exploded all the all the siding
had been ripped off of it same with the
other two buildings most the siding had
been ripped off of it I always have to
keep a wider perspective all that work
that you just invested in this just went
away you learn from it and you use it to
build up the next stuff for you it’s
only a failure if you never learn
anything the insurance company came
through and we were able to rebuild and
now we’ve got a top-of-the-line facility
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on most launches the customers just
signed their names on the rocket and
that they’re sending up and on one
particular one they allowed the
maintenance crew and signed their names
on it as well and launched it up into
space I like the story of being able to
say I’ve been up to space I watched last
mission from the point so it’s beautiful
there’s whales out in the ocean you hear
people talking on the communication
that’s because at launch conductor it’s
going through the checklists and you
realize you’re on the forefront of our
technology endeavors we’re the spear
that is going out and exploring the rest
of the universe
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I think putting up satellites and
getting faster technology is gonna be
better for for all of Alaska and all the
United States and in the world
kodiak’s just one small island on a
pretty large ocean and the earth is just
a small planet in a big universe it’s
important that push our boundaries of
exploration beyond our own island
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