NewsWest 9 EXCLUSIVE: Sky is the Limit

You may remember years ago Midland took steps to diversify the economy to help manage the booms and the busts of the oil and gas industry.

That is why the Midland Development Corporation first broke ground on the Midland Air and Spaceport back in 2012.

Since then, MDC has gotten equal part scrutiny and criticism. Plenty of criticism came after investing $5 million dollars in infrastructure improvements, of which $2 million came from the state spaceport trust fund.

At first, the spaceport did not appear to be bringing in the kind of return on investment taxpayers had hoped for. To make matters worse some of the initial companies that were recruited went bankrupt.

But could years' worth of efforts finally be paying off?

“The Midland labor market already has the most viable labor force, you have petroleum engineers, electrical engineers, you have a highly-skilled workforce," John Trischitti, Executive Director of MDC, said. "If you have an economic downturn, the aerospace industry offers those possibilities because they need that high-level skill and they can be retrained for the aerospace industry.”  

The Midland Spaceport is located at the south entrance of Midland International Airport. It is one of 11 spaceports in the country and one of 29 licensed spaceports in the world.

The unique thing about the spaceport here, it is the only spaceport in the world, yes world, that is located right next to a commercial airport.

For the first six years, the spaceport struggled.  But since 2018, three companies have moved in. AST & Science, Nano Avionics and Kepler Aerospace. Kepler was the only company who agreed to talk to Newswest 9.

They moved here in March and now for the first time engineers and scientists there are giving NewsWest 9 exclusive access to their plans for space.   

Midland has been an oil and gas town for the last 50-100 years," Brent Nelson, Kepler Aerospace Chairman, said. “And it has its cycles but what we can do here in Midland is create an aerospace/space industry." 

Nelson hopes 25-30 companies will work out at the spaceport soon. 

"People can apply almost similar technologies to the oil and gas industry but instead applying it to aerospace," Nelson said. 

Kepler opted out of setting up shop in states like Florida, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. They came to the Lone Star State because there are fewer taxes and regulations. 

“Politically I think the environment here go Midland, go Texas, go business and what we want to do is work with the governments and expand," Nelson said. 

Mix Midland’s educated workforce, limited government regulations, and the fact it is the only spaceport in the world next to a commercial airport, and you have yourself a perfect equation for aerospace success.  

That success is leaning heavily on what's called a thruster. 

It is placed on satellites that help to get rid of them by thrusting them into orbit and burning them up. 

Congress now says satellites must be destroyed if no longer in use. Music to the ears of Kepler Aerospace.

“Space junk is traveling around the world at 17-25 miles an hour, you can imagine what a little piece of space junk can do if it hits you or something," Nelson said. "Something the size of a pea, would impact a piece of aluminum this much and put a crater in it.”

NASA estimates there are around 500-thousand pieces of space junk in orbit.

It is a big enough issue that the U.S. Department of Defense now requires all satellites, big or small, to have a deorbiting thruster. 

“What that means is after it’s shelf life, which is 6-12 years, whatever that shelf life might be, we can hit a button-down here on earth and our thruster goes off and propels it into the atmosphere and thus no more space junk," Nelson said.

The thruster propels the satellite into the atmosphere at such a high rate of speed that it actually burns up.

"One of our engineers, Dr. Brandenburg, invented the thruster 15 years ago so it’s because of him the whole thruster market exists anyway.”

Kepler is one of the few companies in the U.S. that makes these thrusters for various satellite and space equipment companies.

“In order to avoid space junk orbiting the earth for years and years, we basically have a little rocket that will launch it back into orbit and into the pacific ocean," Dr. John Brandenburg, Astronautics Division Head and Senior Scientist said. 

Before we talk about environmental impact, they have already thought of that.

"Our thruster can run on water instead of Krypton, which is dangerous for the environment. Whereas water, it’s just water," Nelson said. 

Krypton has a bad effect on the ozone layer. 

"I patented this thruster and since water is found on Mars, the moon, the earth of course, and even Mercury," Brandenburg said. "Once you have a rocket engine that uses rocket vapor as fuel, you can refuel anywhere in the solar system.”

Kepler tells us they will start manufacturing their thrusters as soon as next month.

It will be one of their first products to “hit the shelf.”