See the 17 startups for the Upheaval In Space Accesschosen Beginning Now StartupAZ Collective program
WHY CHOOSE US? √ Precision CNC Machining & Fabrication All In-House √ ISO 9001 / AS9100 Certified √ APMI Operates In a 30,000 sq. ft. fully equipped facility
√ AND NOW ANNOUNCING... APMI Has Implemented DFARs 252.204-7012 NIST 800-171 Requirements
www.APMI2.com 164 S HAMILTON PL, GILBERT, AZ • PHONE: (480) 668-0024
46 • July / August 2019 50 • May / June 2017
A2Z MANUFACTURING SW • A2Z MANUFACTURING SW •
Pitches, press conferences and panel presentations the entrepreneur annual Space PayGround co-founder and CEO Drew Mercer is at a new Symposium in Colorado looking to learn from other local startups. ShiftX co-founderSprings COO heralded a dramatic shift in launch Bhargavi Balusani is another first-time entrepreneur seeking knowledge hardware, as the spacefaring nations on scaling her company. of the world prepare new rockets for The two local startups are among 17peaceful companies to participate and chosen not-so-peaceful accessinto the yearlong StartupAZ Collective program. orbit and beyond. The 3-year-old collective, run by the nonprofit StartupAZ Foundation, deeptopockets are is a group of startup business leadersThe whoPentagon’s banded together help other fueling a stiff competition for the Arizona startups grow and succeed. U.S. national security launch business. Orbital is introducing a new The program begins with a Flagstaff retreatATK in late June and includes launcher, as Aerojet Rocketdyne (AJR) monthly check-ins with local mentors/founders-in-residence who have and newcomer Blue Origin slug it out experience to share and help companies with challenges they may have. for the right to power United Launch Alliance (ULA) vehicles off the pad This yearstruggle will include groups after 45 ventures applied for in the withtwo SpaceX forof Aircohorts Force contracts. the free program, said Brandon Clarke, co-founder, CEO and president ofFresh StartupAZ from itsFoundation. successful reflight of a Falcon 9 first stage, SpaceX is touting the reliability gains it sees in reusing launch hardware, while Blue Origin “We had a really good quality group that needed support this year,” Clarke owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is applying a little rock-and-roll said. “The growth of the collective was purely driven by demand and razzle-dazzle to promote his push to an off-planet civilization with a $2.5 quality of the startups.” billion reusable rocket named after John Glenn. Last year, 11 startups participated in the program. The private sector also is beginning to see business opportunities beyond The StartupAZ Collective “founders” lownewly Earthnamed orbit, resupplying a planned dropped NASA “gateway” to from Mars its and name after San Francisco company governments with the sameofname reached selling theahardware the spacefaring the world will out, need Clarke said. the Solar System. For now, though, the objective is more to explore mundane—finding a new rocket engine to replace Russia’s RD-180 for PayGround, a Gilbert-based aggregation platform first ULA’s national security launches from payment Cape Canaveral andstarting Vandenberg. in the medical field, can translate to other verticals and is ready for its national in June. Mercer he wants to learn from other startups’ ULA islaunch building a family of said launchers dubbed Vulcan to replace the mistakes. As an early-stage company, he also is concerned about how to workhorses Atlas V and Delta IV. Vulcan will be powered either by Blue find funding. Origin’s new BE-4 methane-fueled engine or Aerojet Rocketdyne’s kerosene-fueled AR1. Blue Origin signed up ULA as a partner in “Being in the collective willULA be crucial rub shoulders with peopleoffering. who developing the BE-4, and favorsto that engine over the Aerojet have already done it,” Mercer said. “I want to learn from experts in the field venturePresident capital toRob steerMeyerson me on thesays right fundingtesting route. Iofjust BlueofOrigin full-scale thewant BE-4 toengine make the right choices haveGlenn the collective developed for theand New will startguide in 3-8me.” weeks. The first of three test engines is installed horizontally at the company’s launch ShiftX LLC, to simplify automateto and test sitea inChandler-based West Texas, he startup, says, andseeks the test campaignand is designed employee scheduling. Its initial target market is the aviation industry. progress relatively quickly. Balusani wants to learn about the basic startup issues before she goes Propulsion engineers at AJR are banking on their company’s long through the process. experience building large rocket engines to see development of their AR1 kerosene engine as the logical replacementwith for mentors the RD-180 ULA’s “I’m most looking forward to networking and on how to Atlas V and upcoming Vulcan. Blue Origin has about a 1.5-year head start approach investors, marketers and PR,” Balusani said. “What they’re in developing its what new engine, but AJR is on excited.” track to have the AR1 offering is exactly I’m looking for.says I’m itpretty ready to power payloads to orbit when it is needed in 2019. Other startups and executives chosen are: “This engine can fit on the Atlas or Vulcan architecture,” said Julie Van Kleeck, vice president, advanced space and launch. “It’s the lowest-risk • Marshall Greenwald, CEO and co-founder of Cray Pay, the Mesa-based way to deal with national security. It replicates, virtually, the Russian mobile payment and marketing platform. performance. It uses the same propellant, the same infrastructure. It will be built in a factory that builds rocket engines that have launched over • Colin Turner, COO and co-founder of Postscript, a Scottsdale-based 2,000 national security missions.”