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Matthew Voss

They’re Sending Satellites to Space From Rural Indiana

Matthew Voss built NearSpace Launch from a basement in Upland, Indiana into an aerospace company with 100+ satellites delivered to orbit. Hear his story.

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Podcast Summary

On today's show I sat down with Matthew Voss, president of NearSpace Launch, about growing an aerospace company started in a basement into a 20-person team that has built and delivered over 100 small satellites to orbit and flown more than 230 communications radios.

Voss explains how NearSpace Launch leverages preexisting satellite constellations for more consistent satellite connectivity, supports customers with spacecraft manufacturing and on-orbit operations, and has transitioned from university and R&D work to constellation manufacturing for partners including NASA and the Space Force.

He shares why the company stayed in rural Grant County, renovating historic downtown Upland buildings into clean-room facilities and scaling through contracts rather than investment.

Our conversation also covers space traffic management, deorbiting, satellite collision risk, and emerging innovations like laser crosslinks and in-orbit refueling.

Voss highlights NearSpace Education, a nonprofit launched in 2020 that runs space camps, high-altitude balloon launches, and Dream Big programs that help six universities build satellites and K–12 students engage with STEM statewide.

If you like this episode and want to hear more Get IN. episodes where I interview Hoosiers making a difference, visit getindiana.com/podcast.

You are going to learn about:

The Founding and Mission of NearSpace Launch
Constellation Manufacturing
NearSpace Education

Thank you to our partners:
Pence Media Group
Keller & Keller

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The UN. Mm-hmm. They came to you guys 'cause they want to build a Space Nation with another party that asked us to build the satellite for them. Renovated part of downtown Upland to build an aerospace startup. Yeah. So that's crazy. That's using a laser beam to talk to each other. And that's a new backbone layer that's happening in the space sector right now. The commercialization of space and just the innovations being pumped out. Is there anything that worries you? From South Bend to Evansville and everywhere in between. This is Get IN, the show focused on the Hoosier State and the incredible stories happening here today. I'm Nate Spangle, founder of Get Indiana, and I will be your host for today's conversation.

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Now let's get into the episode. Matt Voss is the president of NearSpace Launch, an Upland, Indiana based aerospace company that manufactures CubeSat satellites and communication systems over the past 12 years. The team built and delivered over 100 smallsats to orbit. He served as COO from 2019 until he was named president in 2025.

He's focused on scaling the company's national aerospace partnerships while operating from Rural Grant County. Voss is proving that rural America is doing big things when it comes to aerospace, and I'm so excited to have you on the show. Today, we're gonna dive into how an aerospace company was built in rural Indiana.

The crazy cool things you're doing and how you're pouring back into the youth and universities across the state of Indiana. Literally helping, I think six different universities in our state. Like launch something into space this year. So crazy. Matt, we're really excited to have you here. Welcome to get in. Well, thanks for having me here today. Excited to hear always the fun things going around Indiana and just being a small part of it. Yeah, I mean, when I heard about this story for the first time that there was a company up in Upland that was helping launch things like launch satellites, communication systems and putting a physical thing into space, I was dumbfounded like, how does this even, how does someone like wake up one day and say, I wanna start an aerospace company? Yeah, it's, it's definitely been a journey. I mean, it's about 12 years old company, so it didn't happen overnight. It was in a basement, kind of starting a deep-tech company kind of growing and just incrementally over the years, we've just added more capability. I can give a backstory that was Yeah, like, yeah.

Take us to like what started in the basement? Like what were you guys cooking? What was cooking up there? Yeah, so, uh, Dr. Hank Voss, my dad and also Jeff Dailey, uh, were working together. Uh, they were working at Taylor University at the time. Uh, and then, uh, previously Hank Voss was at Lockheed Martin and worked there for about 15 years.

And like, Lockheed Martin is like, like you think of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin and you got it, the Rolls-Royce, the like, not the car side, but the space, right. The aerospace side and doing some cool things like that. And like what type of businesses are those? Like, I think I heard everyone knows the names, but like what do they actually do? Yeah, they service the government as far as, they do a lot of different things, but area that you might be referring to. They do a lot of government support. DoD and just requirements that are, uh, making all things tech and aerospace. Yeah. Uh, defense tech. So they do a lot of different things there. But, so when people think of like nasa mm-hmm.

Building like rockets and going to the moon. Yeah. Was that all made internally or was that, like, were there partnerships with places like Lockheed Martin or places like Raytheon? Yeah, so nasa, um, first, you know, pushed the moon, got us there. And then, uh, they've also been collaborating with a lot of other companies over the years.

I've grown into some, what we call the primes, um, and they do a lot of amazing work of doing some of the difficult tasks that NASA request and, uh, those, they help build it. And so that's manufacturing. A lot of that happens here in Indiana. We got Rolls-Royce, like you mentioned, L3Harris and other mini.

Other great groups like that. So your dad was working at Lockheed Martin? Yep. And then ended up going to teach at Taylor University? Yeah. What was he teaching? So he taught Taylor University, he helped start the engineering program there back in the 1990s. And, uh, did that for over 20 years and, uh, really helped grow that program and, um, really brought the small satellite manufacturing, which was a niche within the space industry.

So we're talking small satellites that are like a box, uh, like a computer, uh, size. So like two feet by one foot. Yeah. Things like that. Size. They're a lot smaller than, you know, traditional size of a car or large satellites. And so back in the nineties that was kind of considered you couldn't do too much with it.

Tech was a little bit bigger, but you know, our cell phones have shrunk and you can do a lot more powerful things with small satellites. And that is what he helped university students develop and grow at the university level. And there was, that was growing across the nation. Um, and then eventually in 2014, uh, they flew their first satellite, Indiana's first satellite in with NearSpace Launch.

So it was an exciting first mission. Wait. Okay. So. As a company in 2014. Mm-hmm. So they decide, do they leave Taylor University or do they do this like, uh, on the side? Yeah. They left Taylor University. So it, it was a spin out, uh, from the university and Oh, is this like, uh, commercializing like research type stuff? Yeah, exactly.

So some great research that had opportunity. Uh, intellect transfer or something. Yeah. And just transfer that into growing that whole Yeah. Entity there. So both Jeff with the manufacturing background and then also Hank with the science background. Yeah. Uh, trying to figure out how to bring those two worlds together and then started providing these radios.

Okay. So they set out in 2014 mm-hmm. To build this company. Yeah. And how long did it take to go from we left the university and now we're launching something into space? Yeah, so basically it took a while to get the first couple things on space. Um, they first did this thing called TSAT, that was Indiana's first small satellite on orbit.

Uh, launched off, um, a mission there that, uh, did achieve, uh, mission success. And then from there. Air Force Research Laboratory, which is the Space Force. Previously, air Force at the time wanted to do some more experiments with this satellite to satellite communication. It was very unique. So, um, it really helped the community start to develop this system called the Black Box. Okay. Well I want to talk about how you go from a basement. Mm-hmm. In, you know, this is Grant County, right? Yeah. Upland is Grant Yep. A basement in Grant County. And you just start saying, Hey, we're gonna launch something. Like what are the steps that go into getting that from a basement in Grant County to outer space? Yeah. Well, I mean, it has to go through some great tech development, uh, work on that. Then also going to a lot of the shows that space companies are at, wherever the conferences are at. Yeah. Kinda share this story of, uh, what this device could do and a lot of operators that build spacecraft found the value in it.

And it really, it gives you a lot more real time connection to your satellite. Yeah. So your, you, your dad, is he like the science guy? Yeah, he's lead. So your dad is building this like small satellite in partnership? Yeah. With his Jeff Dailey. Yep. With Jeff. Okay. Well, is Jeff a tech guy? Like is he's, yeah.

Okay. So they're both like tinkering, like literally like soldering or doing whatever you do That's right. To build this thing. Really cool stuff. And then they have to like hit your ride on someone's like rocket. Exactly. So we ship it to either Florida or California where the rocket's launched.

Thankfully, most of the rules now is you launch a rocket over the ocean, so if it blows up it lands in the ocean. So. Wow. So it's always on the coast. We don't launch anything rocket wise from Grant County, but, uh, okay. So the, but, so you guys built this first. Small satellite. Yep. What was the, what was the goal of that satellite to do?

Yeah. It was to prove out this radio could work. And that was kind of a situation where, uh, traditionally when you're on an orbit, you have to wait till you pass over a ground station to communicate to it. Especially in 2014, a lot of the, uh, satellites were only connecting to a ground stations that passed over.

We connected to a preexisting constellation of satellites in orbit. So you could actually talk to your satellite over the ocean or over the poles. Oh. And so we now have over 230 of these on orbit. Uh, but it's really important to be able to talk to your satellite over the ocean or just more consistently, so. Okay. So are, do you know anything about baseball? A little bit. So your guys a satellite, kinda like the cutoff man. Mm-hmm. You know, like where if they hit a ball out into the ends or into like the outfield? Yep. You throw it to someone like in the near outfield to then get it into base. Right. Keep it more connected. Yeah. You guys were kind of like taking. The relay. Yeah. From the, the big satellites that were up there. There go Yeah. Down to you and then down to earth. Yeah. So we, well, we'd send it out a little more back direction, but Yeah. To the bigger constellation of like 60 satellites. I see it more as like Uber.

Oh yeah. Or Uber already had a bunch of cars out there and they were, uh, saying, Hey, let's just use the cars that are there to service people. We said, why not? Instead of building our own constellation of satellites to talk to, let's use preexisting constellations like Globalstar and Iridium, and they collaborated with us to connect to their satellites and connect back down. How fascinating. Yeah. So they build this out of their basement in Grant County. Mm-hmm. They achieve mission success on the first one. Yep. So that like, and is this launch, is this like your guys' satellite? Mm-hmm. Uh. Like, give me like, uh, distances, like how far off the surface of the earth is your guys' satellite? Right. So we're right in the same range as the International Space Station. So they call it low Earth orbit. Uh, it's a very growing, expanding field, which is exciting. Uh, so it's a large range where, where the starlink satellites with SpaceX where they put all their satellites right in that same range area. Wow. So it's a very, a lot more satellites that go in there quickly. Now, I think the question that a lot of people have is, how does this make money? Mm-hmm. Like, who are the customers that would. Be coming to you all to work on projects and how do you start to build that over the last 12 years? Yeah, it's changed over the 12 years.

So you first started, you know, we worked with a lot of the universities. We grew out of a university servicing, uh, them to help build satellites. As it grew though, then we started doing more research dollars, kind of helping do what they call SBIR, and that helps entrepreneurs really scale these deep-tech ideas.

But then we started working with commercial groups saying like, Hey, some of these commercial, a lot of more groups are wanting to fly their things on space. So if you wanted to fly a propulsion system or if you wanted to fly your own sensor and prove it works on a satellite before you put it on a big satellite.

We did a lot of experimental missions, but now, uh, we're in a stage where we're doing constellation manufacturing, which is a new stage in season where it's a more capable spacecraft that we're actually working through a DoD, uh, joint command for space force. We've built a satellites for NASA now, uh, for some of their missions.

And so it's been a really neat season for our NSL group to really do that, uh, shift into that area. Okay. So how long did it take to move out of the basement? Mm-hmm. And into like a, like I'm assuming you need like a laboratory type, like manufacturing kind of plant. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, no. Yeah, that was, uh, part of it's, we were in rural.

Uh, Grant County like you said, and we wanted to look for a facility that we could use. Uh, so we actually found something in Upland, Indiana. Uh, there were several buildings downtown and so I grew up there and several of the team members, um, had been there for a long time. We were just like, Hey, why are these buildings always empty?

Uh, and so we looked at those and started a renovation project and thankfully the people trusted us, uh, who were there to then see what we were trying to do. And so we renovated a hundred year old buildings that used to have some great history, but been empty for multiple years. Um, decades and we're like, let's renovate these and put our clean rooms and manufacturing stuff in there.

So, so you guys renovated part of downtown Upland to build an aerospace startup. Yeah. So that's crazy. That's been a fun journey. Well, while you guys were deciding between, okay. Continuing to build out an upland, were like the coastal traditional space towns, like kind of appealing. Like, hey, maybe we should be at Cape Canaveral or somewhere down there.

So we're close to where we're launching from. Like, was that ever on the table? Yeah, well, I mean, we really were growing our own there and so it really made sense just to stay in Upland. A couple different reasons. I mean, the cost is very different. Like I was just out in Northern California and the burn ratio for a lot of those companies is over, you know, a million a month for a startup that's a.

Big call out. You definitely need a lot of help to do that. Our cost was a lot less. So, I mean, I'm assuming that aerospace is a capital intensive business, you know? Mm-hmm. Like you have, 'cause you're making hardware. Mm-hmm. Like what? I mean, what's the average, you know, startup have to raise to, you know, prove out success to like, you know, grow? Yeah, so they have to, I mean, basically, uh, 80 to 9% of the groups that we work with have investment base, which is fantastic. You know, it's needed and it can accelerate. Um, so most of them have multiple millions to work out, uh, to raise. Did you guys have to raise money? We actually completely did by contracts.

So we were self grown and that's just an opportunity we could do. I don't see how we could do that and some of those more expensive areas. Yeah. Um, how about like attracting talent? Like how big is the team now? Yeah, so we're about a team of 20 with both NearSpace entities. Yeah. Um, and so we actually, when I say both NearSpace entities, the attract talent and also just to stay on mission for our educational side.

'cause we grew out of a university in 2020. We launched NearSpace Education, a 5 0 1 C3. Yeah. Uh, that really wants to take that little technology we're making and like provide to the students in universities to work with. And so, you know, it's been neat though that's been a cool benefit is, you know, some of the students that go through the programs and that we help with the universities have actually been hired on to our team, um, for talent.

So we have some great engineering schools, you know, that are right around us, um, that we collaborate with. And uh, yeah, we're excited to, we do a lot of internships and that's not really been one of our issues as the rate that we're growing. So we brought in probably about eight people this last year and no way, um, a lot of great people helping us out, but like aerospace engineers coming to live in Upland or near Upland to work.

For a, an aerospace startup. Mm-hmm. Like, this sounds like fiction, you know? Yeah. Like, I, there are so many, I, I mean we're, yeah. I always try to stay in the know of all the cool things happening around Indiana. Mm-hmm. Again, when I heard that there was a, an aerospace startup mm-hmm. In Upland, I was like, I have to talk to these guys.

I'm so glad that we do. Yeah. It's, it's fun. It's a lot of cool stuff and, you know, a lot of times people travel to the cities and it's just, it's a reverse direction. So we got people come from Indy or Fort Wayne or, uh, Lafayette at times. So like, we have had different directions and so we're kind of in a nice middle spot between several large cities.

Um, off I 69 there. I mean, since conception, you guys have launched over, what is it, 100 mm-hmm. Uh, small sets. That's right. So take me through the first time you. We're at a launch. Mm. And saw something that you built or your company team Yeah. Your team built here in Upland, make it to outer space. Yeah. It was a really neat program that I gotta step into.

So I, Jo joined the team, uh, about 2018. Um, and uh, that's when they were working on this ThinSat program, which is actually a patent grown spacecraft that's meant for manufacturing, uh, here. And it was working with a bunch of universities, uh, in Virginia. And uh, that was a program where they built actually 60 satellites and they worked with all the different schools and launched that off of Northrop Grumman.

And I got to be there. And just like the vibration, the, the power of these rockets when they launched, you definitely experience, I dunno if you've been to a rocket launch before, but I've never been to a rocket launch. Highly recommend it. It's fun. It's not, it's not what you expect, especially a night launch.

It lights up the whole sky. How many rockets are launched in any given year? It used to be pretty sporadic, but with SpaceX transporter missions and all the other missions that SpaceX is doing in other groups too. Uh. You know, Firefly Aerospace, rocket Labs, Northrop Grumman, uh, is trying to get back. There is, uh, a cadence that can be, I think their goal is to do weekly.

So you're saying there's, it's a new age Yeah. Space that we're moving into. Like if you had to, you know, give a rough estimate, how many rockets are launched a year in, in America? That is a good question. I wouldn't be able to give you a good number. You're like, it's a, I could Google it for you, but it's definitely over 50.

So over 50. That's wild to me. Now, obviously we're talking about SpaceX. I feel like everyone's been talking about SpaceX mm-hmm. As like, you know, the the privatized space company. Mm-hmm. But you're talking about there's other. It's an exploding industry. Yeah. That's really growing like that are launch, launching rockets, exponential growth going on in the space industry right now.

It's a lot of neat things that spun off from SpaceX, but also from a lot of the other companies there and a lot of new opportunities, a lot of investments going into it as far as what can we do in space? Yeah, it's a lot more accessible than ever before. And you know, with that many things going up, what we do is we're secondary rides, so we have a lot of opportunities to fly things on orbit.

That's, that's why we have over a thousand systems and subsystems on orbit now. Like one thing when I think about space was like, you know, this is like, is it, um, like the JFK time mm-hmm. Where they're like the race space race. Is that JFK? Yep. Around his time. Yep. Yeah. And it's like, you know, it was a mission to get to the moon's or it was a mission like win the space race against the Soviet Union and all this stuff.

What's like the current mission? Like what are all of these, and obviously people are like, you know, solving smaller pain points, but when you think of the overarching mission of these space companies, what are, what's the race to, what are people trying to get accomplished? Yeah. I think there's different reasons for different groups.

Uh, but I think there's an opening door to the commercialization of space and so there's a race of just like, you know, there's a lot of large players. You guys, you know, Elon Musk is very common with that. You got Jeff Bezos on there, sir Branson did a lot of stuff with Virgin. Um, that kind of brought a lot of awareness to space.

Yeah. And bringing it back there and looking up. I mean, space is really a fun thing. A lot going on there. Um, I mean, I think SpaceX's goal to the Mars has driven a lot of his technology from that side, but also it brought a lot of attention to a lot of other groups to say, what else can we do up there?

And I think the communications on orbit is, uh, gonna be a big part of the future. You know, we depend on connecting with all of our devices to set to space, and we're not even aware of how much is starting to happen, uh, that we depend on the space sector to support all of our technologies. Wow. Do you think there's a day when like companies and may, it might already be like that, where they're buying like.

Real estate within space? Yeah. Or like by like, hey, this is where our satellite gets this. Mm-hmm. Prime real estate. Like how does that work? How do you choose where and you guys can orbit go? Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, traffic and space is becoming something that has to be managed. So it depends on what region of orbit you're in.

Uh, so if you're in geo, which is the higher one, you actually stay more stationary over a region of the world. But if you're in the LEO, you're going 17,000 miles per hour. So you're making almost eight laps around the earth. Um, you know, pretty regularly. So it's 8 8, 8 laps. Yeah. So you're running, going multiple times, orbits around the earth there.

And so it's, it's a thing that you have to really start tracking because you're going 17,000 miles per hour. That's crazy. Same speed as the International Space Station. So really one of the things we're learning is how can we help bring traffic in order to that how a lot of the satellites couldn't move or change orbit planes.

So how do you also deorbit your satellites safely now and burn up in the atmosphere without. Reentry and causing any issue. Wait, burn. So you're like, okay, mission, you know, the lifespan of the communication device or whatever it was, two years or however you want. Exactly. You got it. And at two years you want it to just like vaporize or whatever.

Exactly. In the atmosphere. Yeah. So you have to build your satellites to make sure that all the elements in it will burn up in the atmosphere. And there's a lot of do no harm. So everything we build has to stand the space environment, but at the same time be able to burn up on reentry in something like this.

You know, if you think of like the scientific method, right? Where it's like variables, controls, you test it, you iterate, and then you keep testing it. I feel like you can't just like, okay, we're gonna build something today, test it tomorrow. Right? It's like how many launches are you guys a part of in any given year? So, I mean, you know, this year I think if I had to remember, you know, eight to 10 launches here. Yeah. Um, it depends. Some of them were, we built the whole spacecraft and put it on orbit. Sometimes it's, we were just supporting the radio part of it. Uh, so there's a lot of missions that we get to join in. We even did this year a lot of the operations on orbit for customers so that not only did we launch the satellite, but then supported the on orbit operations of communicating back and forth.

So there's some lonely stuff on orbit right now that's we're helping talk to. So, yeah, it doesn't feel lonely. Where was the moment in the journey that you guys knew you were onto something big? So that's really the season we're stepping into right now. I think we've done a lot of iterations of a lot of unique technologies, a lot of R&D section.

Really transitioning to manufacturing right now. So it's uh, a lot of the radio, uh, side of it where, you know, when you've flown over 230 of something and a lot of that's because groups come to you to find it and find, hear what you're doing. Um, you really see like, okay, this is something that could help the space community a lot for tracking their systems.

Yeah. And then also, yeah, the manufacturing, having a US manufacturer. In the small site sector that's not currently owned by one of the primes is a very independent, uh, thing that's self grown, uh, is a pretty unique, uh, offering to do. When you say the primes mm-hmm. What are the primes? Yeah, good question.

So the primes would be a lot of those larger spacecraft groups like we talked about, Lockheed Martin Raytheon, L3Harris, um, groups that are larger entities that support the defense base. Have any of them tried to come and say and like, acquire you guys and roll you up into what they're doing? Yeah, so we haven't really opened ourselves up to that conversations too much right now.

Uh, we wanna keep maturing and growing, but we wanna support them if they need certain missions and we've been actually helping support them with some of our subsystems on some of their missions. You're talking about subsystems? Yeah. Sorry, sorry. I love it. No, I think it's so cool and, and I do see the.

Like your guys' commitment to education mm-hmm. Your commitment to Grant County and Upland. Like, I think that's so cool. Versus, you know, you think about go raise a bunch of money. Mm-hmm. Launch some things into space and sell to the, you know, one of the big primes. Yeah. Like, I think that that's, uh, that's really, really fascinating.

Mm-hmm. Where do you see. Uh, NearSpace Launch going in, in the next decade. Like you've been around for 12 years mm-hmm. And you're kind of hitting this growth phase. Yeah. Like where are you? Where, where's the mission? Yeah. We're, we're excited about making constellations, you know, supporting more higher class required spacecraft that we have on orbit right now.

Proven out. So usually we like to see it work on orbit before we start to scale it. And that's happened already. So that's a neat achievement this last year. So who would come to you? Like what company would come. To you all to build a constellation and how much does it cost to put something up into space? Yeah, so I mean, we can bring it down by a hector, a factor of half of the cost that usually it would cost to go to space. Um, and we can do, well, what does it usually cost to go to space? No, it's usually about, you know, 10 million, $5 million kind of projects that you're working on. And so we can do that for a lot less. So someone came to you guys, like the first ever customer, whoever it was, was like, we want to get this communication, this satellite into space. Mm-hmm. And you're like, yeah, you know, it's gonna be between five and $10 million for one launch. So previously, yeah, I think that was kind of the economy, but as it's becoming more manufactured and a lot of things are becoming, the price is dropping, the cost of launches are dropping, so it's becoming more accessible.

And that's, that's a neat thing. So a lot more groups are interested in it. A lot more commercial groups is like, Hey, what can our cool tech. Res really be brought to space. And that's something that's really fun for us, is we get to work with those companies that have some cool tech already and bring that into the space community and say, Hey, how can we help you adopt that to orbit?

Um, and so over the next 10 years, you guys are excited about launch constellations, which would be mm-hmm. A lot of different units. Exactly. So it's multiple satellites to serve a purpose. So it's not just building one off satellite and then build it and launch it, but usually it'd be satellites talking to each other.

It could be, uh, groups that have alternate GPS. It could be groups that have an ability to, um, do space weather analysis, you know, so the people that are interested in clusters of satellite, so like three or four, maybe six or seven, you know, so all those kinda different parts there, um, we can see how it goes.

So that's, I have a bunch of little kids, so I couldn't help the six seven. Yeah, you had to hit the six seven. I'm trying to make it uncool, so come on. Um, no. Wait, so like, who would be someone. That would buy or like partner with you guys mm-hmm. To launch seven satellite or seven Yeah. Satellites and a constellation.

Like what's like a, yeah, like make it make sense to me in a use case for like, how it would affect my every day. Ah, so yeah. One public project that we're working on is, there's one with the DoD that we're working with, uh, space Force and Naval Research Laboratory. Uh, this one is an experimental one, uh, where we're basically launching three, uh, different satellites for them right now that's gonna launch here in transport 17, which is this summer.

Um, and, uh, they'll be basically seeing how these, uh, how they perform on orbit. And if these are the newest technologies that are currently being used terrestrially and they say, Hey, can we adapt those, put those on orbit, and then they wanna put it on their bigger spacecraft for the future. So there's always gonna be experimental missions that we do.

Yeah. That's a fun spot that we've always done. Yeah. And we'll continue to do. Uh, but then there'll be also more mission specific groups that, um, really want to understand the reentry part of the earth. So like we were talking about earlier, there's different regions of orbit, like the GEO and the LEO, there's this part called very low Earth orbit.

So it's before you reenter and before you are kind of out of the hypersonic regions where they launch. That's, uh, where cranes are doing a lot of neat things. Uh, but the VLEO region is this atmosphere. It's our 1% area that a lot of the, the particles, a lot of things are happening there, but we don't get to research a lot of stuff there because everything burns up there.

Right. And so these small satellites are ideal to go into that region that a lot of our atmosphere is at, where it burns up and we need to study it because the communication between that region. It's gonna effect a lot our cell phones and other things. Um, and so we need to know more what's going on there.

So we're, we're curious about that region. Uh, the VLEO, we call it as well. Yeah. Well, it definitely seems like you all as a company are committed to lifelong learning. Yeah. And it's like, you know, I feel like in, in this thing like aerospace, you have to be mm-hmm. And you have a commitment to helping. Like create opportunity for students. Yeah. You know, like you're working with six different universities in Indiana to help them get a better education mm-hmm. Of all things space. Talk to me about what you're doing with NearSpace Education. Yeah. And, and helping six Indiana universities make it to space. Yeah, no, thanks for asking. It's to basically, yeah.

We grew out of a university, you know, for 12 2014, and then we saw Mission Drift. We were getting more involved with commercial and government projects and you know, that, which is great. And it was stimulating a great ecosystem working and helped us scale a lot of the things in Upland and Grant County there.

Uh, but then, yeah, in 2020 we saw the mission of still wanting to help with education and so we launched the nonprofit and a great team is helping, uh, grow with the universities. And so taking some of the technology that NSL is manufacturing and creating a STEM version of that, but also using high-altitude balloon, that's where we started, was a very entry level way of doing launch high-altitude balloon, to the top 1% in the atmosphere.

LED students collect the same radio that we use on orbit, the same one that they can launch. From anywhere in Indiana. Uh, we launched 12 of them during the eclipse, you know, one from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway with NASA and other groups. It's a great learning tool. Like you can, do you have to get like permitting and stuff to launch a high altitude meeting?

Yeah, we always let the airports and other groups work with them and so we kind of walk schools through that process and, you know, that's where Indiana's great is, you know, we have grids so we can, you know, as far as uh, nice squares to go chase down the balloon. So we actually chase 'em down, collect them, bring 'em back.

Um, so it's no way. So you launched one from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway? We did couple. And how far, how far up did it go? Uh, usually they go about 90,000 to a hundred thousand feet up. Holy. Okay. What's that? Versus like, if I just let go of a helium balloon, how far will that go? Uh, that's a good question there.

I haven't looked at that, but like your airplanes are, you know, going about 30,000, 40,000 feet, you know, in the air. So this is the top 1%. So you actually, if you bring a camera to that height, you can actually see the curvature of the earth. Uh, so you see, see the whole round parts there. So. Um, it's a neat, neat time to launch a high-altitude balloon, but, okay.

So a typical helium feel filled latex party balloon, we will send to about 10 or 20,000 feet. Okay. While, uh, yeah. Professional high altitude balloons can go 90, a hundred, 130,000 feet in the air. That's right. So how high did you guys give them? So usually about 90 to a hundred thousand, 92. So ours are mostly weather balloons that go up and then we bring a parachute to it and burst it and bring it back down, and then we pick it up, um, or collect it.

Do Is that like auto set where it's like it gets high enough and then you burst the balloon and then it auto deploys The parachute? You could do it that way. We also just, uh, a simple way too is because the pressure just gets on orbits. Ours, it gets higher and higher, it just spreads the balloon out more and it burst.

And so when the balloon burst, it comes back down so you actually can project. Where you launch from, most likely where it's gonna land in a region. So, okay. How far away did it land from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway? You launched a 90,000 foot high high-altitude balloon from the Motor Speedway during the eclipse.

Mm-hmm. Where did you have to pick it up from? Usually it's a two hour drive to go pick it up and chase it down. So we have a Chase team that goes after, which is really fun, uh, about usually Ohio or on the border of Indiana. Yeah. Um, well how many did you launch from the Speedway? So we launched, I believe two and then, but we launched about 15 that day with partners all the way up and down the eclipse.

And so we collected data at the same time with different partners from museums and other universities. Oh. So we had, you know, people have eclipse parties. Why not launch a balloon during that time? Right. Beforehand? Yeah. And we have some great photos of the, the eclipse from the, uh, that height of 80,000 feet. No way. So it's, uh, some really fun, fun things to look at our NearSpace Education website. Um. Tracked a lot of that. So, and we're working with a lot of schools right now, uh, to launch these high-altitude balloons and students are still doing that today. That's nuts. So you're, so the one that launched from the Speedway is like you ended up chasing it down over near Ohio? Yeah, a lot of our team members went and chased it there and it was really neat. We got to work with some other tech companies here in Indiana. Uh, so like, uh, Tactile Engineering works with the Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired and they have a lot of braille reading Cadence tactile tablet. So we plugged our radios in with them, uh, at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and uh, they had a lot of their students able to watch the balloon go up and down and see the light go through, uh, with the Tactile Engineering.

So that was a neat, so it's just neat collaborations we get to do with other tech companies that is, they're based outta so wild, like, I just can't imagine. It was a fun day. I mean. Eclipse was a pretty amazing day in April and that was actually kinda the launch of NearSpace Education was from that is like, you know, there's these, all these inspiring events that are happening around, uh, from looking up.

And so we just wanna use those moments and say, Hey, there's more to it. And they can get equipped and also go. So our whole thing with NSE is who inspire, equipped and impact. Uh, so we want the kids to be inspired but also equip them with some of the tools out there. So we give them not just the balloons, but they can go through our space camps that does soldering.

They do, uh, microchip building. And actually that's one of the neat initiatives we have, uh, through NSE is the Dream Big programs, what six universities are there? So yeah, four of those are in Indiana. We're working in the tri-state. And then, uh, so it's University of Notre Dame, uh, Purdue Fort Wayne, Taylor University, uh, Purdue Fort Wayne, and then also Valparaiso University, uh, Western Michigan University and the University of Toledo.

So, okay. It was funded by, uh, the Don Wood Foundation and working with NearSpace Launch, uh, to use NSE to collaborate with the schools. And they all built, we said, Hey, we didn't tell the schools what they had to build as their payload, but they had to fit within this satellite confines. And they learned the same engineering process that we would go through when we have to go build something for NASA or a Space Force.

They had to go through these same design reviews and then they did it one year, which is really a significant factor. 'cause usually if you build a satellite, it can take four to five years. Students never actually get to launch it. They only do one part of the, the process. So we're like, Hey, let's build this satellite.

And then they work on the payload. They experiment whatever they want to fly. Yeah. And plug into it. And these, it was a great project for engineering students. Yeah. But they also worked with K through 12. Uh, so the, the universities in their region, we also helped them, uh, supported them with three high high-altitude balloon launches and said, Hey, you know what, can you go and go reach out to your different schools in your region?

So built pipelines of the K through 12 meeting university students to launch these high altitude balloons. So cool. And then the university students got to build the satellites and then we're gonna host a party here in, uh, March or April to as a launch party for these six satellites. So a constellation of satellites are being launched from the Midwest here.

It's really fun to share about where at? Uh, from Upland, Indiana, from Grant County. So we're gonna do that right there and invite a lot of people to that. And you're definitely welcome and Okay. Itll be a fun time. Alright, we need to dive into this. Yeah. So you guys from the nonprofit side NearSpace Education.

That's right. You partner with six universities? Yep. Ford, Indiana. One in Ohio, one in Michigan. That's right. And give them like a spec. Like a spec specifications. You got it. Like you can build something within these confines. You got it. And we have real estate for you on a launch coming up. Yep. So we help broker the launch, the licensing.

All the things that make it hard to get to space. We kinda smooth that out through our NSL process. They was educating the students about launching and how they, what you can put on orbit, can't put on orbit. So what are the different, like experiments or payloads? Like what are they, what are they putting up there? It's quite a variety of things that they proposed and most of them were able to deliver and they all delivered a payload, uh, by the end of one year, which is really congratulations to all the hard work. They spent some late nights working on it. Uh, so that's just something to learn about delivering. But, uh, there's an idea of, um, an attitude control system so they actually can control the pointing direction of what they're doing.

I believe Taylor University's interested in some redundant testing of systems there, so they're really into space manufacturing. Uh, then there's another group that works on amateur radios from Valparaiso University. They were interested in what they call, uh, a network of satellites, uh, or a network of, uh, radios that did, and they're doing some neat stuff at Valparaiso University.

Um, so all sorts of different things. Some of it can be biological, you know, depends on what they wanna test. And so there's some unique things that they're trying to, so add when you're in orbit, um, the attitude control system, when I said that it basically, there's no gravity to really point you in the direction you want to.

So you usually have to use your reaction wheels or you have to use some sort of magnet to help you point where you want to. 'cause otherwise you can't point to the sun to get solar power and you can't point to your ground station down below. So, uh, there's always groups trying to figure that out, how to help point your satellite without gravity, you know, that is something where I, I just assume it's like a little jet booster, you know, like from Star Wars, but that's not exactly how it works. You can, you definitely, it's helpful to have some propulsion, but you still have to know where you're pointing first before you can do propulsion stuff. That's crazy. Yeah. Wow. Well, there's a lot of factors you get to think about. And then from that you helped, so you helped six universities mm-hmm. In one year get to space and that was our phase one Dream Big, uh, Dream Big.

And so now we just got. We're moving to phase two, uh, which is a statewide for Indiana, uh, that we're working with six different partners. Uh, can't list 'em all right now, but there'll be, you know, uh, um, a lot of different groups that we get. We're excited about the state museum we'll be working with here in Indianapolis.

Yeah. Uh, with Science Central and Fort Wayne and a lot of other great partners like that, uh, that schools and other people can do afterschool programs and work with these things called micro:bits that. Basically it's tools that, uh, kids are already working with, robotics teams are knowing it, and it's a great tool.

But we're gonna launch 900, uh, work with 900 different students to work with micro:bits. Um, and then also we'll launch 30 of those in about a year and a half. What is a micro:bit? Yeah, so it's actually founded by the BBC, uh, foundation, and it's, uh, basically it's like with Arduino or a simple board that if you said, Hey, I wanna learn how to program a board, there's a lot of great educational, it's meant for, you know, younger kids to work with.

Uh, a lot of, uh, robotics clubs use something similar like Arduinos and, uh, it basically teaches you programming, but also hardware and how do those two interact? Uh, so it's great for kids to start diving into that and having fun with it. And then we're like, Hey, let's take that fun stuff you're working on and let's see what experiment you can do on space with it.

So, uh, this made, um, a lot of different kids from, you know, eight year olds all the way to, you know, high schoolers are using it so it's even younger students can get started thinking about stem. And so, and we need that, and this is, this is like the space version of building the fighting robots or like building the, like robots that have to throw the ball through the, you know, the competitions that they have.

Yeah. They have these little bits on there. So those are Arduinos. A lot of times there are some other raspberry, but this is, yeah. micro:bits or even younger kids can get involved. So we we're starting really young now and just saying like, Hey, space is accessible. We gotta reshift our mind of like, technology here and kids can work with it from home and you know, you can learn this stuff and then we can give access to them in rural locations.

It doesn't have to be in certain special spots to do space stuff, you know? Yeah. We can do that from wherever. We like to help groups do that. That is wild to me. It's fun. I mean, so, so cool. And imagine, you know, being a college junior, senior and on your resume saying like, I, with a small team. Yeah. Launched a satellite into space. It changes your mindset, you know, and I think, you know, things are accessible more than before and you can do it from right here in Indiana, you can do it in a town of 3000. You can do it from different places. Now you talk about, you know, right here in Indiana, in a town of 3000, does that ever limit you guys when you're, you know, trying to work with, uh, other big brands that are probably on the coast?

Do they look down upon space, uh, an aerospace engineering being done here in the Hoosier State? I think at first it does. Sometimes I think especially when we had lower flight heritage, uh, now that they see that we've accomplished and uh, um, have proven over the years, there's a lot more respect for what it is.

And there's a rethinking, I think of, you know, space has to be done at certain areas. And some of the things I shared earlier about. How difficult it's to work in those regions Sometimes, uh, they're starting to look for other places and there's some great engineering universities that come out of Indiana that we know about.

And so I think a lot of them respect, a lot of them have gone to those institutions where they work. So the talent's here and we have a lot of the ingredients for doing this already. I mean, just kind of pulling it together. Isn't Purdue like the astronaut capital of you got it. The world, yeah. So Purdue leading, they have a space program now.

There, uh, there's Indiana Space Grant Consortium that does a lot of stuff that we work with in there. Yeah, Notre Dame's doing some great stuff. Taylor University and other groups, um, you know, uh, Bloomington's doing great stuff, so it's, yeah, there's a lot of great. Growth happening here, and it's just a matter of keeping some of those people here, um, that we're excited about doing here in Indiana.

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If you or someone you love has been hurt, don't fight alone. Call Keller and Keller or chat anytime@twokeller.com. That's the number two. keller.com. Keller and Keller right here for Indiana when it matters most. Now let's get back into the episode. Why should the everyday Hoosier mm-hmm. Like how does this affect my life?

Yeah. How does the work that you guys are doing, even if it doesn't directly affect it today, how is it going to affect my life? Yeah. So, well, it's already affecting your life, so there's already connections. I mean, when you're using your GPS, if you're using communications, uh, starlink, when you're using those comms for different groups of, when you're starting, it's becoming more and more common.

It's, uh, a domain that is becoming integrated into our networks if you don't even aware of it. Uh, it's a back becoming one of the series backbones, yeah. Of our networks. And so 5G, six G, um, it's transitioning into that. And so a lot of groups, especially the larger companies, are starting to see what is their idea of how can they be involved in the space programs.

And so, yeah. Who's like the most interesting or random company that's involved with space? Exploration where you're like, I wouldn't believe that, like Nabisco has a small, like a, a satellite, you know, for Cheez-Its, yeah. So there's some really fun, unique marketing groups that kind of come along and we've helped them look at that area there.

That one project that was a fun one was we worked with the UN on what they called the Asgardia, and so they're looking at making a Space Nation on orbit. So we built a satellite for them. Uh, to put on orbit about a bunch of their future citizens that they're thinking about on orbit. Um, and so it was a unique, very special program that we helped do.

Wait, the United Nations? Yes. The UN. Mm-hmm. Like that we've heard, you know, you see read about in the Wall Street Journal or whatever. That's right. Yeah. They came to you guys or the, you guys ended up working together with them. 'cause they want to build a Space Nation. They had, they want, they, they had goals.

There's a lot of great ambitions on space too. Yeah. But they, they worked with the un We actually worked with another party that asked us to build the satellite for them. Yeah. They knew we were building them. Uh, so we were, the, the, they asked us to build the satellite and they helped with the launch part.

So we worked with a group called Nanoracks, or Voyager Space at the time. That's crazy. To put this, uh, on orbit with them. And so it was a neat, neat, unique idea there. But there's some unique ideas that are coming as well. So there's some traditional tech that's. Put on orbit, but then there's some unique things like what else can we do on space?

And so that's what are fun questions for us to do, and we're open to that. So. Well, when you think about the two technological advances that seem to be all over the news mm-hmm. Is obviously space. And you think of like SpaceX and Blue Origin and like all the crazy stuff there and ai. Mm-hmm. Like those are the two, I feel like STEM sort of. Mm-hmm. Uh, they're very, very hype right now. That's right. Which one is changing faster and Yeah. Out of those two, which one do you feel like is, is evolving and changing and innovating faster? Well, the fun thing is we're trying to bring AI into space. So bringing both of those together is gonna be a fun mix.

Mm-hmm. Of how can we operate on orbit with ai. Yeah. Tied to that, I think AI is gonna be drastically changing our landscape and our world. Uh, we, you know. It just, it's a, it's a exciting time to be around to focus on how Yeah. We're, we're constantly looking at that ourselves, how to integrate that into our build cycles and different processes.

Um, and being a small company, it's really neat to be able at, as a scaling stage to be able to integrate AI into our scaling stage. Yeah. Uh, so it's a pretty strategic time for this all to unleash. And I have to assume a largely like hardware and space is like a largely capital intensive business. Mm-hmm.

So ways that you can use AI to keep your costs down. Mm-hmm. Along with, you know, real estate being, you know, more affordable here in Indiana, like that has to help you. Mm-hmm. Um. With value delivered to customers. You know, like where you can cut down, it's not millions and millions and billions of dollars to get your constellation to space.

Mm-hmm. It's like, hey, we're using these, whether it's AI and these different, uh, ways to keep quality high, but also deliver, yeah. We can keep a smaller team while also putting on more outputs. So as a space entrepreneur, you know, you have a lot more documentation and different things that you have to do.

You have to really kind of, really, uh, the AI really has helped us a lot. Is that crazy? Like, you walk into a party and people are like, I'm a doctor, I'm a lawyer. And you're like, I'm a space entrepreneur. Oh, it's, it's a team. It's an honor to share about what the team is doing it. So I really enjoy telling the story for the guys. Yeah. If you walk into, you know, like a networking event or something mm-hmm. How do you explain what you're doing? To make it make sense to someone. Yeah. I think it just, it's a discussion about what is the purpose of space like we're having right now. Yeah. And just saying, you know, the space is a lot more accessible.

It's a lot more here than we realize, and just saying, we actually built spacecraft to put stuff on orbit, so it's a fun conversation. Do people look at you like, okay, this guy's pulling my leg? Yeah. Well they, they, they have to get the right category of what we're talking about. Yeah. Like sometimes it's satellite dish network, they're thinking, or different processes.

So it's dish, it's, it's a very niche area. That's not a common thing that people talk about. And so it's fun to. Yeah. Introduce a new ecosystem to people. What's the coolest space innovation that's launched recently? Whether it's with you guys or just in general? That like, like if you think of something like Starlink mm-hmm.

Like really cool innovation where you can go and hook up your device to wifi like almost anywhere, right? Yeah. Like are there other cool innovations that you've seen come out recently that you're like, these are really changing the game? Yeah, I think it's really neat to see the interlinking of satellites coming together.

So there's satellites talking to each other more often, uh, and they're using optical light, light, like laser beam to talk to each other basically. So it's like in the, the data is coming through so much quicker than it's ever has on orbit. Um, and that's a new backbone layer that's happening in the space sector right now, and that's gonna be really changing things.

And so just the, it's almost be creating a new world on the, the orbit plane of talking satellite to satellite. So that's pretty fun. Uh, and another one would be. You know, they're really trying to do refueling and doing, uh, you know, usually you build a satellite and then you have it on orbit, and then it comes down and it burns back up.

How can we also bring up other sides to refuel the old ones, to keep it up in orbit longer? And also just more like, not just make a one off and let it burn up after it's done, but keep it up there for multiple years and refuel it. So it's almost like, you know, after you build the car, you don't want it to just burn up after it's done.

Let's keep refueling it and have it go for multiple generations. When it comes to the commercialization of space and just the innovations being pumped out, is there anything that worries you? Mm-hmm. Well, I think the thing that we got to keep maturing as an industry is similar to what the aerospace, as far as the.

When planes were first going off and there was not as many up there, you know, we didn't have to track 'em. So you just have to kind of mature the industry as far as tracking all these different missions. And so it's a very, you know, we're quickly going, you know, like I said, seven times around the earth.

You know, how do we, uh, make sure that we are, we're going over other countries, other domains, you know, how are we tracking these? And so that's actually something that we're working on hard with these radios is what we're calling the black boxes, is we gotta really know where. Every satellite is, instead of just depending on a radar when it goes by and having, you know, 10 miles swaths of not knowing exactly where the satellite is for a while.

So we need to have beacons on these things, like black boxes to be able to tell, hey, where is your satellite? And also what's the critical things going on, not wait until it hopefully passes a ground station. So it's a maturing industry quickly. Um, it takes a lot of countries to work together. They're all trying to do that, um, in different ways.

And sometimes it's difficult with some countries having different massive star constellations. They wanna fly and other ones want to. So it's, um, uh, we wanna just, uh, yeah, play nice on orbit. Yeah. Okay. Wait, one, are space devices bumping into each other? Does that happen frequently? It doesn't happen frequently, but it could happen more often.

It has happened and it's a very dangerous thing. If you're going 17,000 miles per hour, it basically shatters and shoots a lot of parts everywhere. And then it's what a cascading effect that can happen where then it goes, hits other ones and then other ones. And it could have a lot of debris breaking a lot of satellites on orbit.

Yeah. Making the whole, that whole region of that orbit unusable for others. Uh, if it's a bunch of basically shrapnel flying around on orbit and it takes like years before it burns up again. So it's a very domain that we really have to make sure we know whoever's flying does no harm for the different groups. Yeah. And it's almost like who's gonna build the sweep? The street sweeper of outer space. And that's actually, that's a big thing they're trying to solve is so going and helping deorbit dead satellites that are there or things that are outta place. And so, um, who's the governing body? Like who gets to make the decisions on, like who does, who does Elon have to call mm-hmm.

To get approval to launch a SpaceX rocket? Yeah, so there's multiple organizations he would work with within the U.S. government, but then there's a global. Supervi overseeing, uh, suggestion groups that provides data as well. So is there like a board? It's a lot of different groups you have to work with there. Like a governance board of like the global earth space Yeah. Alliance. So the, he would work through something like the FCC and FAA and a lot of different groups. There's a lot of like, those are American based, right? Those are the American based versions. Yeah. And you have the, you know, you would've to work with your environmental if you are launching a rocket.

There's a lot of long list of letter, different groups that he would have to work with to launch. And that's actually one of the parts, people don't think about helping people get to space. They're like, oh, you have to build your satellite, but you also have to work on the launch. But you also have to really have, there's a long list of licensing and do no harm processes that we've developed to help people do that.

Yeah. And also working with third parties to help us too. Well, I'm just imagining if there's like someone, you know, like a scientist that like mm-hmm. You know, worked at NASA or wherever and like slowly worked their way up the ladder and all of a sudden they're like the, the executive director, like the president of Earth's space.

Yeah. Global. Enterprises and they're like, yeah, oh, okay, we're gonna have an Elon launch today. Mm-hmm. And this company in Australia's launching something and they're like, yeah, green light this one, but let's just get more checks on that. Like, that's right. Someone's like the ma like the, the like air traffic controller of all the space. Exactly. That would be a crazy, eventually they're gonna have to the, but ITU is the big international one they have in Geneva that basically one of the bigger issues, big issues is frequency. So you wanna make sure that your communications are not gonna interfere with other communication systems. And so, um, they are a governing or a body of a lot of different representations from around the world to really help you out with that.

So it's an interesting group. Oh, that is ITU, the International Telecommunication Union. Mm-hmm. So this is for satellite systems. They do a lot of different things, but Yep. They're trying to help making sure, uh, there's not interference through. So like if starlink is launching all their satellites and they're taking such a large area, they want to use a certain.

Bandwidth. You know, it's basically why you, they've made standards here, satellite. That's why people don't have radios interfering with each other. You always know when you're crossing over two different zones and they're interfering with each other, uh, you have to get approvals and licensings of where you can broadcast and point, and so that that's part of the space.

And when you're going really fast in all orbit, yeah, you wanna make sure you're not affecting things. terrestrially, you don't wanna affect the GPS system. You know, the ones in geo, you know, you just wanna make sure you're not interfering. And so there's a big review every time you go to orbit to make sure you don't affect those things. That's wild. And you think about like the language barriers and like translation and all of a sudden like, well my rocket is speaking English and your rocket speaking Spanish. Like how the controlling, I'm just kidding. Did you everyone, yeah, everyone to interact. Well, I mean, and thankfully there's not enough rockets that are gonna probably have those issues for a little while and they're on different, uh, focuses of where they're launching in direction.

So, um, I'm sure that's, they gotta start thinking more that way down the road. This is so wild to me, like learning about. Aerospace and the advancements that are happening right here in Indiana. That's right. Like I think when people think of space like it, is it Alabama? I feel like Space Camp is in Birmingham. There's a Huntsville or Huntsville. Huntsville. There's some there. Florida has some California. Yeah. That's the neat thing is actually, uh, we have kids that are coming from Florida for our space camps, for our nonprofit, uh, because we let students actually build hardware. So we are not just like theoretical.

These students are actually getting to build something that could potentially go on orbit. Um, and this next year there actually will be able to do some of the micro:bits that we're gonna be with this phase two. So we're excited for the students these rounds to really get their hands dirty and solder and do some real cool stuff. When I was a little kid, Apollo 13 was one of my favorite movies. Oh yes. And I wanted to go to Space Camp. That's a fun one. So bad. But it was like, I don't know, $2,000 or something. Yeah. And we were just like, it was not in the summer budget to go to Huntsville for the summer. Yeah. For like a week or two or whatever.

That's right. That's fair. But, but like. I mean, how cool. Yeah. Space Camp is like, like the kid that went to space camp for the summer. That's right. That's so sick. Like you definitely a flex when you got back to the school in the fall and you're away. Like I was at cross country. Mm-hmm. And I was at this and he's like, well, I went to Huntsville, Alabama to Space Camp.

And you're like, oh, oh boy. Got to do some stuff. And that's the guy. He's doing some cool things. So you can do it here in Indiana now, and we're just doing off 69 and we have scholarships. You guys, you guys do a summer space camp. We have overnights. We were doing a girl stem space camp. We're doing all sorts of fun stuff.

So we're six camps this summer, so, so you have a kid that's interested in space's. Right. And they've seen Apollo 13 and they're like, when they, when they put out the box with like all these things, interstellar, whatever they watch, you know? Yeah. So, well, and no like in Apollo 13 though, when they like put out all the things like we have to figure out how to build the system.

That's right. Yeah. And you have an hour and you're on the clock. I was, I thought that would be so cool. That is cool. Like I wanted someone to just like, gimme a box of, give a C here and say Good luck. Yeah. Like two paper clips and a marshmallow and I can build a respirator. The clock is live. You know, like, it's so cool because MacGyver, like way back That's awesome that you guys are hosting spa, like how many kids come? Did you do it last? We did last year We had all the camps there and then we have usually, I think we have spots up to 20 to, uh, 30 per camp. We have a makerspace that we launched along with an innovation hub where entrepreneurs can come and hang out too. So we actually have, uh, four new entrepreneurs that are gonna probably be starting joining our, uh, innovation hub.

Hear that we just, uh, launched I think over Labor Day. So that was incredible. So that's a new venture here We're starting saying why can't we do a rural tech hub? You know? Yeah. Like, why can't we just share our playbook with other entrepreneurs? Well, I'm gonna have to come check that out. Please do. Yeah. Looks come on up. That sounds so fun. Get some, get some good time up there. So, I mean, wrapping up our space talk. Yeah, I do wanna just know broadly, it's such an industry that is either really in the center of the spotlight with, you know, SpaceX and it's on Twitter and you're watching and you're on stuff all.

But I feel like there's a lot of misconceptions. What's the biggest misconception about aerospace companies and working in that industry? Appreciate your question earlier, just like, how does space affect us and how does it, how far away is it? And I think that's very applicable of realizing, um, you know, I didn't even fully understand the ecosystem of space.

And the seriousness of it. And as I go to conferences, it's becoming more and more aware of the impact of what we need to have some sort of plan or game plan of having space a part of our economies. Yeah. Um, and so every country is really working on making sure, it used to be just a few countries, almost all the countries are now saying, Hey, we need to have some sort of split, some sort of foot in space.

Um, yeah. I mean, like even with Space Force, people kind of thought it was a joke to start. Yeah. Like, oh, we're sharing Space Force. Yeah. There's some great comedies about, right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. But it is, it, it's a great standup that they did for Space Force because it's really, it needed, it's, it's very different than how you would command an aircraft.

Operation now we can work on space as its own sector. And um, and you know, that's how it starts. And then you let it grow over a couple years and develop and, you know, there's a lot of, uh, neat things that when people are really smart, people are thinking about it. When you, again, get a bunch of smart people in a room and give 'em a challenge or problem and let 'em go crazy, like that's like where the magic really happens.

Yeah. You know, I think there's a lot of entrepreneurs involved now too, so it's just like, how do we help commercialize and use it for helping others too in the market? So it's helping. Look, I think space is beautiful to look up and, uh, really challenge and wonder. I mean, it's a great place of, uh, to be inspired by and there's a lot of, lot, it's ama uh, it's just unimaginable how much area you get to work with when you go to orbit.

Um, but there's a lot of opportunity to also commercialize and use for humanity as far as what we can do here. terrestrially, have you guys ever captured any data or photos or videos or any, anything in your work with space that just. Moved you. Mm-hmm. That made you feel like, this is incredible. It was really fun to see the deployment of our satellites.

So we just, this, uh, last fall we were doing this, uh, duplex mission that our project manager, Matt Orvis, who's been with us since the beginning, got to launch off the International Space Station. So we actually gotta see our satellite deploy in space, a video of it, um, as it was leaving the International Space Station.

And so that was a really neat mission to see, um, just like, oh wow, there is truly, you get to visually see your satellite on orbit going around and I'm glad to share that clip with you there. Yeah. Um, and you know, we have some really neat data that we get to see regularly and just like, we're like, whoa, that data's being collected, uh, as it's going on orbit and we get to see, um, some of the different zones of the atmosphere and having real data that could actually, if we do analysis on it.

Can bring some real change and perspectives of how we see our earth. And so, um, yeah, just remembering some of the stuff we're building is currently as we see the data coming down, you know, like, oh, remembering where it's at, and just reflecting on that. It's pretty a neat Yeah. Neat opportunity. And, um, that's the time's so, so cool.

And I can just imagine you even talk about like, seeing the curvature of the earth from the weather balloon. Yeah. Like that, that's something that like, I feel like after a lot of times you might take it for granted. Yeah. But the first time you see that and you're just like, whoa. Yeah. It's always interesting.

I feel like a ton of people say like, well, you know, we're not curing cancer. I'm not a rocket scientist. And it's like, you guys are literally rocket scientists. Well, we appreciate you saying that. It's, we like to stay where the spacecraft builders, those rocket scientists get to build the rockets. But we, we were glad to build the buses to do the experiments and the science.

Incredible. So the team's doing some cool stuff. We're gonna wrap up with some Indiana talk and some rapid fire space. All right. Talk, uh, this question is brought to you by our friends at JC Hart. They're a leader in creating enjoyable living experiences at apartment communities all across Indiana and beyond.

Check them out at home is jc hart.com. My question for you, Matt, why do you call Indiana home? So I'm a boomerang. I've been able to leave and come back a couple different times, different seasons of life. So, uh, grew up here, then I came back as a young professional and then now with kids. Each of them were beautiful in different ways.

Uh, but I asked a few people that question too, just like, you know, people that were transplants and he in the same answer of like, it's people, you know, and it's, it's a beautiful. Being that I don't call like India and it's not always, you're gonna have, feel like it's a utopia, but it's the people that are here for a reason and they're growing, uh, with you.

And um, yeah, the pace of life is really rapid. I have five little kids and so it's just been fun to go through a rhythm of life where. It's very focused and intentional and there's some beauty to that. Yeah. And uh, uh, 'cause it's already a pretty fast world with all the different things happening around us.

So do they, we can treasure it. Do they think data is cool for working with space stuff? I don't think they know anything different, and it's nothing that, you know, but they, they do have fun with our stem, uh, nonprofit. So some of the. Maybe there's some other motives to help push NSE forward as well. Well, okay.

That's, that's a good rapid fire question. Yeah. If there are parents out there listening whose kids are really into space Yeah. Like, you know, all that stuff. I think that sometimes they're like, oh, that's like a pipe dream, or that's like a hobby, like building rockets or whatever is a, you know, a hobby.

Mm-hmm. Like you've probably need to go be an electrical engineer or whatever and get a real job. Yeah. Like how can they nurture their child's love of space mm-hmm. And help them maybe find a career path that, uh, that's a good question. Yeah. Excites that. No, and that's very important to us. Intentional. Uh, 'cause you know, advanced manufacturing, tech development, stem, it's huge shortage of that and getting kids involved in that, or at least just aware of the process is like the scientific and engineering process that will help them through their life.

Problem solving, but also like, you know, mis soldering is something that every electrical engineer needs to know, um, and appreciate and just exposure to that is gonna bring there. And I think that's a lot of stuff I want for my kids is exposure to cool things and awareness. And you can do these things here in India if it's in space, but you know, the tech development, um.

It can be used in a lot of maturing our new manufacturing groups and help them think about how can we bring innovation into some of the new advanced manufacturing that needs to happen. And we do manufacturing well here. We're learning all the time from our other manufacturer partners. And actually our Dream Big program, phase one was completely funded by manufacturers.

'cause they see the need of getting kids excited about STEM and growing them at a younger age. Heck yeah. And I just pulled up your 2026 summer space camps. Great. So parents out there, listen up, uh, what will your kid do? See how engineers make real satellites. Mm-hmm. Design and build their own payload.

Mm-hmm. And launch it to the edge of space. That's right. Is that with, uh, balloons? That's right. Yep. Yep. So sick. When are the camps overnight camp week one, June 8th through the 12th. Week two is a day camp June 16th through the 19th. Uh, week three is a day camp. June 23rd to the 26th. And week four is a girls only overnight camp from July 13th through July 17th and week five's a day camp July 21st.

Through July 24th. Any students entering fifth through ninth grade in 2026, like that's awesome. You have scholarships and financial aid. That's right. Come in and do a space camp here in, in Indiana and we really appreciate our sponsors that have helped us do that. And uh, yeah, so NearSpace Education.org, you can learn all that information and get interest and talk to some of our representatives there.

And, uh, yeah, we'd be glad to. Have a conversation. I, I just remember being a kid and I remember we went to, is there like a Space museum or something in Huntsville? Yeah. Like there a thing. There's exactly, yep. Yeah, there's space stuff there. Yep. Yeah. You can go there. And I remember like seeing a flyer about wanting to go to Space camp 'cause I thought that was so cool.

Yeah. And you know, I was in there playing in the, you know, they have like a space shuttle or something mm-hmm. That you can like, you know, you can like mess around it. Exactly. I wanna go to space camp and we just didn't, weren't able to pull it off. And that's something where I just felt like would've been such a cool opportunity to learn more about mm-hmm. Um, that I didn't get to do as a kid. So maybe if you're a parent out there and you have a kid that loves. You know, he was interested in space. That's right. What a great, and you get, send him to Upland for a week and that'll be fun. Hang out. Uh, what's your favorite space movie? Uh, well we talked about Interstellar.

That actually is one of the top ones for me. Yeah. I love the way of thinking about warping time and how it kind of changes Yeah. Things there for you. I mean, I can't even begin to explain that, but when they go down and then they come back and the guy's like 40 years older is crazy. Yeah. Time is relative.

It's a, it hurts the brain. Yeah. I'm a, I'm a big Star Wars guy. Yeah. That's, oh, that's classic. You know? Yeah. Right. Star Trek, star Wars. Of course. You know, you can battle those two out. Is there a launch that you've attended that just sticks with you? There was a night launch I went to that lived the whole sky, uh, in Southern California.

I got the honor to, uh, and when I was younger, actually it was when I was probably about nine years old and I couldn't even tell you the name of the rocket, but it still stuck with me as my first launch. And yeah, it was, it made me excited about what people can do with those things. What's one thing people need to visit when they come to Grant County? Well, I love them feet near space, uh, there, but while they're in Upland, uh, we have the Ivanhoe's. Uh, if you've been there, are you on the, the a hundred, the a hundred flavor challenge or the ball or whatever? I have probably had more than a hundred, but I wasn't clocking it. So, you know, it's a, it's a tragedy really, dude, you gotta clock that.

I know. I gotta start now. So, you know, never, it's too late to never to start, so it's never too late to start. There we go. So I've done my part though. Mm-hmm. What do you have advice for young engineers that want to pursue their dreams, but maybe aren't sure how to, like, you know, obviously everyone is probably applying for one of Elon's, you know, companies in engineering.

Mm-hmm. But outside of that. Yeah. What are, what advice would you have for young engineers? Yeah, I think just having fun, tinkering with things. There's a lot of, uh, a lot of opportunity out there than ever as far as online little kits you can play with. Uh, you can just, you know, just start working with stuff in your backyards and taking apart technology and playing with it.

Uh, so I think it's really just a process of curiosity Yeah. Of how things work. And just kind of diving deeper and deeper into that. Well, if we were ever allowed to launch a rocket from the state of Indiana, where would you want to launch it from? There's been talk of groups trying to look at that and I think they'd like to launch it over the Lake Michigan. Yeah. Uh, it's 'cause if you're gonna do it over waters and we have the largest water bodies there. Yeah. Uh, it'd be launching over that to make sure. And I think once the industry again grows and matures and gets more steady of where they can launch these from and have it more consistent see of proving it works over the ocean, then it could scale to different locations and different orbit planes. Dude, Gary, Indiana becomes like the Cape Canaveral of the Midwest. There you go. Right next to all the other things going on there. So there you go. Right next to the Bear Stadium. That's right. You go, you can catch a rocket launch and see your team lose a football game. Come on. Alright. These are the final three questions that we ask every guest who comes on all about the state of Indiana.

Mm-hmm. First thing. When talking with, you know, the prime aerospace companies, people from both coasts, Silicon Valley, all the, you know, big tech space money. Mm-hmm. If you could shout it from the rooftops, what's something the world needs to know about Indiana? Well, it's already happening here. So you've mentioned two things.

I'm sorry, you said one, but I'm gonna do two on you. One, we've already got some of the, the top engineering schools that are already producing a lot of the space groups right now happening, and we have some of those great groups from L3Harris Toros Royce and others that are right here in Indianapolis and Fort Wayne.

So there's already a, a space economy happening. It's just a little more pocketed and yeah, really it's a, it's an opportunity that is being untapped as well. So I think there's such a great talent workforce and group here that has been nurtured, especially through these like Dream Big programs and others that.

Uh, would be exciting, especially as we think about manufacturing for space. You know, why not bring that here to a kind state that's all about manufacturing? Yeah. So it's, it's time to think about space more than just R&D time to think, get serious about manufacturing it. Oh, I love that. Like if you could like, starting from upland, like a space manufacturing corridor mm-hmm.

Like that would be really, really cool. Yeah. There we go. I love it. Okay. This is your opportunity to enlighten us about a part of the state that you love, that more people need to be talking about. What is a hidden gem in Indiana besides our sunsets? You know, during COVID I got to explore more parts of Indiana, which was great in Airbnb.

So, I mean, I always loved my timeline. on The Ohio River down south, you know, it's a beautiful area to look at from a nature perspective. Mounds State Park is a secret gem there too. That's right off I 69. Uh, got to do those hikes and races around that. So there's just, you know, I'm always a fan of water and rivers and we have a lot of that. Yeah. I just went to Mounds State Park for the first time. The like Great Mound. Is so interesting. Yeah. And

like we tried to take some pictures of some content and it was okay. But like, it just doesn't do it justice. No. It's like, and when you think about, you know, native Americans here in, in Indiana That's right.

The history there, like, moving the earthwork like it's an earthwork. It's like a, I mean a big like horseshoe type looking mound with like a spot in the center where they would like meet and gather and do all those things. Like you mix like the earth. And like nature. Mm-hmm. And you mix it with history.

And I just love that part. it's a good combination. Yeah. love that. Oh man. Very, very cool. Was there a specific spot along the Ohio River that really like drew your attention? There wasn't one. I think, I think we were even next to a city when we stopped. It was an Airbnb that we just found that was just, you know, just the power of a strong river like that and kinda recognizes how small, kinda like looking to the stars, you know, like it's just, you realize we're small in this world and I mean, uh, but we're also doing a part, so I, I think we take the, that southern border in the Ohio River a little bit for granted.

Mm-hmm. It is huge. That's a big river. You can be down there and have like an overlook and you see like a, a huge barge Yeah. Going down and it looks so small within the river. Exactly. Yeah. It's so, so cool. It's a little scared to swim across that one. So I might need to try to do that. There you go. Uh, finally, this is where we get guest recommendations and learn about other people across Indiana doing inspiring things.

Who's a Hoosier? We need to keep on our radar. Someone who's doing big things. Yeah. I wanna give a shout out to some of our educators, uh, groups that are really investing in the kids. Uh, one person that's really helped guide a lot of NearSpace Education is a retired superintendent, Leslie Winters. Uh, she has been really instrumental in just seeing now in her retirement to work with a lot of different groups.

It brings synergy between other groups that are already happening. Yeah. So I'm excited to see, uh, all the different efforts there. She's working with a neat group called Slingshot, uh, that is based out of, uh, a Grant County and uh, another person would be Darren Campbell. So he's doing some really neat work with his group of scaling a company from just a couple, two or three people into multiple hundreds now. Yeah. That's crazy. Cool. Yeah. I love it, man. Matt, it was a pleasure to learn more about all the stuff you're doing with NearSpace Launch and NearSpace Education, the way you're making. Well, the way this space has become accessible and you guys are helping make it accessible to Young Hoosiers. Mm-hmm. Uh, I think that's so cool.

The fact that you guys are here really soon gonna be launching mm-hmm. Six different satellites. Yeah. So this will be a Constellation partnership with n NearSpace Education Manufacturers and NSL. We're gonna be invited people here in early April to a fun launch party. So, uh, we'll, we'll link it. Yeah, we'll link it up in the, uh, in the show notes, you know.

Do you have a date on that yet? We're looking at April 4th. Um, yeah, so that's current date right now. The rocket launches can change their dates, but we'll definitely launch a high-altitude balloon. Hopefully we can review data by that time on orbit. Um, and just look around and see how people are. So celebrate the students that did all that hard work.

Yeah. Incredible. You know, and you talk about the, the phase two of making. You know, education around space, more accessible for younger students across the state of Indiana. Mm-hmm. I just think it's so cool and yeah. The ever evolving world of AI and space, you know? That's right. It seems to be at the forefront of everything and, and like really empowering Hoosier students to know, like.

Hey, you are smart enough to do stuff like this. Yeah. Like we can do this stuff in Indiana. You don't have to move to California, Florida, or wherever. Mm-hmm. We can build cool, modern companies here in the state of Indiana. Yeah. And your guys' commitment to Grant County renovating historical buildings and just pouring in and attracting and retaining mm-hmm.

Our best engineering talent across the state. I love it. I think it's so cool. Keep up the great work. If people wanna learn more, if there's an engineer out there that's maybe ready for a change to switch things up and wants to consider to look, look at you guys. Yeah. How can they learn more about you guys? Yeah. So if they're interested in some of our commercial work or government work NearSpace Launch.com, uh, that is the company that's we've been talking mostly about, and then our nonprofit NearSpace Education.org, uh, is the other opportunity there. So feel free to reach out to us. Yeah, absolutely. And if you wanna send your kid to Space Camp, go check out NearSpace Education.

Mm-hmm. Uh, there's, I think five weeks where you guys are doing camps over and there's Overnights Day camps, like such a cool, interesting opportunity to get your kids involved in. Matt, thanks for stopping by and we'll talk soon. Thanks so much, man. Really fun to be here. This show is made possible by our friends up at Sweetwater.

Whether you're looking to start a podcast or take your content to the next level, click the link in the description to see all my gear recommendations at Sweetwater. If you want a behind the scenes look at everything we're doing across the state. Make sure you follow me on Instagram and TikTok at Nate Spangle.

Thank you so much for listening and being a part of what makes the Hoosier State great. We'll see you next time here on Get IN.