A company that designs spacecraft parts may seem out of place for a rural area like Durango, but the company has skyrocketed in size from its startup origin.
Agile Space Industries hosted a ribbon-cutting Wednesday for a new manufacturing and office building near its existing location adjacent to Durango-La Plata County Airport.
When the company began in 2020, it had only 12 employees. It now employs about 170. The new building was constructed because Agile needed more room for people to work, said David Cuthbertson, chief operating officer.
The building is made up of two sections: an office space and a manufacturing space. The office space includes rooms lined with computer monitors, conference rooms, a kitchen and a fish tank where employees can go to decompress, said Kris Schaa, chief financial officer. The manufacturing space is linked via a tunnel.
On the office side, employees had their dogs sitting next to their desks, and on the manufacturing side, engineers wore safety glasses among a constant whir of big machines.
All Agile employees must have photo badges to get into the building.
U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper attended the ribbon-cutting. He said it is crucial to have aerospace companies spread out across the state.
“Geographically diverse sourcing of what we make and what we send into space makes the entire system strategically more resilient,” he said.
Agile works with major defense contractors such as Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. The U.S. Department of Defense announced a $30 million award for the company to develop and supply components for U.S. Space Force, said Agile CEO Chris Pearson.
Hickenlooper said Agile’s advances in technology and acceleration in manufacturing improve national security.
Mayor Dave Woodruff said Agile’s recent expansion marks an extraordinary success story for Durango.
“The impact of Agile goes well beyond the walls of this facility,” he said. “It is found in the careers being built here, in the local business supported by those employees, and in the families who call Durango home because of the opportunities Agile has created.”
The company was originally founded by Daudi Barnes, a propulsion scientist, who came to Durango for its beauty, Cuthbertson said.
The COO said Durango’s location is a draw for engineers.
“They want to come live in the mountains and they want to make rocket engines,” Cuthbertson said. “... We’re now one of the top rocket engine companies in the U.S.”
Within the next three to four years, Agile plans to grow to 400 employees, Pearson said.
A lot of the rocket components are created using “additive manufacturing,” which is 3D printing for metal. The printed components are shipped to Durango, where engineers refine the components to a final stage. The printed metal is dull, with a rough surface, whereas the metal added during refinement is shiny, said Morgan Cheng, manufacturing engineer.
The additive printing is done in a facility in Pennsylvania, but with the expansion, Agile is bringing the manufacturing to a facility in Three Springs, Cuthbertson said.
Schaa said there is also an Agile manufacturing facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Engineers in Durango develop the prototypes – or “do the hard stuff” – and if prototypes can turn into repeatable products, the Tulsa facility helps for larger-scale production.
In the manufacturing tour, Cheng showed off many of the different stages of prototypes and final products manufactured.
Agile developed a non-slosh fuel tank for spacecraft. There is a piston inside the tank that moves and takes up more space as the fuel is used. This prevents fuel from sloshing around in empty space while spacecraft are in motion. These fuel tanks will hopefully become an “off the shelf” product, Cheng said.
She said manufacturing engineers at Agile are able to develop prototypes and products more quickly because they can collaborate at the same location in Durango.
There are precise and tight tolerances for the components Agile develops.
“We’re not exploding anything we’re not meaning to explode,” Cheng said.
Upon hearing of a bid for a Small Business Association funding award, two engineers came up with an idea in 24 hours for a mobile clean room. After pitching the idea, Agile won the funding to build it, Schaa said.
Before shipping off products to customers, all of the components must be sterilized in a “clean room.”
Agile’s new mobile clean room is a shipping container with inflatable walls attached. When it is inflated, it expands to allow large-scale manufacturing, and then can deflate and be moved like a mobile shipping container.
The development of these prototypes and new engine components help customers achieve feats in space. Agile rocket parts have helped land cargo on the moon used to construct a lunar astronaut base, deliver cargo to the International Space Station and defend national security space assets, Pearson said.
“Our national security space assets are to make sure our troops on the ground – our allies – we are defended,” he said. “It is a big force multiplier for us, and our adversaries actually know that.”
jrooney@durangoherald.com
