The Launch Company is a company I founded officially in 2019 that bootstrapped hardware to space from Alaska, which (I believe) was a first. We grew fast, servicing all the best new space companies around the US with flight hardware, ground systems, and expertise. In 2021 I sold the company, and in summer of 2023 I fully exited.

What can I say? Building a company was wild. It was simultaneously a ton of fun, a huge disappointment, an attempt to rewrite the culture around launching rockets, and a bold demonstration to fellow Alaskans that anything is possible up here. Pretty good for a company borne from a Maslowian desire to put diapers on my then-infant child and food on my table

In the fall of 2018, I got a mysterious phone call from someone who’d just toured the Kodiak Launch Site and had a four-hour layover in Anchorage. He invited me to dinner and laid out the rough edge of what became the DLC: a competition between small satellite launchers to put up two satellites within 30-days of each other, with only 24 hours of notice, at multiple sites around the country. He asked if I wanted to join the government team to prep launch pads around the country for include and evaluate rocket companies for technical readiness. I was in.

After the SpaceX barge, I moved home to Alaska and started a drone service business, based on the experience I gained flying UAVs on barge missions. I quickly found myself in need of money, as the business didn’t exactly take off (pun).

Meanwhile, SpaceX had around 4 million pounds of leftover Space Shuttle tower rotting in the sea breeze on their crown jewel launch pad at LC-39A, and they needed it gone.

I called the only person I knew crazier than me — Lee Dragna, the eponymous proprietor and motive force behind LAD Services — to see if he had any ideas. He did. A month later, we started tearing down the tower at 10% the cost of the next nearest competing bid.

How did we do it? With cables, Cajuns, and most of a plan.

I initially joined the SpaceX landing barge project on an 8-week contract to help “get things on track.” I had recently left SpaceX Vandy, moved to Seattle, and was looking for something to do. One year later, I woke up in a hotel room along a freeway in Jacksonville, Florida divorced, living out of a suitcase, and averaging 4 hours of sleep a night.

I joined SpaceX in 2012 straight out of graduate school as a “Responsible Engineer” in charge of the ground TVC (thrust vector control) and acoustic water systems.

By the time I left two years later, I was the Lead Engineer, having led the field team in preparing the Falcon 9 for launch on the pad; the leader of the Red Team, a small team of technicians in charge of fixing any issues during the launch campaign; as well as responsible engineer for a handful more ground systems including RP-1 fuel and high-pressure nitrogen.