Space: The Northern Frontier

So, you want to build a rocketship?

-Lines like these are sprinkled across advertisements during the 1960s for everything from whiskey to sprinkler manufacturers, painting themselves as part of a brighter future.  So, with expectations 50 years ago set so high, in many respects the 21st Century to them would be something of a disappointment.

However, we’re starting to rise to the challenge of our fathers’ imaginations, and for those with starry-eyed dreams of spacecraft shipyards and a future on orbit, Frontier Astronautics of Chugwater, Wyoming may be your answer.

Wyoming Atlas-E silo, ca. 1960s. Credit: Frontier Astronautics

Utilizing a converted Atlas-E missile silo, the young, first-of-its-kind corporate space development company offers a full spectrum of spacecraft development services and products, from indoor and outdoor rocket engine test areas, vehicle design and assembly services, onsite cranes, a machine shop and storage space, and they even produce commercial quantities of rocket-grade hydrogen peroxide onsite.  To top it off, they’re in the process of applying for an official FAA space launch site license, making them the second private spaceport in the country (if approved).

Check them out.  Tell your friends.  Keep your rocket dreams alive, or perhaps let your imagination take flight for the first time.  This place is real.

I know in my bones that it’s outfits like these that will change the space game forever.