Transcripts

What You Missed On The Vector Episode 11: Puerto Rican Space Value Chain

Written by: Morsiell Dormu

In this dynamic episode of The Vector, host Kelli Kedis Ogborn speaks with Gail Nolan, CEO of the Puerto Rico 5G Zone + Blockchain Ignition Lab, about Puerto Rico’s emerging space economy, its strengths in aerospace, logistics, and manufacturing, and the development of a spaceport on the island. With a background in economic development, strategy, and technology transfer, Nolan shares insights on how Puerto Rico is positioning itself as a key player in the global space industry.

Key Highlights Include:

Puerto Rico’s Aerospace and Advanced Manufacturing Legacy

  • Puerto Rico is the leading U.S. producer of pharmaceuticals and medical devices, a highly regulated, compliance-driven industry that naturally aligns with aerospace manufacturing.
  • The island’s history in high-precision manufacturing, logistics, and telecommunications provides a strong foundation for space-related industries.
  • Major aerospace companies, including Honeywell, already have established operations in Puerto Rico.

The Role of Microgravity and Space Research

  • The pharmaceutical and medical device industries are increasingly exploring space-based research in microgravity and radiation environments.
  • Experiments have shown that drug effectiveness, protein layering, and biomedical device manufacturing can improve in space due to the absence of gravity and exposure to radiation.
  • Biotech and agriculture applications are also growing, including studies on seed resilience and increased crop yields after space exposure.

Building a Spaceport in Puerto Rico

  • The proposed spaceport is located at the former Roosevelt Roads Naval Base, an 8,000-acre site with an existing airport and second-longest runway in the Caribbean.
  • Phase 1: Focus on horizontal launch and landing with potential for vertical launch based on demand.
  • Strategic location benefits: Eastward launch capability, proximity to the equator, and military-grade infrastructure that minimizes development costs.
  • The spaceport development is attracting global partners, with over 25 companies expressing interest in setting up operations.

Public-Private Partnerships and Economic Growth

  • The government of Puerto Rico is actively supporting the spaceport through the Council for Aerospace and Aeronautics Industry, ensuring it benefits the entire island economy.
  • The Puerto Rico 5G Zone is playing a critical role in cybersecurity, space-ground communications, and secure data transmission, enhancing the spaceport’s capabilities.
  • The project aims to bring back talent from the Puerto Rican diaspora, ensuring local workforce development and sustainable job creation.

Expanding Puerto Rico’s Role in the Space Economy

  • Point-to-point logistics using suborbital or hypersonic flight is an emerging opportunity that aligns with Puerto Rico’s expertise in global logistics.
  • The spaceport is envisioned as a technology hub, integrating research labs, data centers, and aerospace training facilities.
  • The intersection of AI, blockchain, and space technologies is being explored to enhance security, automation, and operational efficiency.

This episode sheds light on Puerto Rico’s growing role in the space economy, leveraging its strengths in manufacturing, logistics, and telecommunications to drive innovation and economic growth. With the spaceport poised to become a major aerospace hub, Puerto Rico is set to make a significant impact on the future of commercial space activities and global space logistics.

 

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Episode Transcript:

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Hello everyone and welcome to the Vector where we discuss topics, trends, and insights, shaping and driving the global space ecosystem. I am your host Kelli Kedis Ogborn, and today is all about Puerto Rico and their space ecosystem and value chain from research to industry. Unfortunately, Joel Piza-Batiz was not able to join us today, but we are in more competent hands with Gail Towers Nolan, who is the CEO of the Puerto Rico 5G Zone Blockchain Ignition Lab, which is a nonprofit zero trust architecture secured research laboratory that is focused on applied research regarding telecommunication-based technologies. She was previously the chief strategy officer at Invest Puerto Rico, where she managed asset identification and strategic business development. In 2023, she was appointed by the governor to serve as the chairperson of the infrastructure subcommittee of the Council for Aerospace and Aeronautics industry within Puerto Rico, and was also appointed that same year to be the president of the technology chapter of the Puerto Rico Manufacturers Association. She is a certified economic developer through the International Economic Development Agency and Council, and she has won national recognition awards for innovative development projects. Notably in 2016, she served as the core development partner for a pilot program between NASA and the Economic Development Administration on a really cooperative agreement to engage regional industry in technology transfer projects from NASA and she has also held public office on a local level. Gail, thank you so much for joining me today.

Gail Towers Nolan:

Thank you so much, Kelli. It’s always funny when people do your intro that it sounds like a mouthful.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Yeah, well, and it’s always interesting and kind of strange to hear about yourself and you’re like, oh yeah, I did all those things. Let, let’s set it up and run with it. But I’m really excited to talk to you today because given your background, and that was just an abbreviated version, you have really engaged in the Puerto Rican development ecosystem from so many different levels, right? From civil service, private investment, economic development, and I think that’s a really good way to couch this because the more that I learn about Puerto Rico, the more that I talk to you. It really is this, there’s this dynamism within the island about what’s happening within the space ecosystem that I don’t think a lot of people know or are able to fully grasp how it can impact them within their space business. And so I’m really looking forward to diving in with you.

Gail Towers Nolan:

Well, thank you, and I’m excited for this conversation. I think there are so many perceptions about Puerto Rico that we need to shift significantly and make people more aware of some of the dramatic things that have happened on the island, not just recently, but in the last 60 years.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Oh, absolutely. Well, and to start, I’d love for you to give us a high level idea about what that ecosystem looks like, because as I mentioned, it’s very multifaceted, it is complex, and it does stretch everywhere from academia to established businesses and also public and private. So could you let us know a bit about how do these entities work together and what is your role within that?

Gail Towers Nolan:

Sure. So one, again, talking about perceptions and changing the narrative about Puerto Rico, people don’t realize, and when I went to Puerto Rico about five years ago, and I would say to people, Puerto Rico is the number one producer of pharmaceutical and medical device goods in the us like twice the next nearest state that is producing. And that’s a big deal because that kind of manufacturing is very high skill, high compliance oriented, and so it’s endemic within the entire population of Puerto Rico. That concept of not just manufacturing, but sterile environment manufacturing, again, high compliance, critical life manufacturing. And so it was a really natural transition for the island about 10 years ago to look at other life critical manufacturing opportunities, which emerged from an aerospace industry perspective. And so we’re coupling that now with this really great historic cultural understanding of a manufacturing concept and then we’re expanding it to be multi-sector. And then because of the geographic location of Puerto Rico being close to the equator, as the space industry has started to really take off, no pun intended, maybe the island just is a natural place to develop that industry. So we’ve done a lot of projections on that and data just points to strengths in every area that we think really supports national security and space industry growth on an international level.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Well, and I think that’s such a great point to illuminate about the manufacturing strength and this heritage within the island of doing really precise, I would say components along even that value chain. Because a lot of people when they think about the space ecosystem, they don’t necessarily realize that they have these very local industries that are driving growth within the space ecosystem that they can leverage and then iterate upon to create better processes, better technologies, better capabilities, as opposed to reinventing the wheel and thinking that they don’t have anything to stand on. And because you had this heritage, this ecosystem has sort of grown organically and it continues to grow and also allow this baseline of new capabilities to come about.

Gail Towers Nolan:

Exactly. And in fact, so that human capital piece is so important, and this is kind of where the disaster of Maria comes in as well, is because the space industry requires really high levels of critical intelligent infrastructure in order to support a localized industry, as does the pharmaceutical industry. The pharmaceutical and medical device industry actually survived the hurricane quite well. We had plants that major multinational companies that lost one shift of production during Hurricane Maria. And so a lot of the things we see on the news were very rural areas, which was tragic that it took so long to get some of the utilities back. But from an economic driver perspective, the disruption was minimal. However, that event gives us the chance to kind of redesign our critical intelligent infrastructure to really maximize some of the assets on the island. I just think

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

That speaks to the resiliency of the Puerto Rican spirit and also the industries, right, that it is a good opportunity to be able to locate efficiencies and be able to maximize them, but not really lose that economic critical infrastructure. And what other industries, so we talked about manufacturing and we talked about pharmaceuticals, which certainly are going to be extremely critical in opening up a lot of opportunity in space, and particularly because as we talk about commercialization in low earth orbit, and as we talk about the lunar economy, I truly believe that technologically we will get there. It’s the human piece that’s necessary to scale and sustain. And that really does come down to space medicine, pharmaceuticals, infrastructure, like taking earth out of the equation. And so that industry is going to be increasingly relevant. But I also know that there’s some pretty established other industries within Puerto Rico and companies that really play into the space ecosystem. So could you touch upon what some of those are as well?

Gail Towers Nolan:

So I would say the two top ones that come to mind is logistics and Puerto Rico being an island, of course, logistics is a critical element. And again, the island has a very high location quotient in terms of concentration of expertise in logistics. And so we’re seeing the potentiality for future point to point logistics from the island of Puerto Rico. Oh, that’s great. Using both suborbital or potentially hypersonic flight as a real opportunity and leveraging that historic expertise in a new way. And then the telecommunications industry in Puerto Rico has always been very strong and some large national and multinational corporations, names that we’ve recognized have been founded on the island of Puerto Rico additionally, and again, going back into the aerospace Honeywell, which has significant operations on the island and very focused on the space side of their business operations. So again, there’s a lot of things that have emerged that now that we’re at this moment of saying, okay, it’s time to look at the spaceport.

And we were approached by professionals within that industry about considering doing the spaceport. And as we started looking at all of the intersections, and so you mentioned microgravity, it’s very important to the pharmaceutical industry. I think about a third of the experiments on the International Space Station are pharmaceutically sponsored, but it’s also important to medical device because of the hardening elements that you can get in space. So it’s not just the microgravity, it’s the radiation. And there are other unknown elements in space that really help. And so I like to cite two different examples if I could use this time. But one would be there’s a company that manufactures artificial retinas and there success rate when they’re manufactured on earth is about 25%. And the reason is because it’s about layering various layers of protein one on top of the other. And so there’s a sedimentation issue with it.

So when you’re in space and there’s no gravity, you can perfectly layer each of those layers for that artificial retina, and they’re 100% have a significantly higher, like a hundred percent or slightly below success rate. And so the idea of manufacturing in space sounds very science fiction, but it’s not. It’s really important because of that control. And then on the flip side, from a drug perspective, and many people heard this, that there was an elementary school that they were trying to do an experiment in partnership with the International Space station, and one of the boys had a severe allergy in the class. And so they put in their experiment payload, they an EpiPen. And it was the first time that we discovered as scientists that EpiPens are ruined. In fact, they’re lethally toxic once they go into space in return. And so that’s important to know as we start talking about the future of space.

So all of these things are really important and it ties together a number of different industries. So we look at the space port as a space hub, so it’s more than just a physical infrastructure. It opens up a new intersection of various industries that we can then differentiate ourselves from other places, not just in the US but globally. So that’s what we’re always looking for. So when you look at the pharmaceutical and the bioscience industry, there’s a lot of other places like the research triangle, Boston San Diego where there’s strengths, but you combine that with the microgravity and the launch potential in Puerto Rico, and it becomes a unique differentiator for the island to be able to do that. And then I’d be a remiss in my role as the CEO of the 5G Zone, not to note that Puerto Rico is also, so we have a research laboratory, in fact a system of research laboratories on top of a research platform at the intersection of foreign, domestic, terrestrial, non-terrestrial cooperative and non-cooperative networks.

And what is important about that is it’s the only place because Puerto Rico is both part of the US and it has a lot of international qualities, jurisdictionally, it’s the only place on US soil where you can do research on those intersections. And where that’s important is in cybersecurity development as you’re bouncing in terrestrial and non-terrestrial. Terrestrial is fiber optics, non-terrestrial is satellite. We’re working with a new company that’s doing space to ground laser communications. And so all of these things are really important, but all of these things then require security research to make sure that we’re securing the information and data that’s being transmitted.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

You gave me so many things that I want to pull threads on, so this is wonderful. So let’s start. I want to dig a bit more into the spaceport primarily because what I think is interesting about what you illuminated is partially when I introduced what you do and introduce Puerto Rico, I was talking about this value chain of people. We go from academia to industry, but what you just described is also this value chain of upstream, downstream capabilities that really have earthbound terrestrial impacts, but also commercial opportunities in space. And one of the things that I think is very exciting, which when you were talking about microgravity is being able to exploit the conditions of space, like you said, for use on earth, to give better practices, procedures that non-space companies can utilize in their day-to-day, but it still has a heritage to space. And when you talk about the EpiPen, what I actually learned recently, which I found fascinating, is your body also interacts with pharmaceuticals and medicine in a different way when you’re in space because gravity and the way that our inflammation system and everything interacts, that’s how pharmaceuticals are made. But when you’re in different weightless environments, your body’s not going to absorb nutrients the same, it’s not going to interact the same. And so it really is creating this research storyboard of what needs to be examined, but also creating a paradigm for a lot of companies to figure out, okay, now we need to expand into these different eventualities to figure out how to do it.

Gail Towers Nolan:

Right. No, absolutely. And I will say at the first meeting we had for the Governor’s Council on Aerospace and Aeronautics in Puerto Rico, which was really formed for the purpose of developing the story around the spaceport and the economic value attached to the space hub. And one of the secretaries that was at that meeting made the comment that because it’s being publicly supported, it has to engage the entire population of Puerto Rico as well. And so in our messaging, we had to be really conscientious of looking at how does this enhance the everyday life of people on the island of Puerto Rico

So that they understand the value. And so you just mentioned several really important things. One of the other things in Puerto Rico is Puerto Rico until just recently, and in fact the number, the percentage is quite high, but until very recently, 87% of the world’s seeds, and this goes back to logistics strengths, went transferred through the island of Puerto Rico. It was the global hub for the majority of worldwide seeds that were being sent to farmers. The reason that’s important is in India, they recently did a study where they sent up coriander seeds into space and they did nothing to them. They sent them up, they retrieved them back on earth and planted those seeds and their yield was 30 to 40% higher. So we are looking at opportunities for a huge grand challenge solutions using space, world, hunger and health and human safety and communications. And so that’s the story we want to really tell in Puerto Rico is that this is for everybody and everybody’s a beneficiary of the development work that’s being done now in space.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Oh, absolutely. The economic development and impact argument and conversation is probably the most critical one because we want to create a society that understands why we are doing hard things in space, why we are pushing for exploration. And it’s not just a pipe dream to see if we can do it. There’s actually real tangible ripple effects that are going to benefit humanity in just ways that we don’t know yet. But we need to be able to take the risk to see what that looks like.

Gail Towers Nolan:

Right. Well, like I said, right now in the industry, the two primary areas of recognition are microgravity and radiation, but there could be things that are not present on earth that we’re not even aware of that are impacting things as they go into space. And so that research to understand that is really critical.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

No, absolutely. And so with the spaceport that Puerto Rico is developing, can you tell me a little bit about what the intention is, like physicality, how it’s going to interact from this public private partnership and then what the timeline is?

Gail Towers Nolan:

Sure. And again, for the audience that doesn’t know, so Puerto Rico in the location where the space port is being proposed and developed is a vacated naval base previously called Roosevelt Roads. It’s about 8,000 acres on the east coast of the island of Puerto Rico and was closed about 10, 12 years ago. And so that is basically a brack and it needs redevelopment. It still has a fully functional airport that is the second longest airport in the Caribbean. And ironically, the first longest airport in the Caribbean is also in Puerto Rico on the northwest corner of the island. That was a air force base. But because of the type of infrastructure necessary for a military base, it kind of has put us well ahead. We’re not building a spaceport in a greenfield.

We have real serious infrastructure that we can transition and an operating airport and runway. And so our first approach is going to be towards horizontal launch and land vehicles, but we are in the process of evaluating and through our RFP process, we’ve challenged the respondents to the RFP to look at the vertical launch potentiality because as an, in fact, at the Space Symposium, we had a great conversation with General Steven Purdy who commented on how important it would be to have east facing vertical launches off the island of Puerto Rico. It was one of my more moments at the Space Symposium, which it’s such an exciting place that that’s a big statement to make, but when General Purdy and his aid were taking their phones out and looking at the map to identify where the launch trajectory would be, that’s amazing. So that’s where it’s going to be the timeline.

Now, the RFP was launched in February of this year. There were initially, and this is all public knowledge, there were initially five respondents to that RFP. And one of the requests in the first session of questioning was, can we see the other entities who are proposers so we can potentially work on aligning our activities together so that we’re not choosing one or the other, we’re choosing the optimal global partnership that will maximize this location. So the last that I heard, and I am not involved in the RFP designation, we have done four extensions of the deadline and the extensions have all been related to requests by the proposers to develop stronger partnerships with the other proposers. It’s my understanding that they’ve all kind of started to merge their plan so that each will have a different area. And as you know, space is, I mean, again, not to space is vast.

We all know that the industry is vast, but it’s a small community at the same time. And so it’s really logical to look for those collaborative opportunities at this stage. And so that’s where we’re at with it, the submission FAA for the license for the horizontal launch and land, we would expect to hear back on that in May of 2024. I just received a call from one of our business development directors yesterday who was saying, we’ve got companies that are interested in launch capabilities in 2025, the fall of 2025, is that even feasible? I was like, yeah, I think it is. And his next question was, well, when would entities be setting up operations? And I said, well, now they’re not going to wait until there’s

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Months. Yeah, that is not a six months prior where you set up operations that you need a runway, pun intended.

Gail Towers Nolan:

Yes, exactly. And so there is that challenge of explaining that to people that this isn’t a future on speculation type of an activity. It’s just like building up a real estate project. You want to make sure that you have significant lease agreements going in and the entities that are there have to design based on what is two years out. And so we’re at the perfect place right now to receive. And again, what I’ve been told is there are numerous, through the various partners that have interest, and sorry, I’m just going to step back for a second. So the RFP, which was very broad, was for development operations management, maintenance, business development. And so it’s the kind of RFP structure that calls for expertise in different areas. And so it’s my understanding that there are already about 25 companies that have significant interest in that development. And so I think that’s the tipping point to say now it makes sense. So you have to look at it both. It is just a real estate project, but it’s also an economic development driver.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

No, absolutely. I mean, real estate always has to come first because we live in a physical world, so you have to have a physical place to be able to do the things. And then the businesses will come to questions on that actually. So are a lot of the companies and the businesses that are looking to respond, are they already in within Puerto Rico or are they going to be coming to Puerto Rico?

Gail Towers Nolan:

Primarily coming to Puerto Rico. And we have companies, and I have to sometimes be cautious about how I frame this from a non-disclosure perspective, but we have companies with, I’ll just give an example. One company that is actually looking at starting three separate companies, and it’s kind of the strategy is brilliant because company number one is basically a workforce skill development from an engineering perspective, custom engineering, the second company would be custom component part manufacturing. And the third company is a ultimate. And we know that this doesn’t exist yet, but we know somebody who has a plan for it, a fully launch and a horizontal launch and land vehicle for point-to-point logistics. So again, anytime you do anything in this particular sector, you really have to look, and I loved your analogy of the runway, it’s a longer runway than other sectors, but the the risk reward profile is so much greater as well. And there’s a limited number of places where you can do this kind of operation Well, and so we’re really excited that we’re able to leverage those assets in Puerto Rico. And again, not just for Puerto Rico, but for the country as a whole and the industry internationally.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Absolutely. And I’m going to pull in a concept from the chat. You have sparked a lot of discussion, which is fantastic, and I think it dovetails really on what we’re talking about. So this attracting new talent and new economic engines to the island, but how do you work to then maximize the space expertise that already exists within the island? So some of the conversation that’s happening is about how do you recruit the workforce that already exists? How do you integrate them? And then how do you actually keep that talent on the island?

Gail Towers Nolan:

And this is a really important issue for us. There isn’t a conversation, an economic conversation we don’t have where we don’t talk about the diaspora and how do we bring back all the talent? Because when I first went to the island, I would kind of tongue in cheek say the best, the biggest export from the island is the incredible talent that’s developed here, and that has to stop and everybody’s in agreement on that, but there’s some complexity to that. So how do we make it attractive from a wage perspective, from a lifestyle perspective, from a security perspective for those families to move back to the island where there have been some incidents of challenge in the last five years. And I just want to right here, interject one point about the hurricane being a data person, we did an analysis after Hurricane Maria and Puerto Rico isn’t even in the top 50 locations in the US for impacts from hurricanes.

It’s a small island. The probability of having a hit from a hurricane is small. They’ve had a couple that are very noteworthy, but from an overall risk level, it’s less than much of the East Coast and Panhandle and Texas area. So we want to make sure we always give that message. But going back to the diaspora and the talent, we’ve started a number of projects to engage them back on the island. And it’s one of the things that we really promote to these companies is I have done work all over the country and I’ve never seen such a strong sense of loyalty of diaspora. So I came from Wisconsin, and people who are raised in Wisconsin don’t necessarily, when they leave to take a job somewhere else, they don’t necessarily say, I’m only taking this for the time being because my goal is to go back to Wisconsin. But in Puerto Rico, that’s the majority opinion of the diaspora is they’re constantly looking for that pathway. And so we’re constantly working to develop that. And again, with opportunities with the Air Force research lab and defense innovation unit of that organization, how do we create opportunities that makes them not just employees, but also gives them opportunities to be innovators? I think we do have a very high level of technical skillset. You do. You do.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

And I have another concept from the chat I want to pull in and then it builds into a broader question. So some of the folks in here are wondering how they can find out about, well, so you talked about the RFP, this is being public knowledge, but has it been announced which companies are doing this yet? Because they’re also curious about potentially partnering and being able to bring in what their firms and their skill sets are?

Gail Towers Nolan:

Sure. So you can go to the Ports authority website and there’s a page for RFPs. And in that is there are seven of them related to the SA spaceport. And in that is the first the document that has the first q and a response publicly, and that lists the five entities who are the original respondents from a letter of intent perspective.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

That’s great. And I’m sure that as it progresses, more and more information will come out. And the question that I have just about the Spaceport is the whole ecosystem around it because I’ve seen different designs where some of them are just launched, but whenever you just start with launch, it always builds the sustaining entities around it. So is the intent to also have microgravity research labs and other entities beyond launch, so really creating a sustainable ecosystem for the totality of space.

Gail Towers Nolan:

Exactly.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

And

Gail Towers Nolan:

So again, going back to my hat at the 5G Zone, we are looking at our partner hub Advanced networks has the fiber optic and submarine cable connectivity, the majority of that on the island of Puerto Rico, they have a significant data center in the Puerto Rico, San Juan area around the airport. We are looking at putting a second facility in Umca, which is right next to where the spaceport would be and have it be really customized for the types of companies that would engage on that level. So it would have not just our zero trust architecture lab, it would have an industry facing skiff. It would be designed with secure training rooms and meeting rooms and hot desks for visiting personnel from various companies that would utilize that. So we’re really trying to think, number one, how do we create the infrastructure to attract the companies that you’re talking about? And then how do we look at the right intersections within those companies for the value proposition? And we’re actually working on an EDA tech hub proposal right now to look at what are the enabling technologies and how do we look at the intersection of companies that Puerto Rico is just the right place for. So again, we’re not doing a scattershot, it’s not a shotgun approach. We really want to be precise in what we bring to the island. We want them to be successful.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Absolutely. And it really does speak to that concept of creating the pipeline. So there’s opportunity now there’s opportunities in the future. And to your point about if you’re going to launch in 2025, you don’t start six months before, it’s the same thing with this pipeline because understanding where the ecosystem is going and who you need to pull in and train now and get their capabilities to a point of fruition so they can take advantage of opportunities is also part of the strategy. It just seems a bit less tangible, but it’s just as critical.

Gail Towers Nolan:

It is absolutely critical. And so what we’re working on now with several organizations, in fact, there’s a new entity on the island, the Sustainable Development Council, and the idea is to pull together all of us as partners so that because it’s a big lift for any one entity to do, but each of us will have a specialty and we’ll all work together to make sure that we’re coordinating those elements that include workforce development and apprenticeships. And

It’s one of the areas actually that probably our next big initiative is going to be around workforce because we want to make sure that we’re doing, and the whole global nature of education and workforce training has shifted a little bit, so the less formal curriculums to certification and very specific technology knowledge. And so we’re looking at creating programs to connect the actual skill to the equipment, to the industry. And looking at, we did a study with University of Michigan last year where we looked at the growth industries in Puerto Rico and identified critical technology enabling technologies that our current next and future so that we know what kind of equipment and capabilities each of these companies need to be successful. So again, now it’s just a matter of sorting it out.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

And I love that you’re having that focus because often it, it’s screening for aptitude and it’s also reskilling and upskilling in a lot of ways because I think that there are so many transferable skills and interests, but the paths to what that looks like in the current ecosystem aren’t evidently clear. However, we can get people there. We just need them to self-select in and then figure out how to build. And when you look at really connecting the island to the global space ecosystem, we touched upon some of these throughout the discussion, but what really are the challenges and opportunities that you see? So we talked about this workforce pipeline. We talked about you’re going to have physical infrastructure, which is fantastic. You talked about the optics problem. Are there any others that you see are impediments that you’re working around?

Gail Towers Nolan:

So I think that, and if I could frame this as an impediment, that we have a lot of assets and there’s a lot, and it’s complex to create an environment that makes everybody want to come back at the same time. And there’s challenges around that. And so it’s really making sure that we address the complexity of the structure. And it’s no different in Puerto Rico than anywhere else. I don’t want to give the impression that Puerto Rico is more complicated. It’s complicated anywhere. And I’ll even, again, I’ll use the example of having worked with a aerospace company in another part of the country as I was doing consulting work for them. And they told me, this was about five years ago, and they said five years ago we would hire out of 20 new hires, 18 of them would be aerospace engineers, and two would be computer science engineers. And now it’s flipped. 18 are computer science engineers and two are aerospace engineers. And so two things that they needed is they said, we really need to be able to focus because computer science doesn’t teach specialization from a sector perspective.

And so in you’re an aerospace or space, even when we hire highly qualified candidates, it takes them 18 months to learn the uniqueness of FA regulations as it relates to communication technologies and embedded integrated systems. So they were wanting support from that perspective, how do we give them exposure? And so this is where apprenticeships will come in. The second piece that they felt was they were in their region. They were one of the only aerospace companies and they had maxed out in their region, the engineering talent. And so they were trying to recruit people to move to that location. And they said, it’s very hard to recruit somebody to move to a location if you’re the only game in town in that sector because they know that if they come and it doesn’t work out, they’re going to have to move again. And so what they wanted to do is let’s create critical mass around skillset. And so I would say that’s our challenge right now is to demonstrate how skill sets apply to various industries so that people not only have clusters within the sector that they desire to work in, but that there is ease in going from one sector to another. So skills that would transfer from the medical device industry where they’re doing very fine manufacturing, micro manufacturing of components. And that is really important in space too. So that’s where we’re at now. And I would say that’s the complexity is figuring out how to optimize all of that.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

And to your point, with all of the opportunities proliferating in space, either for new technologies that are going to go up in, I’m particularly talking about low earth orbit, really where people are looking right now and sis lunar. But you are starting to see this hyper specialization in terms of what industry you’re going into, whether it’s I, it’s sar, whether it’s satellites, but there are these overarching skills that you can train students at a younger age or even at a young professional or mid-career, right? You can always retool and re-skill. But I think often people then don’t understand what that skill goes toward because a lot of times within these verticals as space, we still think of the things that have always been dominant. We think of launch, we think of satellites, we think of astronauts, and we don’t realize the broader body of opportunity. And I think you painted it well by talking about pharmaceuticals, by talking about microgravity, by showing that a lot of these skill sets and technologies are transferable. And then you could create a whole business on earth that isn’t necessarily direct to space, but utilizing this. So I’m really excited to see how this folds out and what you come up with.

Gail Towers Nolan:

Well, and we are too. And in fact we’ve had a lot of fun brainstorming around some of the ideas and one of two of the more fun concepts. We were working with some individuals who had contacts at Buck D, the rum producer. And we were saying, really, it’s not farfetched to think because it’s based on sugarcane and going back to the coriander study, how does this impact distillation is a chemical process and how do the yeast respond differently? And so he said, wouldn’t it be fun to have this rum is out of this world because rum is very iconic to Puerto Rico.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Oh, absolutely. So there actually was a company out of Bordeaux, France that sent 12 bottles of wine to the International Space Station, and they matured it for a year primarily to see how radiation and the lack of gravity affected the wine from a cellular level. And when they brought it down, they did a taste test between 30 aged. And the one year, obviously it’s different, the dip profiles were different, but it was still good. And so that is definitely an area as well because hospitality, there was a company that DoubleTree Hotel, the United States chain, they shot some their, they baked some of their infamous cookies in an oven, in a nano rack satellite to see baked space cookies. So I completely agree that there are really creative ways that you can also exploit space for use on earth, but also in these industries that are adjacent but relevant.

Gail Towers Nolan:

Right? And in fact, the woman who was our contact at Bacardi, she said her number one thing was that she’s the smallest investor in the International Space Station, just on a personal level. She had just was interested in it, but she currently works for a company that does event management, so musical concerts. And so she was like, could we maybe propose for your grant program sending instruments into space and would that fit? And so again, as we started brainstorming, we’re like, well, noise is a huge issue from a payload perspective and a payload processing perspective. And so understanding how noise reacts in space actually would be something that’d be interesting. So again, it’s not necessarily music in space, but it’s how does noise, what’s the impacts and vibration related to noise? But anyways,

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

I think it’s fantastic. I mean, it’s one of those where the sky is no longer the limit. It’s infinite possibilities. And I really want to thank you for this conversation. It has been fascinating. I’ve personally learned a lot. The chat is exploding, so you have definitely sparked a lot of excitement and interest within the island and other people watching. So Gail, thank you so much for sharing your time and expertise with us.

Gail Towers Nolan:

Thank you. And I would be remiss to not mention our partner, rhodium Scientific, who’s doing a lot of the microgravity payload processing for us on the eyelid and a big part of our grant program. So please feel free to reach out. We do have a grant program for microgravity. We’re doing a lot of things and there’s places for people to get involved.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Rhodium is fantastic, the work that they do, and they are just lovely, lovely people. So I’m glad that you plugged them.

Gail Towers Nolan:

Yes, yes.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn:

Well thank you again Gail, and to all of our viewers, thank you for watching. Thank you for engaging and remember that there is a place for everyone in the future space ecosystem. We’ll see you on future vector conversations. Have a good day. Bye.



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