Photo: Scaled Composites
The burgeoning private space industry continues to grow and based on hiring needs, there is more growth on the horizon. Three of the leaders representing both commercial orbital and sub-orbital missions have busy human resource departments trying fill dozens of openings.
Scaled Composites, the company designing, building and testing Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo even produced a recruiting video trying to lure engineers to the Mojave Desert. Another southern California company, SpaceX has pages of hiring needs as the company prepares to begin a busy launch schedule over the next several years. And industry veteran Orbital continues to add plenty of engineers to its ranks every month.
SpaceX recently announced more deals to launch satellites using its Falcon 9 rocket. The Hawthorne, California based company had to reschedule its first planned flight to the International Space Station which was suppose to happen earlier this month, but has more than 40 launches on its schedule for the next several years. All of the activity is reflected on the company’s hiring page where dozens of positions are listed ranging from a few sales, HR and fiance positions, to dozens of engineer openings.
Founded by Elon Musk, SpaceX may soon follow some of the entrepreneur’s other companies with an IPO. Musk started SpaceX in 2002 after selling PayPal to Ebay. He told Bloomberg there is a good chance SpaceX could go public next year.
North of SpaceX headquarters in the Los Angeles basin, Mojave based Scaled Composites and its partner The Spaceship Company are also working hard to both build spaceships and hire the engineers needed to design and build the hardware.
Scaled Composites is expected to begin powered test flights of SpaceShipTwo later this year. The sub-orbital spacecraft will be built for Virgin Galactic just a few blocks away from Scaled at the Mojave Air & Space Port by The Spaceship Company. Scaled Composites released a video this month (below) highlighting the company’s long history of creative designs (aircraft, not videos).
In an effort to try and fill some of the vacancies, Virgin Galactic and The Spaceship Company are heading to the aerospace hotspot of Wichita, Kansas next month trying to attract talented engineers from some of the traditional aviation companies interested in a change of scenery.
Both SpaceX and Scaled Composites will be teaming up together on Paul Allen’s Stratolaunch project that will combine a SpaceX Dragon rocket with what will be the world’s largest airplane as the launch platform. We assume this means even more engineers needed in Mojave.
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