The program, still in its infancy, will help students from Austin Community College, and other schools, prepare for future space industry jobs.
SWIFT, the Space Workforce Incubator for Texas, is opening its inaugural rocket lab at Hays Innovation Center for Advanced Manufacturing's East Austin facility. The partnership will train students to design and manufacture rockets and work with carbon composites.
With the Texas space industry continuing to expand, two organizations are partnering to open a new rocket lab in Austin. The Space Workforce Incubator for Texas — or SWIFT — and the Hayes Innovation Center for Advanced Manufacturing said they are launching their inaugural lab this fall at a 50,000-square-foot training and events facility in East Austin. It’s pairing advanced manufacturing with the space industry's needs, making the case that the two are inseparable.
“Space exploration cannot advance without advanced manufacturing, and the space,” the companies said in a joint statement about the partnership.
The program, still in development, will provide hands-on training to students from Austin Community College and other institutions. Participants will design, build and manufacture rockets and prototype aerospace components.
“This is about creating a launchpad for the next generation of Texas industry,” Innovation Center executive director Marcus Metzger said in a statement. “Rockets represent the pinnacle of advanced manufacturing, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in materials, design and automation. By launching the SWIFT Rocket Lab at our facility, we are not just building hardware; we are building a direct pipeline from the classroom to the cosmos, and cementing Texas’s role as a leader in both space and manufacturing.”
The Innovation Center, an economic and workforce development nonprofit, began work on its East Austin facility at at 6210 Quinn Luke Trail last year. The center serves as a co-working space for startups focused on areas like robotics and artificial intelligence. It also houses classrooms to support instruction and training in advanced manufacturing. Additionally, the facility is home to the headquarters of the SH 130 Municipal Management District, which was created by the state Legislature in 2015.
The new rocket lab is launching with the global space industry projected to grow into a $1.8 trillion market by 2035. The space and defense technology sector has become increasingly commercialized and buzzworthy, fueled in part by billionaire-led companies such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, as well as the successes of commercial space companies like Cedar Park-based Firefly Aerospace.
LAST MONTH: Cedar Park’s Firefly Aerospace soars to $9.8B valuation in trading debut SWIFT, a registered 501(c) (3) nonprofit, was formed last year in response to the rapidly evolving space industry and aims to support Texas aerospace companies through workforce training.
The rocket lab plans to collaborate with aerospace and advanced manufacturing companies in Texas to secure equipment and create training projects. It will also pursue funding and grant opportunities from entities such as the Texas Space Commission, which has allocated $126 million toward 22 projects, and federal agencies like NASA.
“This collaboration reflects our belief that space and advanced manufacturing must grow together,” Geoff Tudor, president of SWIFT, said in a release. “The SWIFT Rocket Lab at HICAM will provide hands-on experience blending design, fabrication and testing of supersonic rocket structures into one experience — exactly the vertical integration that space companies need as their competitive edge.”
AUSTIN (KXAN) — A new high-tech manufacturing center completed construction in east Austin. The Hayes Innovation Center for Advanced Manufacturing (HICAM) is a 50,000-square-foot facility aimed at fostering modern innovation and increasing workforce development in manufacturing.
HICAM is the economic and workforce development nonprofit behind the project.
The facility will serve as a co-working space for startups, as well as a training space for an Austin Community College program.
“We really are trying to be focused on workforce development, economic development, advanced manufacturing and people that needed an industrial space.” - Marc Spier, HICAM Board Member
The facility has industrial space, machinery and dedicated areas for prototype development and testing.
HICAM Board Member Marc Spier said they welcome companies, startups, educational institutions and others who focus on advanced manufacturing.
“HICAM is a not for profit. We’re not here to make money,” Spier said. “We’re not here to extract value. We are here to be a facilitator.”
Spier said they provide people with the space, equipment and resources needed to train or develop their own technology.
“If you’ve got robotics, if you’ve got additive manufacturing, even subtractive manufacturing, drones, anything that is pushing the envelope of where technology is,” Spier said. “You need industrial space? You got to be dirty or loud or need a loading dock? We’re here for you.”
The hope is to create a hub for groundbreaking manufacturing.
“We can get like minded people into a common space to learn from each other, collaborate with each other in a way that creates something magnificent,” Spier said.
The organization announced a partnership with Austin Community College (ACC) to expand the advanced manufacturing workforce training opportunities in the region.
The ACC program is led by Dr. Laura Marmolejo, Dean for Advanced Manufacturing.
“I hope that we could do a training for anyone who may be partnering with HICAM in other ways that we could help them develop whatever skills they need to develop their prototypes and whatever projects they’re working on,” Marmolejo said.
ACC’s Engineering Development Program (EDP) will train at the location. The program provides customized training for Tesla employees.
“I would love people to realize, this is a great industry to grow into, and there’s opportunities that didn’t exist in the past,” Marmolejo said.
Software may still be the king of Austin's tech and startup ecosystem. But robotics and advanced manufacturing is quickly catching up as the city's economy diversifies with the likes of Tesla Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and more than a dozen startups developing AI-powered robots, submarines and drones.
As the sector grows, a new collaboration is emerging this year that seeks to provide easier and cheaper access to high-tech manufacturing machines, coworking space for robotics startups and accelerator programs and educational certificate programs to help people launch new careers. The new initiative will be located in East Austin, just off of the State Highway 130 corridor and a few miles north of Tesla's electric vehicle factory. It's called the Hayes Innovation Center for Advanced Manufacturing, or HICAM.
HICAM's board is led by serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Spier, and the organization will be overseen by executive director Marcus Metzger, an artist and manufacturing leader who previously led a coworking and technology center called Future Space NYC in New York.
The center, which will include space for classrooms, events and coworking, is slated for an initial reveal in late March. Initially, the center aims to drum up applications from manufacturing and robotics startups that want to be located in the space or participate in its accelerator programs. HICAM has partnered with Capital Factory to help source startups.
HICAM also plans to team with several other local organizations to help develop an advanced manufacturing ecosystem, attract new companies to Austin and produce events and podcasts. "One of the primary ways that we can help de-risk these companies is by providing them with access to sub-market rates in a tiered step down fashion as they meet their revenue goals," Metzger said. "Eventually, we want to see them leave the nest and make room for the next cohort."
One of the center's top goals is workforce development, particularly for people living in East Austin. Metzger said HICAM has an initial goal of creating 150 jobs within the center's first three years. HICAM is also currently looking for educational partners to develop certificate programs. "Part of our workforce development is aimed at helping kids from economically diverse backgrounds gain access to the idea that they can work in advanced manufacturing, the idea that they can make things with their hands and develop a trade," Metzger said.
Meanwhile, there's a million square feet of light industrial development currently being built on neighboring properties, which could provide opportunities for some startups to move on from HICAM to their own offices nearby. "I think the next 10 years is going to be just a huge boom in the American manufacturing and industrial space," he said. "So we wanted to do an initiative to be a part of that."
