New Austin rocket lab launches to support growing space sector

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.”