Expert: Companies look to outer space

By Don Shilling

Ohio needs to focus on growing its aerospace supply business, a speaker says.

YOUNGSTOWN — Outer space is providing plenty of real-world business opportunities, an official told a gathering Thursday.

At least a dozen billionaires, including Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, are investing in space projects, said Michael Heil, president of the Ohio Aeronautics Institute, at a presentation at the Youngstown Business Incubator.

Some are out to create rocket planes that will take tourists into space.

“One of these people will put together the right combination of materials that gives us affordable access to space,” Heil said.

Others are working to lower the cost of sending payloads into space. The cost of putting a 1-pound object into space is about the same cost as a pound of gold, but technology will bring that cost down, Heil said.

“If we don’t do it, the Chinese will do it,” Heil said. “Aerospace will join the list of shipbuilding, steel and other industries in which this country once had world leadership.”

Such space projects create business opportunities for companies in Ohio, he told about 15 industry and university officials from the area during the incubator’s Third Thursday program, which features discussion on product innovation.

Heil said Ohio was in a good position to contribute to space projects because of research done at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton and the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. Ohio is the only state with a major defense laboratory and a NASA research center.

The NASA center in Cleveland, for example, has lead responsibility for several systems involved in the agency’s plan to land astronauts on the moon by 2020.

Barb Ewing, a staffer with U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Niles, D-17th, asked Heil how small companies can take part in these efforts.

He said his agency can help companies make contacts as can the Air Force and NASA. He said, however, that companies need to have a special quality certification to work on such projects.

In addition to space work, the aerospace industry offers plenty of business opportunities because of the worldwide growth in airline travel, Heil said. Airlines will need 28,600 new airplanes by 2026, which will be a $2.8 trillion investment, he said.

Ohio is in a good position to take advantage of that growth, although he said he would like to see more coordination of the effort from state officials. He said Ohio is the second-leading supplier of components to Boeing.

One of the companies at the session is participating in that growth.

Fireline of Youngstown, which makes ceramic liners that are used in the making of jet engine parts, has added about 35 workers in the past six years and now employs about 100.

Robert Wimer, company president, said an expansion of Fireline’s Andrews Avenue plant is being considered because of the continued growth that’s expected. “Other people are seeing a downturn; we’re not,” he said.

shilling@vindy.com