Gains cheered, pain feared for aerospace

BOULDER – Large public and private universities haven’t yet felt the major impacts of federal budget cuts known as sequestration – but they will soon, said Stein Sture, vice chancellor for research at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

Speaking as part of a panel on the aerospace industry at Wednesday’s Boulder Economic Summit at CU’s Wolf Law Building, Sture said those schools are projected to see about a $20 million cut in federal research money by the end of the year alone, about half of which will come from the aerospace and space science disciplines.

The private sector of the aerospace industry finds itself in a similar situation, according to Cary Ludtke, vice president and general manager of Ball Aerospace & Technology Corp.’s Operational Space strategic business unit.

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“We continue to grow,” Ludtke said of Ball. “We’re on track for another record year, be it 1 percent bigger than last year’s record. I don’t think we’ve seen the other foot fall on sequestration yet, though. We’re not immune to that.”

While the aerospace panelists were concerned about how looming budget cuts could affect projects such as the development of suborbital space vehicles, another overarching theme of the panel discussion was the strengths the aerospace industry enjoys in Colorado, and in Boulder County in particular.

Aside from the military component in the aerospace realm in Colorado were several statistics supplied by moderator Vicky Lea, aviation and aerospace industry manager for the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp. Among them were that Colorado has the second-largest aerospace economy in the nation based on the more than 400 companies and 166,660 people employed in space-related jobs in the state. Another was the fact that 54 percent of the aerospace companies in the state employ fewer than 10 people each, an indication of the innovation being fueled in Colorado.

“It really is a hotbed of entrepreneurial activity,” Lea said.

The question remaining, panelists said, was how to foster that activity through public and private partnerships amid the federal budget cuts.