From the end of this month through early October, materials manufactured in Grand Junction will be nearly 240,000 miles away, orbiting the moon.
Michael and Shannon Sneddon bought a small parts manufacturer in 2008 that, at the time, dedicated its resources to producing rock-climbing gear. Michael had served as an engineer for Hamilton Sunstrand for two decades before that, so his extensive background in aerospace manufacturing inspired him to shift the company’s focus to aerospace endeavors and rebrand as SG Aerospace and Gas.
The bulk of SG Aerospace and Gas’ business comes from commercial and military aerospace programs, manufacturing components for military aircraft, missile systems and commercial aircraft.
However, through the company’s direct collaboration with Lockheed Martin as a supplier, SG Aerospace and Gas has become involved in a far more ambitious project: NASA’s Artemis program that aims to ultimately return mankind to the moon.
The program’s first mission, Artemis I, is set to launch the Orion spacecraft Monday, Aug. 29, between 8:30-10:30 a.m. Eastern Time from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The unmanned Orion will enter a distant retrograde orbit around the moon and travel a total of 1.3 million miles over the course of 42 days before it returns to Earth and splashes into the Pacific Ocean on Oct. 10.
SG Aerospace and Gas is among the companies that has contributed to Orion’s voyage, being contracted by Lockheed Martin to develop multiple components of the module, such as brackets.
“It’s exciting. We’ve been involved with the program now for about six years, so we’re in the production phase of it now,” Michael Sneddon said. “The production environment is very similar to what happened in the Apollo program. They’re building 10-12 different Orions that will be mounted up to go to different areas (of the moon). They’re trying to get people back on the moon and further space exploration, so they’re building some different things.”
Once NASA and Lockheed Martin finalized Orion’s design and had specific blueprints to provide, SG Aerospace and Gas engineers went to work bringing the components to life.
The company’s involvement demonstrates the trust that Lockheed Martin has in its team of engineers, especially considering that every piece of the craft needs to be designed exactly according to plan in order for the mission to succeed — and especially since Orion’s return to Earth will be the fastest and hottest of any spacecraft ever.
“What we are is a subset, so they’ll send us those plans and we have engineers on staff who will figure out how to manufacture those components to meet the criteria that they need to be able to handle the vast temperature changes,” Sneddon said.
“Our objective is to make sure that we can manufacture the components and our engineering staff works with their engineering department to verify the manufacturability is there and that we can maintain the type of tolerances they need to work out there.”
Assuming the success of the Artemis I mission, Sneddon said SG Aerospace and Gas will continue to be involved with the Artemis program going forward, which is good news for a company, which seeks to make a name for itself both on the Western Slope and across the aerospace sector.
“We’ll continue to develop space systems, whether they’re lunar modules or parts that are going past that into deep space,” Sneddon said. “We’re a fairly small company as far as being in a more rural type of environment, but it’s nice to know that the things that you’re doing are actually contributing and making a difference in the space program. It’s nice to be involved. We work hard to develop good relationships. We’re just happy to be a part of the program.”
Sneddon sees the upcoming Artemis I mission as a seminal moment for SG Aerospace and Gas, as the scope of the company’s ambitions will be realized with its parts helping a spacecraft travel from the Earth to the moon.
It could also prove a seminal moment for the aerospace industry in Western Colorado.
“It definitely puts us out there on a map,” Sneddon said. “With the things happening here, with a major university in town, we have the pipeline and the capability to support these kinds of endeavors. We have that ability and the larger corporations are looking at us as somebody who could possibly support these kinds of things in the future and not somebody who doesn’t have the capacity or capability to support space systems.”
