{"id":3210,"date":"2018-01-18T23:07:48","date_gmt":"2018-01-18T23:07:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/52.10.1.109\/?p=3210"},"modified":"2018-01-19T23:27:25","modified_gmt":"2018-01-19T23:27:25","slug":"actually-it-is-rocket-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/?p=3210","title":{"rendered":"Actually, it is rocket science"},"content":{"rendered":"

Centennial-based SEAKR is still a family flight<\/i><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

By Peter Jones
\nA lot of great ideas have been hatched over dining room tables, but most were probably forgotten by the time dessert was ready. Not so for the Andersons who would launch their family-run business into\u2014no kidding\u2014outer space.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was a kid, they made the Buck Rogers movies with the spaceships, with the little sparks and strings attached,\u201d Ray Anderson said with a gleam in his eye.<\/p>\n

While his sons\u2014Scott, Eric, and Kurt\u2014might have been more inclined toward Star Wars<\/i> a generation later, the Anderson boys all had the imagination and engineering know-how that would eventually turn the family\u2019s garage into a maze of aeronautic computer gadgetry.<\/p>\n

Today, the still-family-owned and Centennial-based SEAKR<\/a>\u2014a techno-sounding acronym for Scott, Eric, Anderson, Kurt, and Ray\u2014is one of the leading manufacturers of multimillion-dollar information-storage systems for military and NASA spacecraft.<\/p>\n

That is not to say the family\u2019s Air Force veteran patriarch would have ever had any desire to join the then-burgeoning space program himself, even while he worked on the Corona and Hexagon reconnaissance satellite programs in the 1970s.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not that brave,\u201d he said of his reluctance to strap on a helmet. \u201cI\u2019d rather build the Atlas [space missile] than get blown up on the pad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anderson has found other ways to make his way into space.<\/p>\n

\"\"
What\u2019s bigger than a breadbox and has traveled on the International Space Station? SEAKR\u2019s digital memory systems. Here, a system awaits testing aboard a simulated spacecraft.
Photos by Peter Jones<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Since its official founding in the early 1980s, SEAKR Engineering, Inc. has helped revolutionize spacecraft memory systems by gradually replacing clumsy \u201cbubble memory\u201d recorders with the evolving latest in solid-state technologies.\u00a0Since the early days, SEAKR\u2019s accomplishments have included the world\u2019s highest-performance single-board computer in space and the most powerful array of reconfigurable processors in orbit, all with 100-percent flight success.<\/p>\n

Although SEAKR does not have the self-deprecating luxury of quipping that its important work is not rocket science, engineer Dave Jungkind, the firm\u2019s business-development director, says the easiest analogy to explain its product might be in your pocket and was, in part, created by another formerly garage-based powerhouse.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe camera in your smartphone has a sensor for light and a processor to convert it to an image and memory to store the image,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s the same basic elements in your satellite.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back in the day when a bulky computer took an entire room to perform a mere fraction of what a cellphone can now do, the government space missions would use similarly quaint methods to capture visual information on what were essentially glorified reel-to-reel machines.<\/p>\n

\"\"
This vibration machine can make sure a high-tech information-storage device can withstand the rigors of outer-space travel.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThey would chuck the recorder out of the satellite in parachutes for boats or planes to retrieve,\u201d Jungkind said with more than a hint of irony.<\/p>\n

It is little wonder that Anderson was sure there was a better way to capture crucial satellite data than to forever live at the mercy of rust and seaweed.<\/p>\n

But it would take the family a few years to sort it all out.<\/p>\n

After 28 years in the Air Force, the southern California father of three sons began his semiretirement at Rockwell, where he worked more or less alongside his oldest son, Scott, then a recent electrical-engineering graduate.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was an old boys\u2019 company and I wasn\u2019t one, so after three years I quit,\u201d the elder Anderson recalled. \u201cScott didn\u2019t like what he was doing so he quit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back at the dining room table, the unemployed father and son mulled their next move. One day, they flipped through a bulky catalog published for government contractors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe defense satellite program wanted a solid-state recorder,\u201d Anderson recalled. \u201cI didn\u2019t know how to make it, but Scott did. So we put together a proposal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Be careful. Even static electricity can harm these multi-million-dollar devices. All workers and visitors must wear protective clothing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Before long, the younger sons were part of the new endeavor. Since regulations said the contractor had to be a small business, the family formed one, using the first initial of the family name and those of the father and his sons to create an official-sounding acronym.<\/p>\n

In the early days, the struggling SEAKR had to get by, taking the odd \u201cengineering\u201d job, adjusting skylights, for example, before finally establishing its leadership role in defense contracting, often competing with much larger corporations as Honeywell International, subcontracting for Lockheed Martin, Ball Aerospace, and Boeing. The business made its first sale to a poorly funded program that could not afford a standard tape machine.<\/p>\n

The upstart SEAKR\u2019s first major contract was with Lockheed Martin, for whom the small company constructed what was then the largest recorder of its kind\u2014about the size of a desk-cabinet drawer, by Anderson\u2019s estimation. Some would be as big as the whole desk.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone in the industry was asking, who\u2019s SEAKR? They were shocked,\u201d Anderson said of SEAKR\u2019s launch into the marketplace.<\/p>\n

The Martin contract eventually precipitated SEAKR\u2019s move to Colorado in 1995 when Martin brass decided they needed to keep a closer eye on their family-owned contractor.<\/p>\n

Today, SEAKR boasts about 500 employees, more than 300 of whom are engineers. In recent years, the company has contributed to such projects as the International Space Station and the Orion program, as well as to the space shuttles and weather satellites. Among SEAKR\u2019s next projects will be a processor for the Iridium satellite constellation.<\/p>\n

Although the firm\u2019s Mass Memory Systems can capture the mundane, as well as the strategically important, the equipment can get pretty esoteric in its information gathering, or as SEAKR Vice President Scott Anderson once told this reporter, \u201cscientific information that\u2019s necessary for astrophysicists to help unlock how the universe began.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similar technology has assisted in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, documented climate change, helped in the building of canals and kept an eye on goings-on in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

As the changing technology continues to find function everywhere from civilian weather forecasting to Google Earth imaging, CEO Ray Anderson is as dumbfounded as anyone by the ubiquity of today\u2019s digital information storage in space.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had no idea,\u201d he said of the newer utilities. \u201cIt was just something I liked, and I knew it was useful.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Centennial-based SEAKR is still a family flight By Peter Jones A lot of great ideas have been hatched over dining room tables, but most were probably forgotten by the time dessert was ready. Not so for the Andersons who would launch their family-run business into\u2014no kidding\u2014outer space. \u201cWhen I was a kid, they made the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3211,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aerospace","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}