Frontiers - Space-Library

AT A GLANCE / BOEING HUNTSVILLE
Boeing’s offices and production facilities in
Huntsville, Ala., are home to a variety of programs,
mainly related to space exploration, strategic missiles
and design engineering. Some of the notable
businesses at the site:
Patriot Advanced Capability-3, or PAC-3 – Boeing’s Missiles
and Unmanned Airborne Systems division has produced nearly
1,500 PAC-3 missile seekers for prime contractor Lockheed Martin.
Ground-based Midcourse Defense – The only missile defense system to protect the United States
from long-range ballistic missiles. It uses an array of sea, land and space-based sensors, and interceptors
based in Alaska and California, to track and destroy the ballistic missiles. Boeing is prime contractor and
is responsible for development, production and sustainment of the system’s elements.
Design
Center,
said he’s
seen a
diverse
range of
programs,
heritage
companies
and employees from
other Boeing sites
converge over the
past 27 years.
“Huntsville has
been a melting pot
of companies and
corporate cultures,
as well as the
cultures you get from across the country,” he
said. “It’s been interesting to watch how it all
melded and fit in Huntsville very nicely.”
New arrivals often are surprised to find that
the north-central Alabama area boasts one of the
highest per-capita populations of engineers and
residents with doctorate degrees in the United
States. In addition to Boeing, a long list of other
defense-related firms have offices in Huntsville,
which also is home to NASA Marshall Space
Flight Center, the Missile Defense Agency, the
U.S. Army’s Redstone Arsenal and Cummings
Research Park, the second-largest research
park in the United States and fourth-largest
research and technology park in the world.
In 2009, Forbes magazine named Huntsville
one of the smartest cities in the world, and
Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine has
ranked the Huntsville area’s economy as
No. 1 in the nation and given it high marks
as a place to raise families.
“Huntsville, to me, is just a hotbed of stateof-the-art
technology,” said Dan Day, quality
assurance manager for the GMD program and
a Huntsville employee since 1981. “You don’t
realize what’s here until you come and see it.”
Like many others at Boeing Huntsville,
Day mentions the “freedom” of working at a
small site, where employees frequently move
between programs.
“You don’t have to move across the
country to diversify your portfolio,” said
Terrence Chance, a senior business analyst
with the Standard Missile-3 Block IIB program
who joined Boeing in 2004.
Ryanne Jones, a product review engineer with
the GMD program, echoed that thought: “I like
the site because there are so many opportunities
to work on different projects and systems,” said
Jones, who grew up in Alabama and graduated
from nearby University of Alabama–Huntsville.
“There are so many things Boeing does that
you can apply to your job, no matter what your
engineering background.”
Longtime employees end up crossing back
and forth with other programs beyond Huntsville.
Those who worked for years supporting the
International Space Station program, for example,
BOEING FRONTIERS / SEPTEMBER 2012
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