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5 questions for David Taylor

By Roger Fillion, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published May 2, 2008 at 11 p.m.

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CEO David Taylor

CEO David Taylor

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* As CEO of Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Taylor has plenty on his plate - including learning the ins and out of an offbeat hobby.

His Boulder company hopes to land some big space and defense deals soon. They involve an Earth-watching satellite for the Landsat program and a piece of a big Air Force satellite- communications program dubbed TSAT.

The space shuttle also is set to ferry two Ball Aerospace instruments to the Hubble Space Telescope later this year for a repair mission. The gear - a camera and a spectrograph - would help scientists better peer deep into the universe and understand how galaxies and stars were formed and have evolved.

If the repair trip succeeds, Ball Aerospace will have built each of the key instruments aboard Hubble.

We spoke with Taylor recently at the annual Space Symposium in Colorado Springs about his company and new hobby. The interview has been edited.

1. There's speculation from time to time that your parent, Ball Corp., might consider selling or spinning off Ball Aerospace. Is that in the cards?

We're not for sale. We're not going to be spun off anytime in the near future. We are a separate corporation. And we're a wholly owned subsidiary of the Ball Corp. And of the entities that are in the corporation, we happen to be the oldest. So there's some emotional tie. But one of the main reasons we're not going to be spun out or sold is that we have very, very good financial performance. And we've had that for quite a number of years.

2. Nearly all of your business comes from Washington via space and secret defense contracts. Could the presidential election and a change in administration have an impact on your business?

People always ask us that. Here's the answer. The work that we do is in (areas) that probably won't change across the administrative boundaries. The things we do the country needs, no matter who's in office.

3. Can you tell us about the company's physical expansion?

We've had an $80 million facility expansion under way over the past three years. It's occurring in Boulder and in the Westminster-Broomfield area. In Westminster, we expanded the antenna- manufacturing test facility. In Boulder, we're expanding our integration and test facilities. More clean room space. More manufacturing and integration facilities. We basically ran out of room.

4. Are you still piloting a glider in your free time?

Funny you should ask. Yeah, I still soar. Now I've gone to the dark side. I have a power plane, also. My kids call it a real plane. I'm doing that, too. It's a little two-seat aerobatic airplane.

5. Do you perform aerobatics?

I'm learning. The normal stuff: loops and rolls, stall turns, and those kinds of things.

Staff writer Roger Fillion