(SIERRAVILLE) – SpaceX who? No, the star of the show in the commercial spaceflight sector right now is Dearwater Industries, which recently announced their successful launch of a small communications satellite into geostationary orbit directly over their base of operations – our very own Sierra County.

Dearwater Industries was first founded by Wesley “Wes” Chanson, a retired aerospace engineer who grew tired of poor internet connectivity in his native Sierra County, where he returned after his career with NASA ended. Chanson began recruiting a team of industrial welders, material scientists and potential financiers from across Plumas, Sierra, Nevada and Washoe Counties in 2011, and by 2018 the group had cobbled together a legitimate rocket. The rocket was nicknamed the “Condor” as a homage to the “Vulture”, the rocket from a 1970s science fiction series called Salvage 1, from which Chanson drew inspiration.

What this group lacks in funding relative to the federal government’s space ventures and titans of private spaceflight such as Blue Origin, SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, they more than make up for in tenacity. After several years of lobbying, beginning before the rocket was even complete, the launch of the Condor was greenlit in late 2019. The actual launch took place in early 2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic, successfully carrying a GoPro above the Kármán Line and achieving true amateur spaceflight.

“This marks a new frontier, in both spaceflight and for the Lost Sierra” said Chanson last Wednesday at Dearwater Airport – the headquarters and namesake of the company - where a press conference was held to announce the successful launch. “For many years since the decline of the timber industry, we’ve heard that opening our communities and homes up to tourism every year is the only way to keep our economy alive. Our launch shows that, as long as we remain creative and bold in our vision for the future, we do not have to prostrate ourselves to faceless recreation interests to feed our families.”

Reception across the nation was generally positive, with even the larger commercial spaceflight entities sending public messages of congratulations on the successful satellite launch. Chanson’s next proposal involves an ultralight probe launch to a near-Earth object, which aims to analyze the viability of asteroid mining at both large and small scale.