00:00When Launch On Demand went looking for the place to put its new spaceport,
00:03the Dominican Republic fit the bill in terms of geography and population density.
00:08But it also turned out to be a section of the country badly in need of development,
00:13which the new facility is designed to provide.
00:33When I saw that the president was doing something in Oviedo, which was my town,
00:39I was like, this is a dream.
00:40I never in my life imagined Oviedo to be like putting a map.
00:45Launch On Demand wants to make Oviedo into a hub for commercial spaceflight.
00:50But first, the company has to build almost everything a spaceport needs from the ground up.
00:56So this is the mayor of Oviedo, and so he's been working with us on all the collaborations
01:01of getting everybody together.
01:02So everything that you're going to see here, his and his staff have put it together for us.
01:08Mucho gracias.
01:39This is the new, going to be the Silicon Valley of the Caribbean.
01:43It's going to have the power, it's going to have the talent, it's going to have the geography.
01:46And those companies that are forward enough thinking from the U.S. side are saying,
01:51wait a second, you have a surplus of power, you have land that is available,
01:56and your regulatory regime can help us do this.
02:00Cattledge sees the potential in the country.
02:03So we have, what we are proposing is a 200 megawatt power plant.
02:07Power tends to be a very big commodity when it comes to the space industry,
02:11and nothing is bigger than how you fuel the rocket.
02:13There's other use cases for the energy, but the biggest one is to make sure
02:17that you could fuel the rocket uninterrupted without any problems.
02:19And also, let's say they're fueling two or three rockets at the same time,
02:22we have plenty of power in order to do both.
02:25So besides power, besides the place to keep the satellites until they're ready to go up,
02:30what else will be on this site?
02:31Interestingly enough, water is a huge problem for space launches.
02:36So the system is called a deluge system.
02:38So if you look at a launch pad, you'll often see a water tower next to it.
02:41And what happens is whenever the rocket is about to lift off or is lifting off,
02:45there's huge gallons of water pushed onto the rocket and onto the infrastructure
02:51because it dampens the sound.
02:52It's not because of a fire, it's because it dampens the sound,
02:55because the sound of the rocket lifting off is so extreme it would shake the rocket apart.
02:59And so the water, the deluge system dampens the sound.
03:03So once that water is used after the launch, then it's recycled and it's treated.
03:10And so when it's treated, then they have to decide what to do with it.
03:13And so we need to have an ability to get potable water, so we need a desalination.
03:17We also have to have a water treatment facility because after it's done, we're going to treat it,
03:21and then we can use it for agricultural purposes.
03:24We can use it for lots of variety of purposes for the region.
03:27But water is something that we need to get in huge commodities.
03:31And basically, when Cape Canaveral was developed, they didn't size the water treatment facility
03:37for the size of rockets that are actually there.
03:39And so there's a real problem with water treatment.
03:42When you're fully up and running, how many people will work on this site?
03:45I would venture probably about 4,000 or 5,000.
03:47Where are they going to live?
03:48So right now, if you go near Cabo Rojo, which is about 20 miles here, there are resorts being built,
03:56high-end resorts, because there is going to be an extension, essentially, of what's going on in Putacana.
04:03So even since our announcement, the real estate prices have gone up and up and up here
04:07because they're like, well, we're going to need this and we're going to need this.
04:10So we will have to build the infrastructure for people to live in.
04:14Subject to the retraining or the fine-tuning, does Dominican Republic have enough skilled workers
04:20to be able to do the sort of project you're talking about, in addition, by the way,
04:23to the hotels and the seaport and the airport?
04:26Yes. The answer is no.
04:29And I think that's anywhere you go.
04:32You know, this country has been mainly focused on tourism.
04:34And as a result, that's where their revenue has been coming.
04:38But as they begin to transition and diversify away from tourism,
04:42tourism will always be an important part of this.
04:44But this is really diversification.
04:46Now, what I have seen in the last, you know, couple of years is the motivation and the education is
04:54there.
04:54It really is.
04:57You know, that's the hardest thing to sort of capture is, you know, are you interested in this?
05:01You know, is this something topic?
05:02Because if you're interested in the topic, I can teach you.
05:06So it is not scaled right now where it needs to be.
05:09But has there been any resistance or questioning from the people who live here?
05:14Or are there so few people living here?
05:16Oh, yeah, we had a number of questions.
05:19So once the announcement was made in March about this, we started seeing, you know,
05:24what were the questions coming to us?
05:26Some of it was, well, we don't understand what this project means.
05:29And so we came here and we did a town hall, almost probably the third day after President Abinader announced
05:36it.
05:36And so we explained, look, they said, you don't have power and water.
05:39We said, yes, we know.
05:40We're going to build power and water.
05:41And they said, okay, well, we don't have the talent.
05:43And I said, yep, my next stop is we're going to sign an agreement with INTECH, which is the university.
05:48Well, tell us about INTECH.
05:49Sure.
05:50INTECH is a technical university, one of the most premier universities in the Dominican Republic.
05:56They produce some of the most talented engineers in the world, in the Caribbean, really.
06:03And when we discussed where we were going to get the talent pool from, we wanted to go to the
06:10university where that talent was.
06:12They have mechanical, electrical, aerospace, all these other engineering and disciplines that, technical disciplines that we could leverage.
06:18And so we met with the provost and said, listen, we can help you train this workforce.
06:25They took it one step further.
06:27They said, we're not just going to let you train it.
06:28We're going to create a minor.
06:30So students can actually participate and learn about the space industry.
06:35Because after a while, it's going to be Dominicans on the console.
06:38It's going to be Dominicans that's going to be running the spaceport.
06:40We're going to help start it.
06:41We're going to help design it, fund it, keep it going.
06:44But ultimately, it's going to be the Dominican Republic and primarily the youth of the Dominican Republic that are going
06:49to be operating this.
06:50Lorena Rosario is among the early Dominican hires working with Launch on Demand.
06:55For Rosario, who was born in the Dominican Republic and now lives in Miami,
06:59the announcement was a call to come home.
07:02As soon as I saw the interview with President Abinader, I jumped on it and reached out.
07:06And the rest of this is going to be interesting.
07:10So as you look forward to this being developed and your launch pad being somewhere right around here, what are
07:15the issues that you have to address?
07:17What are your priorities?
07:18Right now, our main priority will be the regulation, helping the government and also the IDAC create all those regulations.
07:25And as Mr. Burton mentioned, the training of the staff and just making this whole project work together.
07:34For a town long described as forgotten, the promise of a spaceport is not only about rockets.
07:40It is about whether Oviedo's next generation can imagine a future closer to home and whether the project can deliver
07:47the opportunities local residents hope it will.
07:50How do you think the lives of the people who live here will change?
07:54It's going to change a lot.
07:55It's going to change a lot because people here don't have a good income.
08:01They live with $150 a month for a family of four.
08:06So it's going to really change their lives.
08:09They're going to have more opportunities.
08:10The kids are going to have dreams of becoming an astronaut or, you know, try to work with a spaceport,
08:17you know, like try to change who they envision.
08:21You know, usually here, kids don't really know what to dream for.
08:24But Launcher Demand brought a dream to Oviedo.
08:28Oviedo is going to change because of Launcher Demand.
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