 |
 |
.gif) |
|
|
|
|
| Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6
Some of the equipment is too complicated or confidential to talk about. Other parts are simple, if huge, constructions of bent plywood. These are what engineers use to bend graphite epoxy composite materials to form the body of the rocket. "This is the low side of high tech," Spoede says. The headquarters of Beal Aerospace in Frisco mirrors its history: hopeful and ambitious birth, thrilling and painful growth, and an early and tragic death. Its empty parking lot and vast vacant warehouse spaces are the remnants of a dream so bold it ranged from Texas to the jungle nation of Guyana to thousands of miles above the planet. At the heart of this dream is Andrew Beal, self-made billionaire and amateur math genius, one of those rare people who have enough cunning, money, vision, money, ambition, and money to drag his vision into reality. What reality did to Beal's dream is not a lesson in hubris aimed at rich men but rather a warning for any visionary or uber-achiever: The world may not let you change it, and for reasons that may not make sense. Beal's dream was deceptively simple on its surface: Form a privately held company to launch satellites into space cheaply, using proven technology, without becoming a government contractor. (Cheaply meaning about half of the $50 million to $80 million NASA pays for a comparable launch.) To do this, one must have a spaceport, a Cape Canaveral for the private sector. Beal endeavored to build his own spaceport somewhere close to the equator, where his rockets could gain momentum from Earth's rapid spin and save on fuel. It's eminently fair to say Beal's plan was a long shot. That's not to say it had no merit. Each stage of the business plan was backed by logic, reason, and market sense. Satellite launches are prohibitively expensive. The disposable Beal Aerospace rockets were designed to be cheap and effective, thanks to the combination of their simple old-school design and new lighter construction materials. Its rocket fuel was unorthodox but viable. The spaceport could have been built and maintained. "If anyone was going to do it, it would be someone like Beal. They took him fairly seriously. He was putting most of his bank profits into the project," says aerospace analyst Marco Caceres. "He wasn't wasting a lot of time raising money...People thought he was progressing, that this guy could be up and running in a few years." Beal Aerospace might have done the impossible: compete against NASA, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin and win. But the tough odds held, and in October 2000, Beal Aerospace, the largest private rocket development effort in history, shut its doors and laid off more than 200 people. Beal had spent $200 million of his own money by that time. Beal, already beset with export licenses and diplomatic quarrels over his proposed spaceport, claimed a massive subsidy program for government-contracted launch companies doomed the start-up's chances to make a profit. "We wonder where the computer industry would be today if the U.S. government had selected and subsidized one or two personal computer systems when Microsoft Inc. or Compaq Inc. were in their infancy," Beal said in a written statement declaring his company's demise. Industry experts agree that the U.S. competition was a major hindrance, but other factors helped doom his project, including a satellite industry slowdown that surprised Beal and most aerospace analysts. The industry was stabilizing. Companies were planning for more rapid growth but were blindsided. Established satellite companies carrying huge debt loads were ailing; one declared bankruptcy, and others teetered on the brink. Without satellites going into orbit, a launch service company is grounded. The pond was going dry, and the fish were dying, leaving birds like Beal to starve. At the sad shell of available office space that was once Beal Aerospace, Spoede reaches into a box and plucks a publicity shot of a horizontal rocket test in McGregor. It pictures a 10-foot column of flame blasting 300 feet from the barrel of a rocket engine. A bright red truck sits near the lick of fire. "He had it freshly painted red and put out there, for scale," Spoede says, referring to Andy Beal. "People said he was nuts to put it there." He pauses and gives his epitaph on Beal's dream: "I guess it's hard to be a genius."
In 1976, 21-year-old Beal, the son of an engineer and a state government employee, attended a property auction in Waco. The move would sow the seeds of a personal fortune of Lone Star State proportions. Beal, a native of Lansing, Michigan, was attending Michigan State University when he began buying and selling rental property to pay for school. When he transferred to Baylor University, his interest in real estate was still high. In Waco, the young Beal bought a dilapidated apartment complex with the aim to fix it, rent it, and then sell it. The market and industry proved so lucrative that Beal dropped out of Baylor and devoted his full energies to real estate. By 1978, he had relocated and was dealing real estate in Dallas, a popular roost for entrepreneurial spirits and cravers of fast money. Like a bird of prey, Beal's mind is wired to spot and seize opportunities. When the savings-and-loan crisis was eviscerating Texas' financial industry and shutting down banks, Beal decided to open one and began buying defaulted bank loans for as little as 40 cents on the dollar. Beal Bank launched in 1988 with $3 million. It would become a billion-dollar enterprise. Beal was 35 when the bank was founded. It grew into the largest privately held lending institution in Dallas and is still raging, frequently ranking first among all U.S. banks and savings and loans, judged on return on equity over a five-year period. "I think he considers himself a lucky person," says Brad Oates, vice chairman of Bluebonnet Savings and Loan and a friend of Beal's for more than a decade. "He knows whoever is born in this country has won the lottery." |
|
|
