Aerospace startup Leap leases land east of Aurora to test rockets

An aerospace firm that just now leased land east of Aurora is building a rocket that it hopes will be able to deliver goods to anywhere on the planet within minutes Think of it as FedEx but in space stated Sebastian Grabowski a spokesman for Leap The Lafayette-based company leased acres at E Quincy Ave in Watkins to test its new product It moved in last month It s not going to be a toothbrush delivery from Amazon We re targeting heavy industry as well as remote locations where travel can be tough or lengthy Grabowski mentioned Leap was founded in and has spent the past three years emerging its first rocket We won t be launching from Colorado he disclosed We will be testing the entire rocket assembled as if it was launching without releasing it We will be tying the rocket down to the ground checking all the systems The land the company leased is mostly empty space with a concrete pad to test rockets and a small hangar The company will add a containerized command center for testing The land is part of a former -acre corporate campus built out by Orica an Australian mining explosives firm that also performed testing on-site Orica sold the property last year to three different buyers for a combined million but has leased back around acres from one buyer according to citizens records Leap s lease comes as it prepares to launch its first fully operational rocket called Bullfrog this winter The rocket stands feet tall and almost feet wide and can carry a small payload that will initially consist mostly of research equipment The rocket is considered suborbital spending only four minutes in the vacuum of space and falling back to earth with a parachute If Bullfrog is productive the next step would be to achieve full orbital status That rocket the -foot tall Bighorn is anticipated to begin testing in late Paul Cattin a broker with Platinum CRE represented Leap in the yearslong search for testing space We did a lot of work with Leap what their requirements were also working with the state and where they would literally allow stuff along those lines that s where we unveiled ourselves in this unique pocket where the Orica explosives campus is and ultimately just east of the space port area he noted Related Articles Meta prevails in historic FTC antitrust incident won t have to break off WhatsApp Instagram Kroger closing automated fulfillment centers as it tries to make delivery faster and cheaper Wall Street drops again as Nvidia bitcoin and other stars keep swinging Cloudflare resolves outage that impacted thousands ChatGPT X and more Nine in Denver area homes lost value in the past year Zillow reports It really just took a lot of conversations and frankly finding the limited options that existed Grabowski mentioned the company also looked at a decommissioned intercontinental ballistic missile facility east of Aurora Leap raised million in a funding round in April Grabowski commented the -employee company is raising millions more to launch Bighorn and build a facility capable of manufacturing dozens of rockets per year Colorado is the perfect location from a talent perspective Grabowski revealed Large pool with an easy ability to recruit people It s one of the aerospace hubs in the U S Read more from our partner BusinessDen Get more business news by signing up for our Commercial sector Now newsletter