Spacecraft Manufacturing

[Music plays and the Earth can be seen spinning in Space, and inset images appear of a female operating a computer, a satellite dish, and a female smiling at the camera, and then text appears: Space Careers Wayfinder]

[Image changes to show a view of the Gilmour Space centre, and text appears: Gilmour Space, Helensvale, Qld]

[Image changes to show Luke Callaghan sitting inside Gilmour and talking to the camera, and text appears: Luke Callaghan, Manufacturing Supervisor, Gilmour Space Technologies]

Luke Callaghan: Hi, my name is Luke Callaghan. I work at Gilmour Space Technologies.

[Image changes to show a close view of Luke talking to the camera, and then the image changes to show a close view of a ‘Gilmour Space’ sign on a building]

I’m the Manufacturing Supervisor, or one of two.

[Image changes to show an aerial view looking down on the factory]

And we’re in Helensvale on the Gold Coast at our factory.

[Image changes to show Luke talking to the camera, and then images move through to show a male working on a large piece of machinery]

The main subjects that I enjoyed at school along with Maths and English and the usuals were the engineering and metalwork subjects. I’ve always enjoyed working with my hands and making things, also, technology studies.

[Images move through to show Luke and colleagues in conversation in the factory, Luke talking to the camera, and then a rear view of Luke and a colleague walking through the aviation factory]

 

I stayed until Year 12 at school and then once I finished school I went on to a trade college called Aviation Australia.

[Image changes to show a close view of a worker working on equipment, and then the image changes to show Luke talking to the camera]

It was probably two months after I finished at Aviation Australia that I got my apprenticeship.

[Image changes to show a rear view of Luke walking through the factory past a plane]

Yeah, there’s a lot of benefit in sort of branching out.

[Image changes to show Luke talking to the camera]

It’s good to specialise and that’s definitely what I’ve done with the structures sides of things.

[Image changes to show workers in the factory, and then the image changes to show Luke talking to the camera]

Even small amounts of knowledge that you have about a lot of different subjects, you might not have the answer, but you’ll know where to look, or who to ask for a bit of direction.

[Image changes to show a view of the inside of the factory and the camera pans along, and then the image changes to show Luke talking to the camera]

And I think that’s the biggest advantage of going across different areas and skill sets especially when you’re learning.

[Images move through to show a male working on a computer and looking at designs of airplane parts, Luke and colleagues talking in the factory, and Luke talking to the camera]

Subjects that I had at school that I still use today, it was called Technology Studies, it probably goes by other names now as well, but it taught you the design process, iterating on original ideas and then working through to a final product which is exactly what we’re doing here, just on a big scale.

[Image changes to show a large cylindrical airplane part, and then the image changes to show Luke talking to the camera]

It's a good approach to put all the STEM subjects together and sort of have them in that group because they all feed into one another.

[Image changes to show workers moving the cylindrical airplane part around the factory]

Bring it out to what I’m doing here now, we have engineering problems where we need to understand science and a bit of chemistry and obviously there’s a lot of maths involved for the engineers in particular.

[Images move through to show the two workers turning the cylindrical part by hand, and the image Luke talking to the camera, and then a close view of the cylindrical part]

When we’re building something here in the factory and we’re presented with a problem sometimes the units that we’re using or the way parts that we’ve ordered might be from a different country that use a different set of units, you have to sort of understand, I guess, as an example to convert those units and understand that even though you might have one thing, it could be described in a different way.

[Image changes to show two workers looking at the cylindrical part and talking]

A lot of those decisions are made in the engineering process initially.

[Images move through to show Luke talking to the camera, a worker bending over a bench and working with tools, and then Luke talking to the camera again]

But I guess where my understanding of those materials comes in is what you need to do to work with them, whether or not it bends easily, or if it’s going to crack, or how hard it is to drill into.

[Images move through to show the cylindrical part in the factory, Luke talking to the camera, and the Gilmour Space building]

Just the actual physical characteristics may look exactly the same but if it’s made out of a different material, whether it’s aluminium or stainless steel or carbon fibre, if you’re doing the same job, you might actually have to go about it a different way.

[Image changes to show Luke talking to colleagues in the factory]

Currently at Gilmour I’m working as a Manufacturing Supervisor.

[Image changes to show Luke talking to the camera]

My role is to work between manufacturing technicians, management and the engineers to make sure we have everything we need to do the job.

[Images move through to show an aerial view looking down on the factory, an interior view of the factory, and a satellite inside the building]

Under this roof here we have the majority of engineering teams, all the manufacturing, and we also have a satellite development.

[Image changes to show a rocket engine being tested outside the building and smoke billowing from the engine, and text appears: Sirius Engine Test Footage, Courtesy Gilmour Space]

In the engineering side of things, there’s mechanical engineers, the propulsion engineers,

[Image changes to show a rocket blasting off]

guidance navigation control and avionics engineers.

[Images move through to show Luke talking to the camera, two technicians working on a piece of equipment, and the engine being tested outside of the factory again]

There’s kind of a parallel with technicians, the structures’ technicians who build the structural side of the rocket.

[Image changes to show Luke talking to the camera]

Then the propulsion engineers work with the fluids and integration technicians who work on the motors and the fluid systems.

[Image changes to show technicians working with wiring, and then the image changes to show a close view of a person working with a bundle of wires]

And then the avionics and navigation engineers work with the avionics technicians who work on the electronics of the rocket.

[Image changes to show a technician working with the wiring, and then the image changes to show the Rex Marine factory, and then the image changes to show Luke talking to the camera]

We also have quite a few people from the boatbuilding industry, fabricators and fitters and turners, and machinists as well.

[Images move through to show flashing police lights, and then an area cordoned off with police rescue vehicles inside and a policeman talking on the phone]

I spent five years in the Queensland Police Service, completely different to what I’m doing here today.

[Image changes to show Luke talking to the camera]

You learn pretty quickly in the Police when a problem is in front of you, you’re the one that’s dealing with it and solving the problem.

[Image changes to show a view looking up at a rocket type model]

So, those skills have definitely translated across.

[Image changes to show a truck outside of the Gilmour Space Centre, and then the image changes to show a satellite moving around the Earth]

I guess one of the things that we see all around the world with the space industry is they’re always trying to develop better ways of doing things and develop that technology. So, that’s really kicking off here in Australia.

[Image changes to show Luke talking to the camera]

In the next couple of years we’ll put a couple of rockets up and start building some bigger rockets and I can see a lot more of that industry following suit in Australia.

[Music plays and the image changes to show the CSIRO logo and text appears: CSIRO, Australia’s National Science Agency, Space Careers Wayfinder 2022 except where otherwise indicated, The Space Careers Wayfinder materials may be used, reproduced, communicated and adapted free of charge for non-commercial educational purposes provided by all acknowledgements associated with the material are retained, Space Careers Wayfinder is a collaboration between the CSIRO and ANU]

[Image changes to show the ANU logo on a white screen]