Owner of Kodiak spaceport has new CEO

Although the majority of employees at the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Kodiak are locals, Keeter believes that those numbers can increase if more people on-island received education that is relevant to the specialized work done at the spaceport.

He also would like to include Kodiakans in other parts of the Alaska Aerospace Corp., including work done outside of the Spaceport as he seeks to expand the launch partner’s client base to other industries, such as aviation.

“[If we can get] the younger group of people as they come to high school and college involved in the aviation industry, that [will] bode well for both Kodiak and the country,” Keeter said.

Jacelyn Keys, director of Kodiak College, is open to this collaboration, but acknowledges that it will take a lot of work to create these programs.

“I am committed to the Kodiak workforce,” Keys said, “be that in what [Kodiak College] can offer or in how we can be creative together.”

Any formal collaboration between Alaska Aerospace and schools on Kodiak will start after Keeter steps into the position of CEO at the end of the month, he said.

At the end of June, John Cramer was appointed interim CEO of Alaska Aerospace after the last CEO, Mark Lester, left after two years. Lester left Alaska Aerospace to become the vice president of launch operations for Phantom Space Corp., an Arizona-based company that builds rockets. 

Keeter’s background is in flight safety. For the past nine months, Keeter was the director of launch safety and licensing at ABL Space Systems, a California-based rocket manufacturing company that plans to launch one of its vehicles from the Pacific Complex Spaceport before the end of the year.

Prior to that, he spent almost four years at Astra Space Inc. — another company that has a contract to launch out of the Pacific Spaceport Complex — as vice president of launch operations, head of safety and launch licensing. He also worked on safety systems for launch vehicles and satellites at the defense contractor Orbital ATK and spent 20 years in the Air Force where he worked on aircraft maintenance and flight safety operations. 

Keeter estimates that he spent a culmination of a year’s time on Kodiak in the past four years as a client of Alaska Aerospace. Although Alaska Aerospace is based out of Anchorage, he wants to continue his involvement with Kodiak by working with the high school and Kodiak College. 

“I just kind of fell in love with the area,” Keeter said. “I just love Alaska and this was a great opportunity to take the experience I have on the launch side and the safety side, and to work here.”