Official reception at City Hall after the successful launch last Saturday. The co-founders set the goal of creating “the most important technology company in Europe”
PLD Space, the company from Elche that made history early last Saturday by launching into space the first Spanish rocketaspires to have in Elche, probably together with Fira Alacant (former IFA), a factory for serial construction of rockets to send payloads (for example small satellites) into space.
The main people in charge of this company, Raúl Torres and Raúl Verdú, co-founders, and Ezequiel Sánchez, executive presidentwere officially received this Tuesday at the Elche City Council by the mayor, Pablo Ruz, and the different municipal spokespersons. Everyone congratulated the “titans” of space and after signing the three in the book of honor, they confirmed that new and greater challenges are now coming and that their company is seen differently from abroad.
Signature in the honor book of the Elche City Council.
| ANTONIO AMOROS
Raúl Torres indicated that what we have to do now is to continue working on the next rocket, the Miura 5, under development and with support from the central government and the Spanish Space Agency, and in which, thanks to the experience of the Miura1, progress will be made. faster. The nearest future involves building a bigger rocket and that allows satellites to be placed in orbits in that world reference of providing services from space.
“The history of PLD is not just launching a rocket“, is part of the path, but what we want is to create the most important technology company in Europe,” declared Torres, who confirmed that there is a second Miura 1 in development (the first one that was launched on Saturday fell into the Atlantic) and also that they have more than 300 million euros of launch purchases committed to various clients for future cargo launches.
Pitcher
Torres insisted that PLD was founded to develop a launcher that would put Spain as the tenth country in the world with launch capacity“and we have just achieved that. We must maintain and improve it and that maintenance and improvement is Miura 5”, while making it clear that launching another rocket beforehand is not ruled out either.
Meanwhile, Raúl Verdú, regarding the future PLD Space facilities to be located near Fira Alacant (former Alicantina Fair Institution-IFA), indicated that it will be a “large production plant” that will allow Elche to have the “most advanced rocket factory in the world”. “This is not a marketing comment, it is reality because we are going to mass produce rocketswhich is something that only the automobile and aviation industry does and that is our intention,” he said.
Verdú assured that his “headquarters” will continue to be in Elche, while highlighting the fact that “international talent loves working here.”
Dedications in the book of honor.
| ANTONIO AMOROS
More than 900 WhatsApp messages
Ezequiel Sánchez told a little about what happened after closing the launch: “We finished with the collection at the base around four in the morning, we went to a place to celebrate, at 8:30 I was going to bed and when I got up I had like 900 WhatsApp messagesamong them many competitors, the President of the Government, authorities…”
“All the companies that have flown recognize the difficulty of flying and I think that we are not aware of it and I think that we are in the top 5 companies worldwide even though there are ten countries that are flying. From a technological capacity point of view, what we have fact is truly a milestone that we are still digesting ourselves,” he added.
Meanwhile, the mayor of Elche described “feat” what happened last Saturday “that has taken the name of Elche to heaven.” “We are deeply proud of what they have achieved, for having been able to launch a company of this magnitude, which has a great international impactand above all for being able to demonstrate that talent from Elche, young talent, has a universal projection,” he noted.
The first mayor also announced that he will convey to the Department of Education the need to launch a FP line related to the aerospace industry, all after pointing out from PLD Space that they need turners, millers, mechanics… in short, trained students in vocational training since they plan to double their workforce, currently made up of about 150 people, by 2024 and then continue increasing it.
Torres, Verdú and Sánchez signed the honor book and later the mayor gave them a small bust of the Lady, while PLD Space responded in the same way but in this case with a scale reproduction of the Miura1the Elche rocket that successfully took off from Huelva last Saturday.