Local company plays role in SpaceX launch

Morgan City businessman Lee Dragna thought SpaceX was crazy, but that was a good thing.
And now his company has played a role in the recent SpaceX launch, which made history in manned space flight.
The LAD Services owner was approached by Space Exploration Technologies Corp, also known as SpaceX, in 2014 about how to land a liquid-fueled rocket on a barge.
While Dragna, whose company completes barge fabrication, among other things, said he thought the idea was “crazy,” he said smart people are crazy.
“That’s just the way it is,” said Dragna, whose company has done work for SpaceX since 2014 and has expanded its services to the company, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, during that time.
When SpaceX made history with the first commercial human spaceflight May 30 at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, LAD Services was there.
The Falcon 9 rocket, which helped propel Crew Dragon Demo-2 on its journey toward the International Space Station carrying NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, fell back to the Atlantic Ocean as designed where it landed on the “Of Course I Still Love You” drone ship.
“I didn’t have anything to do with launch or transportation of this one (rocket) until it got back, so our guys caught it offshore, and then when they brought it back in, we had to help them unload it and transport it … back to the refurb facility,” Dragna said.
Dragna, who didn’t attend the first commercial manned launch, said after watching so many successful rocket landings, the May 30 landing was “just another day at work for us.”
However, he agreed it’s cool to be part of the process.
Dragna said SpaceX learned of him due to his six U.S. patents and found out more about him through a company SpaceX sought to rent a barge from. Just so happens the unnamed company had a barge in Dragna’s work yard.
From there, LAD Services and SpaceX worked to perfect the desired landing of a rocket on a barge.
“We would argue with each other, but then we would settle on something, and we’d get it done,” Dragna said.
While Dragna said his company was basically the first contractor for SpaceX in their recovery work, things grew from there.
“Then it turned into building stuff,” Dragna said. “It turned into tearing stuff down. It turned into everything.”
The idea behind Falcon 9 rocket is that the most expensive pieces can be salvaged and reused to cut down on costs for space travel.
“The Falcon 9 is the workhorse,” Dragna said. “That’s what makes SpaceX money. That’s what saves their customers money. That rocket will continuously be reused.”
The rocket is designed to slow down with the help of some of its engines as it makes its descent to the drone ship and land on it with precision.
While the successful rocket landing took nearly a year to achieve initially, now SpaceX has achieved the feat on a mission that sent a crew to space while saving the rocket.
“Now, it’s the cream of the crop of the world,” Dragna said. “Nobody can compete with SpaceX.”