The launch pads and facilities at the Kourou spaceport are impressive. But they also have to function 100 percent reliably. And a German company, MT Aerospace Guyane, plays a key role in making that happen..
Actually, the small house had only recently been painted in fresh yellow. But the tropical rainforest climate quickly takes its toll on the new paint, Michael Gärtner explains almost apologetically as he welcomes us into the house in Kourou from which he and his staff manage MTA’s work in Kourou. A house on the edge of a small settlement that was built in the early years of the spaceport for employees and their families. MT Aerospace has been significantly involved in the realization of all launch facilities for over 30 years. 
For almost eleven months, Michael Gärtner has been the Director of MT Aerospace Guyane, a company that ensures everything runs smoothly on the ground. An endeavor that Germany has recently been paying more attention to and attaching greater importance to. At a ministerial conference in November this year, which will also involve setting budgets, the topic of a “European spaceport in Guyana” will play an important role for Germany, “which it hadn’t held this way before,” Gärtner reports. He refers to this less in terms of involvement with rockets or satellites and more to activities “on the ground,” meaning facilities on the grounds of the CSG site (CSG stands for Centre Spatial Guyanais, the European space center in French Guiana).
This is also related to the fact that, besides the ESA, Germany has an interest in having more influence on the possibility that German launchers (that’s what rockets are called here) might also launch from Kourou in the future. “That is not currently the case, but it is developing very quickly and strongly right now.” When allocating European budgets, so-called geo-return is also considered, meaning that contracts also flow back to the countries that contributed to the joint budget. And German return could then also benefit his company.
Michael Gärtner took the time for our conversation. That he spends almost the entire afternoon so relatively relaxed in his spacious office is rather the exception. Normally, he is on the way to the facilities where his people are working. And they are deployed all over the huge site, so he can easily cover around 80 kilometers a day between the launch facility, large halls, specialized and office buildings.
Michael Gärtner, Head of MT Aerospace Guyane
Michael Gärtner, Head of MT Aerospace Guyane – Photo: MT Aerospace Guyane / Michael Gärtner
MT Aerospace Guyane is basically a large service provider for facilities at the spaceport. “You can imagine it like a huge camp with large industrial facilities, which are kept running by companies like ours, and in the end, this serves a rocket launch: that is ultimately the end product that we are all working towards.”The tasks include maintaining large halls, including cleanroom halls where satellites are prepared for launch, air conditioning in halls and offices, which are constantly needed in the tropical climate, as well as maintaining the launch facilities or special transporters with tanks for liquid hydrogen or oxygen with 20 or more wheels on each side. Even the list already strongly resembles airport operations, which is essentially what Kourou is, but only with launches—without landings.
In two halls, the material for solid rocket boosters is produced, “Basically like a plastic explosive,” and it all starts in a giant mixer, as big as a small single-family house, of which there are two identical ones in Guyana and probably only one more in the world (in the USA at NASA). Such mixers need maintenance, as do the huge 200-ton cranes and hydraulic lifts. Or the steel door to this hall, which weighs around 40 tons.
whole articel available @ „Das ist schon sehr speziell“ | Forum – Das Wochenmagazin
