- Coming up on "Austin InSight," we're talking baseball, as in could Austin land a new MLB team?

And we visit a local aerospace innovator celebrating a successful landing on the moon.

"Austin InSight" starts right now.

- [Announcer] Support for "Austin InSight" comes from: Sally & James Gavin.

And also from Suerte, Este, and Bar Toti Restaurants, bringing Austin together around culinary excellence to celebrate creativity, conservation, and culture in Central Texas.

(bright music) (bright music continues) - Hello and thanks for joining us.

I'm Laura Laughead.

Something is missing in Austin.

Of course, the city has so much to offer when it comes to entertainment, restaurants, cultural and economic vibrancy, but did you know Austin is America's largest city without a big four professional sports team?

Meaning the MLB, NFL, NBA or NHL.

But a concerted effort is underway to change that, specifically focused on baseball.

A group called the Austin Baseball Commission is currently looking for potential investors for a team and scouting sites for a stadium.

It's a multi-billion dollar endeavor with many steps and hurdles along the way.

Joining us now is "Austin Business Journal" reporter, Justin Sayers, who's been following this.

Justin, thanks so much for being here.

- Thank you so much for having me.

- Absolutely.

So in your reporting, you've talked about the hypothetical potential for Austin to land an MLB franchise, but how realistic is this?

- Yeah, so thank you for using the word hypothetical.

Right now, there's no plans for expansion.

There's a lot that MLB has to get done.

Primary among that is a collective bargaining agreement.

And there's a lot of issues that need to be hammered out through that before we even talk about that.

But the feeling is that if there is expansion, it's going to be two teams and probably happen within the next 10 years.

- Hmm.

And you've brought up a few of the various obstacles and circumstances that would prevent Austin from getting an MLB team, but what would you say are the biggest challenges confronting us right now for getting a team soon?

- Yeah, I would definitely say it's competition.

I mean, right now we have two teams in Texas, Houston and Dallas with the Rangers and Astros.

Besides that, there are a lot of untapped markets with a lot of the same selling points that Austin has.

And then they've also been working for years to bring a MLB team there.

So those are cities like Portland, Nashville, Salt Lake City that might be seen as a better option.

But again, it's all hypothetical until an expansion process begins.

- And obviously too it's gonna incur an enormous cost.

How do you think the private and public financial commitments would work and are there lessons that we could learn from things like Austin FC or the Round Rock Express?

- No, that's a great question.

It's going to be a multi-billion dollar effort.

There's the actual cost of the team, there's the operations that you have to have every year with contracts and salaries and your spring training, your international minor league system, so all that is a cost.

Then you have to finance and build a stadium.

We did go through this with Austin FC where they were able to work with the City of Austin to create a partnership.

We had the same thing with Moody Center, with UT and a private group, Oak View Group, be able to build a stadium and finance that.

But it's going to be a very, very hefty cost.

And the big thing that I think at the end of the day is going to be finding someone to take on that cost.

- And you brought up a stadium.

What are some possibilities for stadium sites?

- Yeah, so one of the groups that's working to bring baseball here, the Austin Baseball Commission, they have over the last year been going out and identifying real estate options.

They've looked as far north as Williamson County, as far south as Hays County.

They've looked downtown, around Downtown Austin.

What they've said is that realistically the best sites that they can see are in Eastern Travis County.

So east of I-35, but still in Travis County, not quite out to Bastrop because they wanna master plan out a site.

You know, they want to have a stadium, but they want to have a whole mixed use district around it.

So having the available land of Eastern Travis County, that's a big selling point for them.

But again, it's all hypothetical until that even becomes an option.

- Now let's paint a perfect reality and this is something in the works.

Do you think though Austin, you know, notorious for being a little bit alternative in the grand scheme of Texas, do you think it would even be receptive to a baseball team?

- I think so.

I mean, we have the Round Rock Express here.

They're actually celebrating their 25th anniversary.

Reid Ryan, son of Nolan Ryan, obviously baseball legend.

When they created that team, the goal was to have an MLB team here eventually.

It was essentially a case study to be able to prove Austin as an MLB market in the future.

When you talk to Reid, he basically says that Austin is on that track.

They've been able to build up that market, make it a viable market for a professional team.

So if executives are saying that, if it's even on a list, like there was an ESPN list that was put out last year about potential franchise locations and Austin was on that list so people in the industry are recognizing that.

And I don't know if it's gonna happen, but it's at least being considered.

- Well definitely something we'll have to follow.

An exciting journey for the next few years.

And selfishly it would be really cool, but also just think of all the sports puns we could use.

- Oh, for sure.

- We really hope Austin's baseball dreams don't strike out.

- Yeah, I love it.

- I know, low hanging fruit but that would just be such a fun opportunity for us nerdy journalists.

Well Justin, thank you so much for explaining and we'll have to stay tuned for the future of Austin's baseball.

- Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

(soft bright music) (soft bright music continues) - Sometimes it actually is rocket science.

That's the focus of Firefly Aerospace, a local company with a team of 700 plus employees based in Cedar Park.

Following their recent successful moon landing, they have plans to go even further.

We spent some time at their mission control facility to find out what's next.

- [Flight Controller 1] Power's nominal, vehicle is charging.

- [Flight Controller 2] IME reports lunar gravity and it is stable.

(spectators cheering) - All con, chief engineer on ops.

Y'all suck the landing.

We're on the moon.

(all cheering and applauding) - [Brigette Oakes] Firefly Aerospace just became the first commercial company in history to complete a fully successful moon landing.

Congratulations to the entire team.

This is such an incredible feat for Firefly, NASA, our nation, and the world as we pave the way for a lasting lunar presence.

- Joining us now is Jason Kim, the CEO of Firefly Aerospace, and we are here in Firefly's Mission Operation Center.

Very cool.

Jason, thanks so much for joining us.

- Thanks Laura.

Thanks for having me.

- Absolutely.

So Jason, first let's talk about the historic lunar landing.

What an incredible accomplishment and I've read the longest commercial operations on the moon to date and the first successful commercial moon landing.

What was that moment like for you?

- A proud moment.

You can see the Mission Operations Center.

It's empty right now, but I assure you it wasn't during the historic lunar landing.

We had a team of 60 Fireflies, two shifts going on, so 24/7 operations and they didn't miss a beat.

Everything that they did was like clockwork, down to the day of the landing.

It was actually the 2nd of March, which is historic because it's the Texas State Independence Day.

- Very cool.

Clearly meant to be how fortuitous it was to be on that very day.

But speaking of the lunar landing, how much of your business focus is on stuff like that versus satellite support or contracts with the military?

- We're so diverse at this company and it was deliberate.

Firefly is really good at picking the right market segments.

For instance, the Alpha Rocket is the only one ton rocket on the market right now and it's good that we do that because all the small satellites, they're not getting any smaller, they're actually getting bigger.

So this one ton market is great.

We're gonna take that flight heritage and all the great technologies from that and we are developing our medium launch vehicle and that'll be 16 times more capable in terms of mass to orbit than Alpha.

And then that's gonna launch Constellation's commercial, national security, as well as NASA.

So very well diversified there.

And then further, we're diversified in the spacecraft portfolio as well so we have our lunar landers that we're launching once a year to different parts of the moon that sometimes we've never been to.

So another historic besides just being the first commercial to do it and do the surface operations since the Apollo era, we're gonna land on the far side of the moon, we're gonna land in the Gruithuisen Domes and more.

And then finally we've got our Elytra vehicle, that's the orbiter, that's gonna do things for NASA, national security, for commercial missions as well.

So just having that diversified portfolio is immensely helpful for our company to grow and continue to do game changing missions.

- Clearly so much on the horizon for you and your team and it's all very cool to witness.

You know, Firefly and yourself maybe to the general public is not as well known yet as some of the bigger competitors or the owners like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos.

But your location here in Central Texas, it's growing rapidly and it offers some key advantages.

What would you say those are?

- Well, first of all, Austin is a pretty great town.

It's one of those towns that brings a lot of people to this location all the time, whether to live long term or just check it out.

It's the music capital of the world.

And then it's got great universities all across the state, especially here in Central Texas with University of Texas at Austin and others close by.

So the university is great, there's a lot of talent and we want to have our sons and daughters have great reliable growing companies to work in and Firefly is right here accepting candidates for all of our roles at the company as we grow.

Instead of them having to go and search for places in the West Coast or East Coast, they could just stay right here, close to family and a great setting.

- And that means something doubly coming from yourself, a fellow Texan.

- That's right.

- So you're giving back to your own community.

And the commercial space sector is really having a moment.

Besides the business opportunity, what would you say are the broader benefits and the impact of this kind of innovation?

- You know, I think the commercial industry is just blazing a trail with all the new technology that's out there, both on the satellite side as well as the rocket side.

There's just no stopping it because the commercial innovation brings in the latest technologies that you wouldn't have thought of traditionally.

And I think you're seeing new models like direct to cell phone kind of satellites, constellations out there.

You're seeing more Earth observation satellites, more and more of those populating the space, which means you need more small to medium launch vehicle capability 'cause 2027, there's gonna be a bottleneck.

And so we're gonna have our Alpha line rating up to launching 12 times a year, maybe even more.

We're gonna have a medium launch vehicle that's gonna be ready to launch constellations and so we're gonna help with advancing that commercial technology in space.

- And speaking of space, having this moment in the future of space exploration, last month a Blue Origin mission with an all-female crew completed a space trip.

It generated so many news headlines and it generated a lot of excitement, but also some critics for the optics of it.

And some have since written think pieces and especially younger people have posted on TikTok wondering about the importance of space exploration in today's world when so many things on Earth are happening.

Of course, you know, social political unrest, extreme weather events, maybe another pandemic.

What do you wanna say to young people or anyone who may be feeling that way?

- Yeah, one thing's for sure, space is bipartisan.

It just got to testify in front of Congress just a month ago.

It was in front of Democrats and Republicans and they all are for commercial technology and commercial companies like Firefly leveraging the technologies and applying it to game changing science missions just like Blue Ghost 1 where it successfully landed on the moon and did those surface operations.

It's one of those things, space is one of those things that brings everyone together.

And whenever there's a moment to inspire the next generation, I don't know if you knew, but on Blue Ghost 1, our marketing team had this whole campaign to reach out to 100 different local high schools and across the world even and sent out posters that said, "Dream big, you never know where you're gonna land."

And we think that helped inspire so many K through 12 students.

And what's that gonna do?

It's going to have people go into space and aerospace and other adjacent industries and really foster more astronauts, foster more great new game changing business models in space.

And so that mission alone went a long ways towards STEM and educating and inspiring that next generation.

- And how cool is it for kids to get to see models of rockets and to learn more about this?

I know as a kid growing up, going to NASA was such an exciting, exciting thing.

And how do you hope your operations here in Central Texas grow and what do you expect of the growth here in Central Texas?

- Well if you've toured our facility, you'll see just the massive scale of our 200 acres and our 250,000 square feet of factory space for both rockets and satellites.

And these are 100 foot rockets, 200 foot rockets, reusable rockets, as well as lunar landers and orbiters as well.

We're already production hardened.

All that is in place, the people are trained and they're building at rate.

We're just an execution story where we're just gonna continue rating up because there's so much demand for our Alpha rockets, for our medium launch vehicle, for our lunar landers as well as our orbiters.

So we're gonna continue increasing our supply and then providing that great technology to our customer base.

(exhaust roaring) - And what do you foresee and what do you hope for the future of space exploration?

- Well, I think that there's all kinds of new science that we don't understand yet.

For instance, on Blue Ghost 1, I don't think anybody in the world knew what the true temperature readings were gonna be on the moon's surface.

Blue Ghost 1 landed, we landed next to a crater safely, stable and upright.

The thing is, is that we expected a certain temperature and we saw a higher temperature.

We were still able to withstand those higher temperatures because we had a great design with margins.

But it just made me think there's so many geographical features on the moon that we don't even understand enough about.

So in the future we'd love to map that with higher resolution, higher fidelity so that when future landers go on the moon, whether it's for human life or robotics, we'll be ready for any type of temperature swing or anything else that is out there that we don't know about yet.

So that's something that's important.

Blue Ghost 2 is gonna go to the far side of the moon and we're gonna be RF dark, radio frequency dark because the moon itself is gonna be basically a shield blocking the Earth's noise as well as sometimes the sun's noise, which means it's gonna be very quiet, which means we can sense millions of years ago signals that came from the dark ages that are finally getting to us.

We'll be able to sense that.

And so there's just so much game changing science that we don't know about and we wanna do more of.

- It's definitely hard to comprehend.

That's why they call space the final frontier for a reason, so much yet to learn and it's so exciting to see all that your company is going to do.

Jason Kim, the CEO of Firefly Aerospace, thank you so much for joining us.

- Thanks Laura.

Thanks for having us and thanks for highlighting Firefly.

- Absolutely.

(soft bright music) (soft bright music continues) In North Austin, one group of middle school students turned their classroom into a newsroom, starting a school paper at the beginning of the year, and then their school became the story.

Our Decibel Team continues its coverage of the Rundberg community with this look at the Dobie Roadrunner.

- Two more minutes, girls.

Two more minutes to be in class.

Right, Dulce?

Good morning!

My name is Tatiana Brown-Gomez and I am a sixth grade and eighth grade ELA teacher.

We have all this different after school stuff, but there was not a newspaper.

Sadie.

I hope you're not, oh Lord, and Amy too.

In middle schools, it's not common to have a newspaper because there is no middle school newspaper curriculum like that.

But I really enjoyed it when I was in high school and I saw a lot of potential in just how they wrote.

And I was like, "Something about this is telling me they just need a little bit of their own voice and that's gonna help put the cherry on top for sure."

So I went ahead and started newspaper this year.

You still get the interview.

It would be really good if we got some information on that at that assembly, like what happened with that.

That first pitch day was hard.

- We're doing the work!

On LeBron.

- [Tatiana] Everything's completely new.

- I was kind of nervous.

I wanted to be like, I wanted to get it.

I feel like I'm actually doing a real job.

Like I'm not just going to classes, I'm dedicated to do something, you know?

(Evelin speaking Spanish) - Another challenge was grammar because a lot of our students' first language isn't English.

If I'm struggling with it and English is my first language, then I can't imagine having it be your second language.

But do the seventh graders on here first.

But it was really cool to see them get into the habit of being like, "Oh well, let's write about the pep rally."

"Oh, let's write about band."

Let's write about this and this and that.

- That was my first actual story.

And I was like, "You know what?

I finally know what to do."

(Evelin speaking Spanish) (bright music fades) - April 3rd is when we got an email and that was Thursday at six o'clock.

They were having a performance, a dance performance at the same time.

So you know, people pull out their phones, they have this community emailing that's being sent.

It's saying that Dobie has three options now to be turned into a charter school, to be permanently closed or to be temporarily closed and reimagined is the wording they used.

We were projected to get another F this school year, making that four years.

So if we got five years in a row of an F, that would allow for a TEA takeover, and as the district put it, that's not something they're willing to risk.

So everybody is freaking out obviously and being like, "Oh well, what do we do?"

- [Student 1] Put it on people's doors.

- I heard it in newspaper class.

So she wanted us to know about it but not to be scared.

- Monday's the next day that we have newspaper, so I told them.

- We started discussing about it, like how do you guys feel?

What should we do about it?

- It was immediate like, "Y'all, what are we gonna do?

How are we gonna save Dobie?"

- No, they're gonna submit it.

- [Tatiana] Ivy was working on the letters.

- And how do you feel about Dobie shutting down?

- I actually have a job to do, you know, I have to save the school, I have to talk about it.

(Evelin speaking Spanish) (Evelin speaking Spanish) - We were like, "Okay, let's start social media."

So it's like, "Okay, what do students think?

What do staff think?

What do parents think?"

- I wanted to do a video.

- And they're gonna have to move schools and I don't think that's fair to them.

- [Ivy] So we started recording everyone.

We were like, "What's your opinion?

How do you feel about Dobie shutting down?"

(Evelin speaking Spanish) (Evelin speaking Spanish) - When will this decision be made?

That's a good question.

We've been trying to keep people updated as well.

These are when you should be here at the community meeting or this is when this big board meeting is happening.

We kind of just went, "Go, go, go" and it hasn't really stopped since then.

- [Student 2] He's always telling us to do things.

- [Student 3] He's gonna be bossy, isn't he?

- [Tatiana] Then not release 'cause that would have to be like a whole separate thing.

It started out with a lot of energy.

It's kind of died down now as we've been in this weird limbo.

We don't know what's necessarily going to happen.

When we first got that email, and this is gonna make me somewhat emotional because immediately they're like, "Oh, is it because we're bad?"

They immediately saw it as everybody else in this district sees our students as bad students, as bad people.

It's just when you get news like this and it's being plastered around all media platforms that they're an F, they're an F, they're an F, they're an F and it's because of their low performance, that's one phrasing I kept seeing a lot, was that they're not performing as they should be.

And it disheartened me so much because I've seen what they could do in the cosmetology, in barber, in medical, in their classes.

Like that's a big thing that nobody thinks our students can do because they see these stereotypes that are around here.

I've been very honest with my students and being like, "I'm worn out.

I know you're worn out.

We've been fighting really hard, but we still have to put our voices out there."

It doesn't necessarily have to be like, "Oh now save Dobie" but it is about the students.

What do y'all need and what do you want?

What do you deserve?

- Miss Eugen's gonna go- - I really do think that- - He's gonna be bossy.

- So once again, that's something that we could report on.

It's hard because we don't know a lot of information right now, but the community meeting- I'm not sure exactly when the decision will be made.

I would love for my newspaper students to report on it so we can get that closure too.

Because like I said, our following is majority students.

- Literally like let's go.

- Yeah, Miss, let's go.

- I want them to understand that they truly have learned a lot of skills and now they have opened so many different avenues for themselves.

- And it's showing that they need us to like...

I never wrote like this before.

I feel like it's gonna improve my writing skills and my thinking skills.

And I feel like in my future, people are gonna look at my resume and they're gonna be like, "Whoa, she's in a newspaper class?

'Cause she knows what she's doing."

(Evelin speaking Spanish) (interviewer speaking Spanish) (Evelin speaking Spanish) - The future of Dobie remains uncertain.

The Austin Independent School District will submit turnaround plans to the Texas Education Agency for Dobie, Webb, and Burnet Middle Schools by the end of June.

And that's our show for today.

We're off next week, but we're back on June 12th with a reporter's round table recapping what you need to know from this Texas legislative session.

You can find all of our segments on the Austin PBS YouTube channel and full episodes of "Austin InSight" in the PBS app.

We'll see you soon.

(bright music) (bright music continues) (bright music fades) - [Announcer] Support for "Austin InSight" comes from: Sally & James Gavin.

And also from Suerte, Este, and Bar Toti Restaurants, bringing Austin together around culinary excellence to celebrate creativity, conservation, and culture in Central Texas.

(bright chime)