beal aerospace
beal aerospace regrets to announce that it is ceasing all business operations effective october 23, 2000 .
according to beal aerospace, there was no greater roadblock than the u. s. government .
even more problematic was venezuela, which claimed ownership over the swampland beal aerospace was to lease .
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beal aerospace is 100 percent privately financed with a commitment of many hundreds of millions of dollars from mr. beal. the company is breaking the mold of traditional aerospace companies, which typically develop products using government funds to meet government needs .
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andy beal is the founder and chairman of beal bank and beal bank usa as well as other affiliated companies .
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it' s hard to say for sure what beal was thinking when he founded his aerospace company, and he isn' t saying. since the collapse of beal aerospace, the founder hasn' t granted any media interviews. his last public communication was the two - page eulogy for his aerospace company. access to his defunct company is forthcoming, but access to the man himself is denied .
both beal bank and beal bank nevada are subsidiaries of beal financial corp. , a holding company solely owned by beal. beal financial also owns charter bank, the recently acquired new mexico bank. (beal bank swallowed up the alabama bank. )
beal aerospace might have done the impossible: compete against nasa, boeing, and lockheed martin and win. but the tough odds held, and in october 2000, beal aerospace, the largest private rocket development effort in history, shut its doors and laid off more than 200 people. beal had spent $ 200 million of his own money by that time .
he was a space buff, millionaire, and unorthodox libertarian thinker. he was ready for another project. he devoted his energies to researching the viability of beal aerospace .
but the window of opportunity to make beal aerospace profitable was tight and closing. competing against the large aerospace companies and nasa' s new generation space - launch vehicles meant getting a jump on them by creating and launching his rockets within two years. every delay pushed the timetable back and reduced the chance beal' s company would earn money .
beal' s first major challenge was to design a disposable rocket that could put large payloads in orbit. beal decided on a creature from aerospace history: a multistage behemoth powered by a fuel of hydrogen peroxide cut with kerosene .
in frisco, beal aerospace plans to construct rockets that will help launch commercial payloads for telecommunications companies, according to comments at a sept. 16 meeting of the frisco city council .
1. beal hoped to make beal aero into a money making business. mr. beal (the man), should be admired. his life after beal aero makes for a story of a truly decent person. beal aero was a sad part in his life .
its common trivia around here that spacex took over the mcgregor site from previous rocket company beal aerospace. the test stands that falcon 9 cores are tested on were built by beal, but it got me wondering what else beal had accomplished while in operation. the answer surprised me. they did quite a bit !
andy beal and his banks, beal bank and beal bank usa, have donated millions of dollars to colleges and charity sponsorships and to prizes for science and math education .
it is the largest engine ever built by a private program with no ties or funding by the government. beal aerospace is a fully private company dedicated to build more reliable and economic access to space for the international satellite community .
the woman signs you in on a clipboard. the list of visitors is short .
it' s so rare anyone comes out here ,
says the woman, one of the few people still employed at beal aerospace .
he signed up as a peroxide scientist with beal aerospace. bringing the concentrated hydrogen peroxide production in - house cut costs by two - thirds, and with the amount of fuel required, that meant a vast saving .
andy beal pinches every penny until it squeals ,
carden says .
former beal aerospace vice president lewis watched the shutdown with interest, having seen beal begin to accept that money and willpower couldn' t create miracles .
he began to realize the scope of the job ,
lewis says .
he began to realize this was no small feat .
when news of the beal aerospace deal reached venezuelan ears, the country fell into deal - killing mode. government officials and diplomats said the launching pad could have military applications and threatened its national security because of u. s. government involvement with beal aerospace. a flustered spoede tried to explain that the government was only involved with export licensing and regulatory matters, but the complaints persisted. a u. n. moderator was called as saber - rattling ensued .
beal aerospace technologies inc. has started building a 100, 000 - square - foot rocket construction plant in frisco. it is reconfiguring facilities on a 124 - acre plot at an old navy base in mcgregor to test rocket engines .
to address requests for information about our founder, andy beal, beal bank provides this website of authorized reference material. read more
•shortly after the aerospace company closed, beal went to las vegas and challenged some of the world' s best poker players to high - stakes games, often donning sunglasses and headphones in an effort to prevent his opponents from reading his face .
beal aerospace this time hired peter pritchard, a well - respected researcher with chelonian research institute, an international environmental protection group, to validate its claim that the space launches wouldn' t hurt sea turtles that lay eggs on the nearby beaches .
after squads of beal executives prepare reports on assets for sale, beal peppers them with questions in a room nicknamed the
fishbowl .
the ba - 2 uses hydrogen peroxide and standard aviation fuel as propellants, providing tremendous environmental advantages. propellant is fed to beal aerospace technologies - built engines using helium pressure. this reliable pressure - fed technique negates the use of costly and complicated turbo pumps .
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a dallas billionaire by the name of andy beal, of beal aerospace, started searching for properties last year. he had his sights on two of the best properties in the nation. one being the $ 100 million property, 10000 hollow way, and the other was one of the crow' s family properties at 4500 preston rd .
the loss of beal aerospace may mean more than the continuing dilemma of expensive space launches. it can also be seen as a discouraging trend in america away from risky ventures, gutsy moves outside stiff government oversight, and the value of an individual to transform the world .
the border disputes were simmering nicely when the h2o2 fires at beal aerospace flickered out. publicly, guyana took the collapse with grace. a statement from the prime minister' s office read :
the government entered into the agreement with beal with the full knowledge and understanding that the commercial international space industry is a high - risk competitive business .
i have mixed feelings [ about beal aerospace ] ,
he says .
it was a great learning experience. looking back, i' d have done things differently. but if i had known what i know now, i would not have gotten involved .
beal aerospace was from near my home town area of dallas texas. i always looked on it as being spacex' s older brother, especially since the mcgregor facility was purchased from beal. it' s kind of like a hand - me - down. this write up gives a concise description of beal' s accomplishments and the forces that caused their shutdown. please enjoy the reading during the current long intermission between flights !
i really recommend reading the whole interview with beal. it is from june 2014 and speaks a lot about beal' s choice of launch sites and the challenges of each. beal looked at brownsville too, but ruled it out .
the disappointment was real. artist renderings of beal launches hanging in the defunct headquarters always show a rocket blasting from the lifeless rock of sombrero. the rocket is rising from plumes of smoke with
beal aerospace
stamped across the sides, checkered bands painted on its frame so that the brains in the launch command center can tell if the craft is spinning correctly .
andy beal formulated the beal conjecture, which is a generalization of fermat’s last theorem, and offers a $ 1, 000, 000 prize for the solution .
as the sole owner of beal financial, beal doesn' t have shareholders to answer to. that suits his independent personality fine, his friend kaplan said .
while beal aerospace recognizes the need for nasa to develop a human rated launch capability for space station and other human missions, we find it inexcusable and intolerable that nasa intends for these subsidized systems to additionally compete for non - human rated missions including cargo for the space station and commercial satellite missions .
beal sued the fdic in 2002. the regulator had taken over operations of an illinois bank in 2001. it continued making subprime mortgages, some of which beal bank bought. in a lawsuit, beal bank accused the fdic of misrepresenting the mortgages. the agency agreed to pay beal bank $ 90 million in late 2008 .
as the company progressed, beal recruited more experienced talent. walter lewis, a 30 - year veteran of the aerospace business, was tapped as vice president of business development. lewis brought a wealth of knowledge about satellite customers and their products and was pleased to use that knowledge to advance his field .
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1. after cots, spacex hasn' t. beal wanted to get money .
while beal might prefer a low profile, his business is getting hard to ignore .
beal keeps mum when it comes to his methods for determining prices, colleagues say .
one wild card beal will have to deal with is the development of reusable rockets .
the emptiness hits home when you explore the cavernous space where they planned to build rockets. not just any rockets: rockets powered by the largest engine developed by anyone in the united states since the apollo space program. the stage one rocket designed by beal aerospace burns three backyard swimming pools of fuel per second .
•he founded beal aerospace in the mid -' 90s to compete with nasa and others for satellite launches. in 2000, the company dazzled spectators with 300 - foot flames at a successful engine test in mcgregor, near waco. it also laid plans to build manufacturing and launch facilities in the caribbean or south america .
it didn' t take long for beal aerospace to figure out that setting up your personal rocket program came with its own set of unique problems. the troubles ranged from the typical, such as problems with internal software, to the absurd, such as the nation of venezuela protesting your project to the united nations .
there' s a lot of beal wannabes ,
said danny payne, a former commissioner of the texas department of savings and mortgage lending, a beal bank regulator .
a retired naval weapons research laboratory located near waco, texas, just east of mcgregor, was the site of the extensive rocket engine test program. beal aerospace technologies built its new factory and office space in frisco, texas. this facility supported development of the ba - 2 fabrication methods, and housed the administrative, technical, and executive staff of beal aerospace technologies. it was planned that eventually a coastal site would be secured for a multiple hundred - thousand square foot fabrication and stage assembly plant. this production facility would take over production from the frisco facility, which would then focus on research and development for advanced vehicles in the ba family .
meanwhile, beal and legendary activist investor carl icahn are facing off against beal' s old friend donald trump for control of three atlantic city casinos that went bankrupt a year ago .
if the opposition wins, beal is out. the opposition party will not have beal in there ,
reis says .
hopefully, we' ll win again .
the headquarters of beal aerospace in frisco mirrors its history: hopeful and ambitious birth, thrilling and painful growth, and an early and tragic death. its empty parking lot and vast vacant warehouse spaces are the remnants of a dream so bold it ranged from texas to the jungle nation of guyana to thousands of miles above the planet .
the tax agency disallowed deductions beal had taken against $ 1. 2 billion in income he earned between 2002 and 2004. (beal financial is an s corporation, which means its income, losses, deductions and credits pass through to beal' s personal tax return) .
suriname was less than thrilled to see a rocket launch company set up shop in guyana. visions of missiles raining on suriname must have danced through their heads, and more important, the burst of beal aerospace revenue would have allowed guyana to easily match a recent increase in surinamese arms purchases. no nation is too poor to afford an arms race .
beal aerospace was conceived in 1995 as its founder read a magazine article about the coming boom in satellite technology. no one could predict that this boom would plateau in the new millennium, driving satellite and launch companies to the brink. beal saw a problem, and his keen mind sought ways around it like an equation. the problem: expensive launches. the solution :
dumb
rocket launches using new twists on older, reliable technology .
it' s may 20, 1999, and beal is pleading, begging, before congress .
so did the administration in charge .
guyana needs a project like that ,
says terry reis, honorary consul for guyana in houston, who helped coordinate negotiations with beal aerospace. she rarely puts the spaceport project in past tense, even though it is obviously deceased .
the project is wonderful, but the opposition is always in opposition .
carden attracted beal' s attention with his proposal for the x - prize, a contest sponsored by a private space tourism foundation. the x - prize foundation is offering a $ 10 million bounty to the first privately funded craft to carry three people to suborbital space (62 miles) then repeat the feat within two weeks. carden' s hydrogen peroxide fuel (which never got past the proposal) and entrepreneurial spirit seemed a perfect fit for beal aerospace .
startup company beal aerospace technologies inc. is in the preliminary stages of designing the ba - 1 expendable liquid - fuel rocket capable of lifting a 17, 000 - lb. payload into a 180 - mi. circular, low - earth orbit. first launch is tentatively scheduled for january 2000. ceo andrew beal said the ba - 1 would be a '` unique launch vehicle with the potential to dramatically reduce the cost of boosting satellites into space.'' beal, the sole stockholder in the dallas - based company, said he is ...
the bureaucracy at beal aerospace may have been slim, but the u. s. government bureaucracy was still a serious hindrance. no problem was greater than the state department' s refusal to give an export license to the company to ship its rockets out of the country for cheaper launches. the position became a frustrating unknown for the entire company and caused months of expensive delay .
industry experts agree that the u. s. competition was a major hindrance, but other factors helped doom his project, including a satellite industry slowdown that surprised beal and most aerospace analysts. the industry was stabilizing. companies were planning for more rapid growth but were blindsided. established satellite companies carrying huge debt loads were ailing; one declared bankruptcy, and others teetered on the brink .
beal' s mcgregor facility features two additional test stands: a vertical - fire test stand for smaller engines, and a 220 - feet tall vertical - fire stand, currently under construction, for larger engines. the mcgregor test facility also houses a five - ton - per - day hydrogen peroxide concentrator, designed and built by company engineers. headquartered in frisco, texas, near dallas, beal aerospace designs, is building and will launch heavy - lift vehicles for the international satellite community .
beal aerospace where building a' big dumb booster'. basically the idea is you use really low quality and efficiency, but cheap, technology. that way you have to build a really big booster to get any descent payload since it' s mass fraction is so low, but (in theory at least) it' s cheaper to develop, build and launch because its so simple .
if anyone was going to do it, it would be someone like beal. they took him fairly seriously. he was putting most of his bank profits into the project ,
says aerospace analyst marco caceres .
he wasn' t wasting a lot of time raising money... people thought he was progressing, that this guy could be up and running in a few years .
it' s eminently fair to say beal' s plan was a long shot. that' s not to say it had no merit. each stage of the business plan was backed by logic, reason, and market sense. satellite launches are prohibitively expensive. the disposable beal aerospace rockets were designed to be cheap and effective, thanks to the combination of their simple old - school design and new lighter construction materials. its rocket fuel was unorthodox but viable. the spaceport could have been built and maintained .
these days, the front door of beal aerospace is locked, and knocks go unanswered. three vehicles dot the otherwise empty parking lot, testifying that there is still life at the headquarters of the defunct satellite launch company. all but a handful of the 200 - plus engineers, rocket scientists, and assorted staff have been laid off, and the vacant rows of their parking spaces seem like unmarked graves .
paper rockets? mr. beal deserves the respect for putting his money in real terms where his mouth was .
over the last 18 months, beal has gobbled up loan portfolios from hedge funds, banks and federal regulators .
carden wished beal was around more .
looking back, if he stepped into the role of project manager, he could have gotten something off the ground. unfortunately, he had many other responsibilities with beal bank .
andrew beal has been a player on the dallas financial and real - estate scene for more than a decade .
no other details about beal' s plans for the plant were available last week. beal has submitted
incomplete
plans for its $ 3. 5 million facility in the stewart creek business park, city officials say .
at the sad shell of available office space that was once beal aerospace, spoede reaches into a box and plucks a publicity shot of a horizontal rocket test in mcgregor. it pictures a 10 - foot column of flame blasting 300 feet from the barrel of a rocket engine. a bright red truck sits near the lick of fire .
he had it freshly painted red and put out there, for scale ,
spoede says, referring to andy beal .
people said he was nuts to put it there .
the treaty was yet another hassle in a long string of hassles, and it was hampering beal aerospace' s viability by throwing a cloak of uncertainty over the program .
andy had a lot of struggles with it ,
says carden .
there was nothing military about a 40 - year - old rocket... for a month, we couldn' t talk about the rocket at all .
spoede walks into the nation' s federal government office in the steamy capital of georgetown, briefcase in hand and sweat under armpits. behind him, the crowd of protesters are chanting, waving signs, displaying red rage for cameras and reporters. they are a mixed bag of environmentalists, indigenous indians, and guayanese opposition party members, all dedicated to scuttling the south american country' s deal with beal aerospace .
boeing has spent millions, no billions by now, on eelvs ,
says paul nisbet, an aerospace analyst with jsa research .
he was doing everything on his own... obviously, he was competing against the federal government, and they are very hard to compete against .
beal aerospace fired today the largest liquid rocket engine built since the historic apollo program of the 1960s. the 810, 000 - pound vacuum thrust hydrogen peroxide / kerosene engine, designated the ba - 810, is the stage 2 engine for beal’s forthcoming ba - 2 heavy - lift launch vehicle, scheduled for inaugural launch in 2002. the engine made a 21 - second firing at the company’s engine test facility in mcgregor, texas before a large crowd of company employees, industry and government vips, news media and other > guests .
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mcgregor site was originally a navy ordinance and test site bought by beal. i' m just not sure if any previous rocket development took place there. beal certainly built the test stands required for the be - 2, etc .
as a launch site for the ba - 2, beal aerospace signed an agreement on 18 december 1997 for the exclusive use of sombrero island in the caribbean for up to 98 years. this lone island was 56 km north - west of anguilla, a dependent territory of the united kingdom. it was well located for due - east launches as well as north and north - east launches for all orbit inclinations of commercial interest .
that luck brought him to some strange places, including a desert island that was beal aerospace' s first choice for a spaceport home. it was called sombrero island, a sad 95 - acre rock about 100 miles from st. croix, belonging to the island nation of anguilla. sombrero island is a simple lump of coral and rock with a lonely lighthouse staffed with even lonelier lighthouse keepers. beal aerospace representatives would sleep on the tip of the island, as far from the squirrelly keepers as possible, spoede says. there are no trees or shrubs on sombrero. the dutch had already raped sombrero island when they strip - mined it for bird guano. it used to be shaped like its
hat
namesake, but all that remains is the brim. the dutch mining operation and severe weather flattened the only parts that peaked well above sea level .
beal aerospace fired today the largest liquid rocket engine built since the historic apollo program of the 1960s. the 810, 000 - pound vacuum thrust hydrogen peroxide / kerosene engine, designated the ba - 810, is the stage 2 engine for beal' s forthcoming ba - 2 heavy - lift launch vehicle, scheduled for inaugural launch in 2002. the engine made a 21 - second firing at the company' s engine test facility in mcgregor, texas before a large crowd of company employees, industry and government vips, news media and other guests .
the privately financed project reached a major milestone on 4 march 2000 when beal aerospace fired the largest liquid rocket engine built since the apollo program. the 3, 600 kn vacuum thrust hydrogen peroxide / kerosene stage 2 engine, designated the ba - 810, made a 21 - second firing at the company' s engine test facility in mcgregor, texas. at that time flights of the launch vehicle were scheduled to begin in 2004 .
after paying what the irs said he owed for' 02, beal sued for a refund through his southgate master fund partnership .
the beal engines were all pressure fed, so they were much lower chamber pressure than a comparable size engine with a turbopump .
according to documents filed last year, andrew beal also owned some 900 apartment units in texas, michigan, ohio and missouri .
beal aerospace has made significant advances in low cost hydrogen peroxide propulsion systems and continues to believe that low cost and reliable space launch systems are viable and producible by relatively small commercial companies. despite our experience with cost overruns and schedule delays, we were confident of our ability to ultimately succeed in the development of our ba - 2c rocket launch system. the ba - 2c program was the largest privately funded program ever in existence to build a large capacity space launch system .
it is the largest hydrogen peroxide - propelled engine ever built. hydrogen peroxide was first developed as a rocket propellant in the 1930s, then was replaced in later years for more potent alternatives like liquid oxygen. advances in engine design and chemical engineering, pioneered at beal aerospace, have led to a rediscovery of hydrogen peroxide and its operational and environmental advantages. hydrogen peroxide, for example, is stored and handled at ambient temperature, rather than cryogenic temperatures like other propellants .
beal aerospace got caught in this dilemma when it tried to launch from south american spaceports. the company needed the state department to sign off on export licenses and wasn' t getting a good response .
there was a key individual or two in the state department who had reservations ,
says spoede, declining to get into deeper detail. to break the institutional deadlock would have taken a supreme effort involving lobbyists and pubic relations drives in washington, d. c .
but it folded later in 2000, with beal saying it couldn' t compete with nasa' s
subsidized launch systems .
beal spent an estimated $ 200 million on the project, according to press reports, though he has never confirmed that figure .
but beal didn' t build it. he picked it up at a discount when its former owner moved its employees to houston .
he pauses and gives his epitaph on beal' s dream :
i guess it' s hard to be a genius .
like a bird of prey, beal' s mind is wired to spot and seize opportunities. when the savings - and - loan crisis was eviscerating texas' financial industry and shutting down banks, beal decided to open one and began buying defaulted bank loans for as little as 40 cents on the dollar. beal bank launched in 1988 with $ 3 million. it would become a billion - dollar enterprise .
in a september interview, a company official said beal was looking to jump into the booming business of launching commercial satellites for telecommunications companies .
lockheed and boeing are also in the eelv market, but lockheed is less aggressive for the time being. lockheed' s eelv, called atlas 5, will not even compete for government contracts against boeing because the air force already assigned most of the future satellite payloads to boeing, which will launch from a specially built spaceport on vandenberg air force base in california. both boeing and lockheed will receive government subsidies to get satellites in orbit cheaper and be in a position to compete with beal aerospace in the private sector .
1. if you compare the amount, or even the percentage of mr. beal' s investment compared with todays so called
commercial
a federal judge ruled that the deductions should not be allowed, but also held that beal acted in good faith, so penalties were not appropriate .
officials of the company would not comment for this story, saying they wanted to wait until a march 19 press briefing on beal' s plans .
lewis' job with beal aerospace was decidedly different from previous work at megacorps such as hughes and boeing .
it was great in that respect. there was kind of an entrepreneurial spirit there. i always thought we were competing against the big boys. i enjoyed that ,
lewis says .
i did find it a little difficult working for a single individual... it was a plus and a minus. the company could be nimble and make quick decisions, but he could get out of bed and change his mind .
this is a remarkable achievement for our program ,
said company founder and ceo andrew beal .
our program started small in 1997, with a vision to build a more reliable, more economic means to space for the international satellite community. after a steady stream of successes in our engine development and composite - tank programs, we' re beginning to generate a lot of attention. building the largest liquid engine in 30 years is an extraordinary achievement – particularly for a private company .
the engine marks several milestones in the aerospace community :
leased by beal from the city. the navy used to do solid rocket work there after world war ii. jato bottles among other things were tested there. there' s an informative aiaa article somewhere on the history of the bluebonnet ordnance plant, from wwii up to the beal / spacex days .
beal bank' s average return on equity, a measure of profitability, was more than 25 percent over the last five years, compared with an industry average of 6. 7 percent, according to snl financial. the number for beal bank nevada, a sister bank, was 11. 6 percent .
politically, beal has described himself as a libertarian, and he' s a believer in limited government. he and his wife are major republican donors .
in an nice wrap up, beal was interviewed (pdf) on his thoughts on spacex and specifically the mcgregor site. he had this to say :
unfortunately, development of a reliable low cost system is simply not enough to insure commercial viability. several uncertainties remain that are totally beyond our control and put our entire business at risk. the most insurmountable risk is the desire of the u. s. government and nasa to subsidize competing launch systems. nasa has embarked on a plan to develop a second generation launch system that will be subsidized by u. s. taxpayers and that will compete directly with the private sector. in my capacity as founder and chairman of beal aerospace, i previously testified to a congressional subcommittee that government subsidies to competing launch providers constituted the private sector' s biggest business risk. nonetheless, nasa remains committed to such an effort, and congress last week approved an initial $ 290 million to begin an effort that nasa declares will result in the government funding of one or two human rated subsidized launch systems within 5 years. while beal aerospace recognizes the need for nasa to develop a human rated launch capability for space station and other human missions, we find it inexcusable and intolerable that nasa intends for these subsidized systems to additionally compete for non - human rated missions including cargo for the space station and commercial satellite missions .
that plot includes an existing bunker and a rocket thrust stand, which beal is retrofitting, city officials say. the company plans to build an additional thrust stand .
fact is that just when things were getting interesting, the firm was shut down. i don' t consider the company a failure as mr beal pulled the plug .
not many years ago, lenders were bagging profits by making loan after loan after ill - fated loan. andy beal saw the easy money and ran the other way .
without satellites going into orbit, a launch service company is grounded. the pond was going dry, and the fish were dying, leaving birds like beal to starve .
beal' s rockets will be expendable, meaning they can only be used once. the company will face competition from much larger competitors such as lockheed martin and boeing .
he shields his computer keyboard and screen with pieces of cardboard so no one else can see. the executives leave without knowing how beal determines what he is willing to bid .
carden began distancing himself from beal in early 1999, becoming an independent contractor employed by beal under a six - month contract. when beal folded his hand, carden simply accepted the previous isu offer to market his fuel. the school gets two - thirds of the royalties for its help and the intellectual property rights, and the scientists get free marketing and the intellectual gravitas of having university affiliation. now, the scientist who was outraged at government bureaucracy is just another defense contractor peddling his wares to nasa and the air force .
not that beal is crowing about it. he tries hard to avoid publicity. he declined to be interviewed for this article, although he eventually agreed to confirm facts in it .
beal lives in highland park with his wife and their four children. he also has two children with his first wife. his eldest daughter is expecting his first grandchild next month .
measuring 1. 6 km long by 0. 6 km, the island featured a lighthouse which was the first landfall for ships approaching from europe. this territory was to be transformed into the beal aerospace launch site, featuring a horizontal vehicle integration building on one end of the island and a launch pad at the opposite end. a runway would link the island to the mainland for personnel and high - value cargo transport. a heavy - load roadway would link the integration building to the launch pad. a small port area to the south - west of the integration building was to be used for transport of rocket stages, propellants, and heavy equipment and supplies via barge and ship .
i am a good guy made to look like a bad guy for doing what every taxpayer does - appropriately use the law to minimize my taxes ,
beal told forbes last year .
the company, which is controlled by dallas banker and apartment owner d. andrew beal, also says it has a 98 - year lease on a caribbean island from which to launch payloads .
nor has beal disclosed much about what it is going to do on a 124 - acre plot it has leased at the 10, 000 - acre navy weapons industrial reserve plant in mcgregor .
beal considered all kinds of new launch concepts. he was initially very intrigued by the simplicity of solid propellant motors. but he wanted to develop new concepts on how a rocket might be designed and manufactured using a totally new and vertically integrated low - cost production methodology. after spending considerable time with industry engineers and professionals, beal concluded that he must distance his new effort from the existing mindset in the industry where government and military contracts were the norm. beal decided to
go it alone
and develop at his own expense totally new rocket and related manufacturing and launch facilities .
downtown - - a dallas company headed by the majority stakeholder in beal financial corp. is quietly assembling what it says is a $ 250 million program to build and launch commercial rockets into space .
he owns nearly all the shares of beal financial corp. , the shell corporation for profitable beal bank. for the nine months ended sept. 30, the bank reported net income of $ 66. 1 million on revenues of $ 145. 7 million. that compares with profits of $ 44. 8 million and sales of $ 143. 5 million for the same period in 1996 .
propellant tanks are composite filament - wound structures, making them very lightweight, durable and strong. beal operates one of the world' s largest filament winding machines at its facility in frisco, texas .
delays and unexpected hassles meant cost overruns. beal was the sole investor in the company, and while this meant he need not explain the delays to anyone, it also meant that no one was accountable to anyone but beal. former employees say most of the problems were controllable, if not routine .
yes, there were issues, but they weren' t deal killers ,
spoede says .
but marco caceres, space analyst at the fairfax, va. - based teal group, says the market is big enough - - and growing fast enough - - for beal to grab a slice .
beal, already beset with export licenses and diplomatic quarrels over his proposed spaceport, claimed a massive subsidy program for government - contracted launch companies doomed the start - up' s chances to make a profit .
beal, a native of lansing, michigan, was attending michigan state university when he began buying and selling rental property to pay for school. when he transferred to baylor university, his interest in real estate was still high. in waco, the young beal bought a dilapidated apartment complex with the aim to fix it, rent it, and then sell it. the market and industry proved so lucrative that beal dropped out of baylor and devoted his full energies to real estate. by 1978, he had relocated and was dealing real estate in dallas, a popular roost for entrepreneurial spirits and cravers of fast money .
beal' s mind has been active with self - education since he dropped out of baylor. math has been his first and steady love: oates says he' s spotted his friend working on complex equations to pass the time on air flights. not content with simple self - improvement, beal sought to make an intellectual and scientific mark through his hobbies. his money became a vehicle to leave a profound mark .
since beal closed up shop about 2000 and musk formed spacex about 2001 - 2002, elon must have had discussions with mr beal about the business environment and his reasoning. i always felt he threw in the towel a bit to early. that is certainly based on hind site and the launch market looked pretty bad at that point, but most business goes in cycles so the market had to come back, eventually .
getting a good price is key to beal' s business model. if there' s an insight at the heart of what he does, it' s that markets sometimes put the wrong price on risk .
we give andy the information, and he decides the pricing ,
said one beal bank executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity .
i do not know how he arrives at the pricing .
i had never been to texas ,
beal told the dallas morning news in 1997 .
my plan was to finish college at baylor, but i got busy starting little businesses and never did .
since then, nasa has changed course and is now aiming to support private - sector companies. space exploration technologies, a company led by entrepreneur elon musk, is using beal' s old facilities in mcgregor .
my fear is that the fed has little more understanding of the stench of the garbage than many of the current owners who bought all these debt instruments issued about 2004 ,
beal said in the ad .
six months later, the nation crashed into its worst financial crisis since the 1930s. providing the fuel were the kinds of shortsighted loans beal avoided making while other lenders were ringing up profits just a few years before .
2 of the beal engine bells are on display at the frontiers of flight museum in dallas. one inside and 1 outside. here are a couple of pics i took of one of em a few months ago .
beal lent nearly $ 500 million to the casinos, which carry trump' s name, and he recently sold a majority of that loan to icahn. a hearing is set for tuesday in a new jersey bankruptcy court .
beal ended up bidding on a waco apartment building instead. he won with a bid of $ 217, 500 - $ 17, 500 of his own money and a $ 200, 000 loan, according to craig .
contacted by a book reviewer for the news in 2005, beal described his poker days as
not much of a story. i went to las vegas, got interested in playing poker and that' s it .
everybody in the banking business follows beal bank ,
said jim gardner, a banking industry veteran and chairman of commerce street capital, a dallas - based investment bank .
it' s such an unusual operation .
beal bank' s glass - domed headquarters sits along the dallas north tollway in plano, near a mall, some fields, several corporate campuses and two plano water towers. the lobby glitters with shiny granite and polished wood .
daniel andrew beal grew up in a middle - class family in lansing, mich. , with an older brother and a younger sister. his mother was a secretary in the state government; his father was a mechanical engineer .
beal was staring at stiff, government - funded competition in eelv and rlv markets, an uncertain spaceport project, a problematic rocket system, increasing costs, and a slow market. in september 2000, he cut half of the staff, but company officials refused to say the company was shutting down. when congress approved $ 290 million in subsidies a month later, as part of nasa' s space launch initiative, beal decided to abort his mission .
i remember beal, and being excited about his technology. of course, the gov' t had to have assured access to space, so was funding the eelv developments around the same time. beal wanted those vehicles to be legally restricted to gov' t launches; said the commercial market would be unfair if it included vehicles who' s development was government funded. when he didn' t get his way, he took his marbles and went home .
in 1976, 21 - year - old beal, the son of an engineer and a state government employee, attended a property auction in waco. the move would sow the seeds of a personal fortune of lone star state proportions .
beal h2o2 / kerosene rocket engine. 3600 kn. development 1990' s. pressure - fed engine with composite ablative chamber and nozzle. helium pressurant. thrust declines to 50% of initial value before shutdown. isp = 282s .
beal never struck me as someone who was in it for the money. he was doing it more out of passion ,
says caceres, senior space analyst at the teal group, a fairfax, virginia - based consulting firm .
in april 1998, the iowan met beal at the bank headquarters in dallas .
i had a very good impression. i never felt like he was a millionaire ,
carden says .
i mean, he flies economy .
lots of beal and spacex and other
new space
goodness in there from one of the few that have stood in the shoes as a private spaceflight company, a truly unique perspective we don' t often get candid answers from .
beal' s friend and banking peer oates takes a moment to decry a government that stepped on the private sector .
the government should be pushing new technologies while the andy beals of the world commercialize it within the best business model .
the government is appealing the judge' s ruling disallowing the imposition of penalties, a department of justice spokesman said. beal is appealing the disallowance of the deductions and waiting for the irs to return the penalties, according to a lawyer representing him .
beal took out a full - page ad in the wall street journal on march 18, 2008. wall street investment bank bear stearns had just failed, and the federal reserve agreed to fund billions of dollars of the bank' s riskiest assets .
at the heart of this dream is andrew beal, self - made billionaire and amateur math genius, one of those rare people who have enough cunning, money, vision, money, ambition, and money to drag his vision into reality. what reality did to beal' s dream is not a lesson in hubris aimed at rich men but rather a warning for any visionary or uber - achiever: the world may not let you change it, and for reasons that may not make sense .
if you compare the amount, or even the percentage of mr. beal' s investment compared with todays so called
commercial
its very much an apples vs oranges story. today' s
commercials
take taxpayer money to fund their companies .
to do this, one must have a spaceport, a cape canaveral for the private sector. beal endeavored to build his own spaceport somewhere close to the equator, where his rockets could gain momentum from earth' s rapid spin and save on fuel .
a new thrust chamber was fitted for today' s tests. the chamber used in the previous two tests is undergoing analysis at beal' s engineering and assembly facility in frisco, texas, near dallas, and will return to the stand for future tests .
wow, thanks for the info, its a shame i never knew about this. i also find interesting this sentence :
in 1995, a magazine article sparked beal' s interest in satellites and new proposed low earth orbit constellations ...
.
the first time i played him heads - up, it was like taking candy from a baby ,
said howard lederer, a beal opponent .
by the end, he was a very formidable opponent. it was extraordinary to watch his progress .
i think he considers himself a lucky person ,
says brad oates, vice chairman of bluebonnet savings and loan and a friend of beal' s for more than a decade .
he knows whoever is born in this country has won the lottery .
not only did andy beal close on the $ 100 million property but it is rumored that he also has 4500 preston road under contract. when you have $ 11 billion, i guess buying a couple multi - multi - million dollar properties is just another day .
beal bank got its charter in 1985, but it didn' t get federal deposit insurance until three years later. the bank launched with $ 3 million in capital in 1988. by then, the texas oil and real estate bust was devastating the local banking industry .
it seems in many ways that andrew beal' s ideas were listened to, and spacex is the benefactor of that groundwork both figuratively in the case of the evolved politics of cots, crs, and ccdev, but also literally with the contribution mcgregor test site itself .
beal was 35 when the bank was founded. it grew into the largest privately held lending institution in dallas and is still raging, frequently ranking first among all u. s. banks and savings and loans, judged on return on equity over a five - year period .
i always thought the environmental concerns were bogus ,
spoede says. an environmental assessment by a washington firm hired by beal stated sombrero was not unique as a nesting site, has no endangered species, and provides nesting sites to a very small percentage of caribbean seabirds.
beal aerospace was a launch vehicle development company , founded in february 1997 by andrew beal , president of beal bank in dallas , texas . the goal of the company was to build and operate a privately developed heavy lift orbital launch vehicle . it ceased operations on october 23 , 2000 . 
beal aerospace was a launch vehicle development company, founded in february 1997 by andrew beal, president of beal bank in dallas, texas. the goal of the company was to build and operate a privately developed heavy lift orbital launch vehicle. it ceased operations on october 23, 2000.
beal aerospace was a launch vehicle development company, founded in february 1997 by andrew beal, president of beal bank in dallas, texas. the goal of the company was to build and operate a privately developed heavy lift orbital launch vehicle. it ceased operations on october 23, 2000.