Kent mayor lauds aerospace industry during Chamber speech

Published 12:09 pm Friday, March 6, 2026

Kent Mayor Dana Ralph praised the city’s competitiveness in the aerospace industry during her State of the City Business Edition speech to the Kent Chamber of Commerce.

Ralph described how it all started in the 1960s at the Boeing Space Center with development of the Lunar Roving Vehicle used on the Apollo missions in the 1970s on the moon and spread to today’s rocket manufacturing companies Blue Origin and Stoke Space.

“Aerospace manufacturing is the backbone of our Valley,” Ralph said during her talk at the Green River College Kent Campus at Kent Station. “Nearly 32,000 aerospace jobs are located here, more than one-third of Washington’s entire aerospace employment located in the Kent Valley across 200 workplaces.”

Ralph said those aerospace businesses in the Kent Valley generate about $27 billion in manufacturing output each year.

“That is really impressive and it’s also really deliberate,” said Ralph, in the first year of her third four-year term as mayor. “That is the foundation of what we are building on. Kent Valley aerospace is accelerating. We are moving ahead and that’s what we have positioned ourselves to do.”

The mayor tied in the city’s space history with the present and the future.

“It was more than 50 years ago the Lunar Rover used by astronauts on the moon was designed and assembled in Kent Valley at Boeing Space Center,” she said. “That helped make some of the most historic moments in human space exploration possible. But that was not the end of our legacy. That was the beginning.”

The latest business booms are from Blue Origin, started by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2000 in Kent, and Stoke Space, which opened in Kent in 2019 with co-founders Andy Lapsa and Tom Feldman, each former Blue Origin employees.

“Blue Origin received nearly $270 million in a single month last fall,” Ralph said about an $190 million federal contract from NASA to land a science rover on the moon’s South Pole region by late 2027 and an $78 million contract from U.S. Space Force to expand space vehicle processing capacity by 2028 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

“Two separate contracts to a company that has called Kent home since 2000,” Ralph said. “That is something we should be very proud of.”

The Chamber audience responded with applause.

Ralph then described the funding that keeps rolling in for Stoke Space.

“Stoke Space is developing the Nova rocket and has raised more than $1.3 billion and is preparing for rocket launches this year,” Ralph said. “That is being created right here in the Kent Valley.”

Ralph continued the praise.

“These are examples of two Kent companies, two missions pushing the boundaries about what is possible, and it’s not a coincidence but a result of decades of investment in talent and infrastructure and an ecosystem that attracts the best in the world,” she said.

The mayor pointed out the significance of the aerospace industry.

“There are not many regions in the country that combine our level of aerospace concentration, direct freight access, deep industrial land and a coordinated workforce strategy all in one valley but Kent Valley does,” Ralph said.

With such success, Ralph emphasized a program by the city, the Kent School District and local businesses to get more students to consider aerospace careers.

“One of the challenges is not too many students know they have access to these jobs out of high school at $80,000 a year starting salary,” she said. “Our job is to make sure students are aware these opportunities exist.”

Called Kent Strategic Vision for Advancing STEM, the program targets students from kindergarten through high school to get hands-on STEM education aligned with industries driving the local economy from aerospace to health care. It’s a formal five-year commitment through 2028.

“We’re helping to set students up for success,” Ralph said. “As a mom, my goal has always been raise my kids up but I want my kids to come home. I’m super excited we are providing for our kids to stay right here.”

Nearly 800 students attended an aerospace career expo last year at the accesso ShoWare Center in Kent organized by city staff.

“Kids are connecting with actual employers and seeing a spark that they can do this,” Ralph said.

Ralph said Renton Technical College recently received a $2.6 million federal grant, sponsored by U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, to invest in Kent Valley’s air and space manufacturing workforce to expand aerospace education programming.

The Kent City Council recently reached an agreement to sell the city’s Naden property near downtown to a developer for $18.3 million to build an advanced manufacturing campus, with the aerospace industry a prime target.

“We are really excited about what is going to be coming on that Naden property,” Ralph said.

The mayor said it’s all part of an overall plan by the city.

“We are building a workforce system. …it is deliberate, we are making investments that make sense for our community,” she said.