During the 1980s while working at a national lab, Stone Aerospace founder and CEO Dr. Bill Stone had the opportunity to work with Tom Rogers, former deputy SECDEF under Robert McNamara. Rogers led the team that developed the world’s first satellite communications system for the Department of Defense. The feat had been performed under an incredibly tight time schedule.

Rogers later explained his method for achieving this remarkable success (in what today would be called “rapid prototyping”): he had selected the “crème-de-la-crème” of engineering talent of the day in fields ranging widely from radio communications to the nascent field of orbital rocketry and collected them all at a secluded retreat to brainstorm the radical concept of putting radio transceivers in space. Rogers wanted something remote, basic, yet functional and relaxed – a place where luminaries and engineers could discuss privately and in groups their ideas on how to proceed. The place he finally selected was the Chautauqua Lodge in Boulder, Colorado and the process of eliciting unusually novel ideas in this fashion he referred to as the “Chautauqua Effect”.

It was this concept that Stone Aerospace strived to duplicate in the establishment of it’s Austin, Texas headquarters and lab. Located just 7 minutes from Austin-Bergstrom (AUS) airport, the Stone Aerospace “Armadillo Works”™ comprises a high tech lab with attached design office and a rustic log cabin for housing visiting scientists, engineers, and programmers. With 26 acres available for expansion the site is poised to carry on in the Roger’s tradition of think-tank brainstorming and rapid prototyping.