{"id":125878,"date":"2026-04-22T18:38:54","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T00:38:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/jacks-plastic-welding-of-aztec-built-recovery-raft-for-artemis-ii-mission\/"},"modified":"2026-05-10T12:36:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T18:36:18","slug":"jacks-plastic-welding-of-aztec-built-recovery-raft-for-artemis-ii-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/jacks-plastic-welding-of-aztec-built-recovery-raft-for-artemis-ii-mission\/","title":{"rendered":"Jack\u2019s Plastic Welding of Aztec built recovery raft for Artemis II mission"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"T.J.
T.J. Garcia and a few of his team of 12 employees. (Courtesy T.J. Garcia)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The orange rafts that fished four astronauts out of the Pacific after the Artemis II splashdown April 10 didn\u2019t come from a NASA lab or a big defense contractor.<\/p>\n

They were built by hand in a small shop on Main Avenue in Aztec, New Mexico, where Jack\u2019s Plastic Welding has quietly engineered specialized recovery gear for modern spaceflight.<\/p>\n

For CEO and designer T.J. Garcia, the project marks the culmination of two decades of hands-on work and ingenuity culminating in a historic moment in the Pacific Ocean off San Diego.<\/p>\n

NASA tapped Jack\u2019s Plastic Welding to design and build the inflatable recovery platforms used by U.S. Navy teams to extract astronauts from the Orion capsule, a contract that pushed the crew to invent new welding techniques that are now being used across their full line of products.<\/p>\n

According to NASA, the Artemis II mission<\/a> was the first crewed test of the Orion spacecraft, sending four astronauts to confirm that the capsule\u2019s systems functioned well in space.<\/p>\n

\u201cFinally come together. We\u2019ve been working on it for years,\u201d Garcia said. \u201cReal life mission \u2013 pretty rewarding.\u201d<\/p>\n

Garcia\u2019s journey goes back about 20 years, starting with what he called \u201cgrunt work\u201d at age 15, high school summer breaks. After graduating, he built rafts and other products full time. When business slowed and he was laid off, he and decided on instrumentation training at San Juan College.<\/p>\n

A family-oriented man, Garcia chose not to work in the oil field, which required travel. Instead, he worked locally in fire suppression before returning to Jack\u2019s Plastic Welding.<\/p>\n

Garcia said most of his career was built through hands-on work, and when JPW co-founder Erol Baake decided to retire in 2019, he didn\u2019t want the company he had invested so much time and effort in to pass to people he couldn\u2019t work with.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I threw my hat in the ring, and they selected me for CEO,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Working with NASA<\/div>\n

According to Garcia, the \u201cword on the street\u201d is about nine years ago that Jack Kloepfer had a plan and won the contract because he had a contact who alerted him that NASA was asking for bids.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd just because of that foresight, they really jumped on it that we had some of the software that we can easily share models,\u201d Garcia said regarding the computer-aided design programs they were using.<\/p>\n

Garcia said they could move quickly because the company had the foresight to use computer-assisted design programs and could easily share design models.<\/p>\n

Garcia said he believes NASA found out about Jack\u2019s from their work with Boeing, building \u201cinflatable ladders and that type of equipment.\u201d The company also made stabilization collars for the SpaceX Dragon 2 capsule as a subcontractor.<\/p>\n

Regarding their most recent work, Garcia said \u201csome parts are pretty straightforward, but some welding techniques were done in a unique way where we were able to meld a drop stitch, like paddleboard material, with a normal inflatable, and we combine them together.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNever seen it done the way we did it, to pull off that flat top yet having a full inflatable bottom,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Their innovative process resulted from a focused period of building about one raft a month for roughly two years.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd had we patented it, who knows where we would be now,\u201d Garcia said.<\/p>\n

\"A
A Jack\u2019s Plastic Welding raft similar to numerous others built for NASA. (Courtesy T.J. Garcia)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>
Key rewards<\/div>\n

\u201cI would say the best thing that has come from is not just like the publicity or, extra contracts,\u201d said Garcia. \u201cThe really cool thing is they really stress tested all of our stuff, our gearing, out attachment points.\u201d<\/p>\n

Watching NASA videos in which they burst the inflatable when overpressurized was amazing, Garcia said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey did slow motion capture of where the rip started, how it propagated, and kind of helped identify any weak spots that were in there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The learning and validation has carried over to their products.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so we\u2019ve taken the knowledge learned from there and apply it to our outdoor recreation our industrial products,\u201d he said, adding that it has been applied in subcomponents, such as the way D-rings are mounted and grommet strips are attached.<\/p>\n

The knowledge gained from the whole experience has been the biggest reward, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis just kind of brought all of those years of hard work and, you know, sacrifice into one celebration,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Garcia prefers to stay out of the spotlight, emphasizing that the achievement belongs to the entire team. Still, he said, it is \u201cpretty surreal to know that we\u2019re kind of getting put into the history books along with this momentous occasion.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CEO-designer said learning, improving products is big reward<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":125879,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6300],"tags":[1820,28,29,1829,6419],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-125878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tri-cities","tag-dh-trueanthem","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-tcr-trueanthem","tag-tj-trueanthem"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125878"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126024,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125878\/revisions\/126024"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125878"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=125878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}