San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Hometown roots, stellar ideas
San Antonio space architect creating the foundation for our out-of-this-world future
San Antonio’s space architect wants to make the city a space construction hub — and that’s just one of Sam Ximenes’ ideas.
From moon bases to space stations, the San Antonio native is at work designing the next chapter of space exploration. When he’s not doing that, he’s helping young people get interested in space, science and technology.
His latest creation? A space station that looks like something out of “2001: A Space Odyssey.” On a recent afternoon, he was in his company’s sparse conference room at the San Antonio Museum of Science and Technology reviewing renderings of a circular spacecraft with sleek spires.
He calls it a Celestial Aligning Bernal Sphere, and images of the craft set against spacescapes look like frameable art.
It’s the latest design by the San Antonian, who’s always working on the next idea.
Ximenes is founder and chief executive of space architecture firm Exploration Architecture, or XArc, as well as a space construction company called Astroport. He’s also founder and board chair of the WEX Foundation, an entity focused on space education for middle and high schoolers.
“There are a million architects in this world ... space architects you can count on two hands,” said David Monroe, founding chair of the museum. “He’s just a really, really unique person, because he thinks in another dimension than most of us do.”
With roots on the city’s South Side and in Floresville, his family heritage is grounded in agriculture, service, social justice and civil rights. His ancestors served as Floresville sheriff, helped clear the way for Hemisfair Park and ran a South Side restaurant.
His uncle Vincente, a World War II Army Air Corps veteran, became a civil rights activist and leader with the American GI Forum — a Hispanic veterans and civil rights organization. President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him the third commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Another uncle, Edward, was a doctor who served in World War II. Texas Gov. John Connally appointed him to the University of Texas Board of Regents in 1967. He was the first Hispanic appointed to the position and helped bring the
UT system to San Antonio. Today, a street and parking lot at the University of Texas at San Antonio bear his name.
His aunt helped introduce bilingual education in the area, and yet another uncle was a contractor at Kelly Air Force Base. Ximenes’ father, Waldo, was an Air Force judge advocate who became a federal judge.
One of five siblings, Ximenes was born at Fort Sam Houston. His father’s service kept the family on the move — Laredo, California, Spain, Germany and the Philippines.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way because it taught me how to adapt quickly, how to make friends quickly, how to leave friends quickly and how to know that you still have friends around the world,” he said. “And the ability to understand other cultures and other viewpoints — it’s been a tremendous learning experience.”
A self-described bookworm, he became interested in technology by way of James Bond books and movies.
Ximenes graduated high school in the Philippines and returned to Texas to study architecture at Texas A&M.
“Since middle school, I always wanted to be an architect,” he said. “I thought I wanted to do it because I wanted to build my own house — which I haven’t done.”
After college, Ximenes spent time in Lake Tahoe, working first with a hot air balloon company and then for the city, overseeing art installations in public buildings. Four years later, he got restless and took off in his Datsun 240Z.
He spent two years in Cuernavaca, Mexico, working in a women’s shoe factory. His job was to turn scraps into a product.
“So, I designed a line of toys for them,” he said.
Next, he found himself designing street furniture in Hamburg, Germany, in the early ’80s. In those pre-Internet days, he was intrigued by a video advertising kiosk he saw at a train station.
“It just struck me that video’s the next thing so I went and contacted that company,” he said. “And I convinced them to let me go to America and try and sell this concept.”
The idea brought him back to San Antonio, where he incorporated his first company — Video Point Corp. of America.
“We ended up getting a contract with the New Orleans World’s Fair in 1984 to set up these kiosks,” he said. “Wayfinding kiosks.”
The deal could’ve changed the trajectory of his life, but few attended the fair and his company went bankrupt.
“That was my first business failure, but you learn from failure,” he said.
Hoping to return to architecture, he wrote a paper about how humans could be oriented aboard space stations. A journal published it, and the success deepened his interest in the infrastructure of space.
Ximenes found some professors who were starting a space architecture program at the University of Houston. It was the precursor of the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture, or SICSA.
“There were three of us in the first official space architecture class,” he said.
After earning his master’s degree he worked at several companies, first designing lunar bases and then interiors for the International Space Station.
As a concept designer, Ximenes
relies on engineers to move his concepts from art to reality.
“They turn it into something that actually works,” he said.
Larry Toups, who retired from NASA and now is an adjunct professor at SICSA, has known Ximenes since they both studied at the University of Houston.
“He has a vision of how you can look to the future, and how you solve some of the engineering and technical challenges required for going to places such as the moon or Mars,” said Toups, who serves as an adviser for Astroport.
Along his path, Ximenes has experienced the ups and downs of space contractor life: A layoff when the federal government canceled a contract. A swerve into business development in an adjacent industry. Moves across the country. Then, a job with a Houston company in 2004.
It was the year aerospace engineer Burt Rutan won the $10 million Ansari X-prize for creating a spacecraft that could fly to space twice in two weeks. The next year, Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, teamed up with Rutan to create spaceship company Virgin Galactic.
Today, some see Rutan’s victory as the start of the billionaire battle for the stars between Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Branson.
The company Ximenes worked for at the time played a role in Virgin Galactic: It helped design the terminalhangar facility at Spaceport America, N.M., the company’s headquarters.
Things were moving fast in the space business, and in 2007 Ximenes stood up his own space architecture firm, XArc. “I could see commercial space business coming up,” he said. “So I decided, well, I’m going out on my own this time to position myself for that work.”
The U.S. Transportation Command, which moves military personnel and equipment around the world, is working with Ximenes’ XArc and SpaceX to develop “rapid transportation through space” capabilities.
The government is looking at vertically landing rockets to haul gear and people anywhere in the world in an hour or less. Ximenes’ team is helping to develop ground support infrastructure for rocket landing areas.
“The money is going to be in the hardware development and the technology development because we don’t have a lot of stuff right now,” he said. “And they’re still trying to understand all these ways to use building materials on the moon and whatnot.”
The realization led to his space construction firm, Astroport, in 2020. In May, NASA awarded the company a contract to research construction of lunar landing pads using robots and molten moon dust. Astroport collaborates with UTSA and the University of Adelaide Australia.
Ximenes’ nonprofit WEX Foundation, named for his father Waldo E. Ximenes, exposes middle and high schoolers to space exploration. It’s received several NASA grants since its launch in 2009, and Ximenes estimates its programs have influenced more than 50,000 students.
“It’s been really a godsend because it is really about the next generation,” he said. “It’s not about me and how am I going to get to space because I’m not going to get there.”
Jim Perschbach, CEO of Port San Antonio, said Ximenes’ work in space is groundbreaking.
“But the thing that impresses me most is ... what he’s doing here, and by that, I mean, the WEX Foundation,” he said.
“He is taking time out of his daily work, out of his research programs, to work with kids on the same type of work that he is doing for the folks who really are doing space exploration.”