Jim Nelson – Aerostar

Not many aerospace executives can say their company gatherings happen in a 1950s diner — inside their house. But Jim Nelson isn’t most executives. Tucked into his South Dakota home is a full Coca-Cola-themed diner, complete with counter stools, a working kitchen, and enough nostalgia to make you forget you’re not in an episode of Happy Days. His father-in-law built it years ago as a way to draw the family together when his wife was ill. Nelson bought the house in 2020, inherited the diner, and promptly turned it into an extension of Aerostar’s culture – a place to come together. Ten to fifteen events a year, Aerostar interns, engineers, customers, partners, and leadership pack into that room. Senior leaders make and serve the burgers. Nobody leaves hungry, and nobody leaves a stranger. It’s not a typical setup — but then again, so is everything else about Aerostar.

Jim Nelson | Aerostar | President

From the ground up

Nelson grew up on a farm in southeastern South Dakota, the kind of place that teaches you to solve problems with whatever’s in reach. That sensibility has followed him across a career stretching from MIT engineering labs to satellite programs to the edge of the stratosphere. He earned his undergraduate degree in math and computer science at the University of Sioux Falls, then headed east for a master’s in civil engineering from MIT. From there, he joined Raytheon and entered their leadership development program — a formative experience that shaped how he thinks about organizations.

“A turning point was when I took the job at Raytheon and became part of the leadership development program,” he says. “I was deployed to an operational part of the company and part of an enterprise-level part of the business. I could dive into the operations and then step back and see the impact on the business. I didn’t realize how foundational that was until I went further into my career.”

After returning to South Dakota, Nelson spent 15 years working on the Landsat program, first as a contractor and later as a federal civil servant. He helped grow the Landsat 8 effort from a core team of fewer than 10 people into a program involving more than 1,000 people across government agencies and industry partners, ultimately leading the program through its successful launch in 2013. He later co-led an architecture study with NASA to define the future of land imaging, delivering the report to OMB and OSTP. That study laid out the overall architecture for the next phase of the program, with Landsat 9 as the first step, where he guided the program through its early design phases before he joined Raven Industries in 2018 as Director of Engineering for its Aerostar division, and subsequently promoted to Division Manager in 2021. When CNH Industrial acquired Raven in 2021, Aerostar was subsequently divested to TCOM Holdings in 2022, Nelson led the business through the separation and the creation of a newly independent Aerostar – preserving more that 65 years of l heritage while rebuilding it’s strategy, systems, and culture for the future.

A company reborn

Aerostar specializes in life-saving solutions that enhance situational awareness and safety in the aerospace and defense sectors. With more than 70 years of expertise, the company offers innovative products including stratospheric balloons, radar systems, and protective wear. Its clients include government agencies such as NASA and the U.S. Air Force, as well as organizations requiring advanced communications and surveillance capabilities.

The company’s roots stretch back to 1956, when Raven Industries began launching high-altitude balloons for the U.S. Navy. By 1957, it was working with what would become NASA, testing flight suits and equipment before the Apollo era. The organization went on to pioneer the modern sport hot air balloon, supply Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons from 1984 to 2019, and set and break numerous balloon altitude records.

When Aerostar separated from Raven, Nelson saw an opportunity that few leaders encounter: the chance to take a company with more than six decades of innovation and intentionally decide what it would be going forward. The team codified a mission — connect, protect, and save lives — and built five guiding principles: do what’s right first, dare mighty things, make a difference, own it, and simplify.

“This isn’t just a placard on the wall,” Nelson says. “It’s a reflection of who we are and how we show up every day. I love to hear when people bring them up regularly when we are faced with difficult decisions or getting called out when people feel we are not following these principles.”

The stratosphere as a frontier

The defining focus at Aerostar today is the stratosphere — specifically, the band between 50,000 and 100,000 feet that Nelson calls the next frontier between aviation and space. It is largely untapped, technically demanding, and full of possibilities.

“When you’re at 70,000 feet, you can see 300 miles,” he says. “You used to need a billion-dollar satellite to make that happen. Trying to bring that into the commonplace is the opportunity and the challenge.”

Aerostar has developed a super-pressure balloon designed to maintain its shape and remain aloft for extended periods. A second internal chamber allows the platform to take in or release air, changing its overall buoyancy and moving it between layers of the atmosphere. By climbing or descending to find winds traveling in different directions, the balloon can navigate without conventional propulsion. “It’s like combining a submarine and a sailboat 12 miles above the Earth,” Nelson says. Combined with solar power, onboard batteries, and an AI model that processes wind forecasts to autonomously guide the craft, the result is a navigable, persistent platform in the upper atmosphere. In 2025, Aerostar broke the world record for sustained stratospheric navigation at 336 days! The company has launched more than 140 different payloads, from radars to cameras to intelligence-gathering systems. Applications include wildfire monitoring, hurricane tracking, oil spill detection, and disaster communications — including a deployment over Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria.

“Where the strongest application for high-altitude balloons is when something is regional and seasonal,” Nelson explains. “If you need to cover a precise area for a few days, use an aircraft. Cover the entire world? Use satellites. Cover an entire region for an entire season? Use high-altitude balloons.”

Building what’s next

The most persistent challenge, Nelson notes, isn’t engineering. It’s comprehension.

“We’re not simply introducing a new product; we’re helping create a new market,” he says. “Customers understand aircraft and satellites. Our job is to show them where a persistent stratospheric platform fits between the two—and how it can solve missions that neither can address as effectively or affordably.”

That pioneering spirit has become a genuine recruitment advantage for Aerostar. Engineers and technologists from aerospace, spacecraft, and defense come to Aerostar to work on problems that have never been solved before. For a 200-to-250-person team, that culture of doing hard things holds real weight — and Nelson works to protect it. He holds quarterly all-hands meetings that routinely turn into open Q&A sessions. He walks the floor and talks about the mission. And when the occasion calls for it, he fires up the diner.

“It represents our company,” he says. “It’s a place where we can gather and come together.”

The stratosphere is wide open, and Aerostar intends to fill it — one balloon, one breakthrough, and one burger at a time.