Aerospace Leader Not Returning To Michigan; Believes He's Being Targeted By AG

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 06/20/2025) The executive director of the Michigan Aerospace Manufacturers Association (MAMA) said he believes the Attorney General's investigation into his association's use of state appropriations is politically motivated and that he no longer feels safe in Michigan.

Gavin Brown said he was calling MIRS from Accra, the capital of Ghana, where he was doing work, but not with MAMA. The aerospace association has been “forced” to suspend its operations due to the “whisper campaign” being waged against the organization in Michigan, and he's fingering the Attorney General's office for that.

“I'm not the bear kicking up dirt,” Brown said. "I'd like to see the space business in Michigan, but it's not coming here if you're saying we're under investigation."

In June 2019, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed a mid-year supplemental budget bill that set aside $500,000 for a nonprofit that promotes the aerospace manufacturing industry to develop a maintenance, repair and overhaul facility and another $2 million for the same aerospace manufacturing nonprofit to develop a low-orbit launch site within this state.

Brown flirted with the idea of building a launch site in Marquette, but that went nowhere, according to Bridge Michigan. A project was also discussed for Oscoda in Iosco County, but that never went anywhere, either.

In fact, there's no proof any of the combined $2.5 million went for anything tangible toward a low-orbit launch site. Attorney General Dana NESSEL, a Democrat, reiterated last month that Brown's MAMA was one of two other recipients of legislative earmarks that she's investigating.

According to MAMA's filing with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), MAMA ended Fiscal Year 2018 with a $577,309 deficit.

In 2019, he reported receiving $1,537,620, of which $1.3 million came from a government grant. Brown received a $159,849-a-year salary for 60 hours of work and “Managing ACC” John Geisler received $118,500 for 55 hours of work. MAMA reported paying “management fees” of $435,341, $48,500 for “other," $48,069 for travel, $46,947 for meals and entertainment and $64,030 for “other expenses.” After Brown paid off his debt from the year before, MAMA had $131,000 in the bank.

The next year, MAMA's filing with the IRS had Brown receiving the final $1 million from the government grant and got a $141,638 salary. Geisler received $105,000. A reported $608,017 went to “management fees," $70,355 for “other,” $22,916 for travel and other odds and ends until MAMA's total expenses hit $957,321. They ended the year with $448,049. But in 2021, the state government money slowed to a trickle, Brown's expenses were about the same, and the group ended the year $208,261 in the hole. It was the same thing for 2022. They ended the year 408,330 in debt. No other reports from MAMA were on the database MIRS used if they were filed.

In 2019 or 2020, Brown hired Mike Dudzik of IQM Ann Arbor to do a roughly $325,000 study on the feasibility of a low-orbit launch in Michigan for which IQM was paid $290,000. However, Brown declined to pay the final $32,000. Brown said he was concerned that there were 20 sources used to compile the reports that were not legitimate, and since Dudzik declined to cough up the names, he wasn't submitting the final payment.

Brown said he believes Dudzik then went to the AG in what should have been a civil matter. From there, Brown said he believes the Attorney General pursued a case against him for political reasons because the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) wants to chart its own path for a space industry in Michigan and is trying to discredit him. He said he went through the Legislature for his seed funding and not the MEDC, and he believes they're salty about that.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced a new Office of Defense and Aerospace Innovation in April 2024 with retired Marine Col. John Guiterrez as the head.

But Dudzik had a much different account of the report. He said he was contracted by Brown and the MEDC to look into the feasibility of a low-orbit launch site in Michigan and the feasibility of the space industry in Michigan, in general.

He produced an exhaustive study that concluded that launching rockets from Michigan wasn't feasible for several reasons. For one, Elon Musk's Space X basically had a corner on the market. For anyone who needed a satellite shot into space, SpaceX was able to do it at a lower cost due to its volume of work. According to Motley Fool, SpaceX accounted for 72% of the rocket launches in 2022.

The other issue dealt with logistics. The only potential Michigan location to launch rockets and not worry about debris falling on people from space is the northern Michigan coast overlooking Lake Superior, but even that comes with concerns. Unlike the ocean, Lake Superior is fresh water that roughly 40 million people count on for drinking water. Allowing rocket fuel or debris to fall into that water source isn't exactly eco-friendly.

Also, if the rocket separates from the booster late in the launch, the booster could fall in Canada, which the Canadians weren't thrilled about, regardless of whether it fell on inhabited ground or not.

The report did say Michigan has a strong space workforce, with engineers at General Motors, for example, who can make the next lunar rover. If the Legislature wanted to move toward more R&D credits to bolster the work project, Dudzik said Michigan has a viable workforce. In fact, Michigan is graduating more talent than it can keep, making Michigan an exporter of "great students we'd probably like to retain in this state."

“We're well-positioned, just not to launch,” Dudzik said.

So, after the report, Dudzik confirmed that Brown didn't give his company the final $32,000, but he gave different reasons for that. Dudzik declined to elaborate.

When told that Brown told MIRS that it was because Dudzik didn't reveal his sources, Dudzik said, "That's a surprise to me. We gave him all of the sources, all of the details. We uncovered a lot of content . . . It's absurd for him to say we didn't give him references.

“We delivered 110%, the gold standard. There was a lot of supporting data in there."

Both the MEDC and the Attorney General's office declined to comment on Brown's claims, pending the investigation.

Brown also said the attorney he is using from Warner, Norcross & Judd is a big supporter of President Donald Trump and he believes that has an impact. He also mentioned a political action committee that he created that raised and spent no money as a possible reason for investigation.

Brown said all the reports are public and that he has no personal money on this deal. Instead, Brown claimed he has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars because the ensuring whisper campaign about an investigation starting in 2023 has chased away his organization members, which he claims once totaled 200. He's been forced to suspend operations of MAMA.

“I've made no money off of this,” he said. "We were trying to bring space business to the state, but with the whisper campaign, what we're hearing is 'why would we do this if we're under investigation?'"

He acknowledged that Nessel sent him a letter, to which he responded. He said her response to that was that he wasn't engaging in good business practices.

Brown indicated that after Nessel is out of office, he believes this will be a dead issue and that only she is trying to make this an issue.

“I no longer feel safe in the state of Michigan,” said Brown, adding that he's received death threats. He asked that the Department of Justice come in as an intermediary. He believes he'll get a fair investigation from the DOJ and would be "happy to live by their recommendations."