This story appears in the June 2026 issue of Utah Business. Subscribe.
Gregg Robison proudly admits he geeks out over space, both at work and at home. As CEO of RAM Aviation, Space & Defense in St. George, he leads a company producing critical aerospace components — multifunctional solenoid valves — used in missions orbiting thousands of miles above Earth. Space may feel distant to most people, but for Robison, it’s tangible. The precision-built parts his team manufactures make that reality feel close enough to touch, while his hobbies outside of work reflect the same hands-on curiosity and drive to build. The objects Robison surrounds himself with, from a massive LEGO Artemis launch set to a SpaceX propulsion valve, reveal a leader obsessed with learning, building and inspiring the people around him.
LEGO Icons NASA Artemis Space Launch System
“I gave my 7-year-old grandson a 3,600-piece LEGO set for ages 18-plus. He clearly has some of the same tendencies that I have, because on Christmas Day, he spent the whole day trying to put it together and could not focus on anything until that rocket was done. It’s everything about space and nerding out on the next generation of technology that is advancing mankind.”
SkyView app
“This app shows you everything that’s in space … the stars you’re looking at, how far away they are in light-years. You can see satellites across the sky. Point your phone at it, and it’ll tell you what that satellite is, when it was launched, and what country it’s from. You can see major space debris. … There are still rocket bodies floating in space from 30 years ago. It will pick that up and tell you where it is and how fast it’s floating around.”
Claude
“Claude is by far the most superior of the [AI tools] that are out there right now. Whenever I’m curious about the technology we’re using, who our competitors are, what we should be doing strategically — I ask it tough questions. I can’t personally put in intellectual property of the business … but we used it heavily for helping refine our vision and mission statements as a company, as well as consolidating tons of input from people on what our core value should be.”
Mission: We engineer and build mission-critical motion and sensing solutions that advance technologies on earth and in space.
Vision: To enable humanity’s most critical missions with absolute precision, reliability, and trust.
Bambu Lab H2D 3D Printer
“The grown-up version of LEGO sets for me are 3D printers. We have a lot of employees here who have access to printers at home. We have 55 laser printers here at work, and so many of our employees are such a perfect fit for what we do that they actually have their own laser printers at home. These printers enable them and people like me to think of things outside of work that you love doing, and then build them. The Bambu printer is very cool, and it’s very economical.”
Old-fashioned toolbelt
“When my kids were young, I finished out the basement of my home in Ohio. I would take my kids … and we all worked down there while I taught them how to use compound miter saws. It was cutting out sheetrock, nail guns, running electrical wire. Now, my daughter bought a home that needed massive fixing up, but she had all of those tools as a young mom in her 20s to build herself a kitchen island.”
SpaceX Crew Dragon Capsule valve
“I have one of the SpaceX valves on my desk that controls the propulsion and trajectory of the Dragon Capsule in space so it could dock with the space station and return to Earth after its mission. [RAM] has 32 propulsion valves on every one of the SpaceX Dragon Capsules, whether it’s being used for cargo or being used for astronauts, and our 32 valves have incredibly tight precision, needing to be able to open within three-thousandths of a second, and not stay open for more than a couple thousandths of a second to ensure the amount of propulsion doesn’t create an overcorrection or, a missed trajectory when it’s doing 17,000 miles [per hour] in space.
“Having that valve on my desk reminds me of the importance of what we do and how critical precision is in not just the valves, but in our lives.”
Employee list
“When I first arrived at RAM, I pulled up the employees’ list of names and at that time, there were only about 180 employees. … I would work hard to say ‘hi’ to every single one of them … and then go around on a regular basis just to see how they were doing.
“Nobody wants to work in an environment where nobody cares about them as a person. You’re going to be much more successful in life by ensuring that the relationships that you’re involved in are genuine.”
