The Space Force was created as a military branch, and has been growing rapidly. Traverse City Air Force and Space Force Recruiter, Kenton Disbrow, says “it’s only been around for a couple of years. It’s only ever supposed to grow to roughly 8,000 every year.”
A new recruit, Sam Stivani, comes from Traverse City. He went to school at Grand Traverse Academy and the Career Tech Center. He says along with those schools he also “took a few college classes at Northwestern Michigan College and a few at Michigan Technological University upstate” but felt he wasn’t pushing himself hard enough. He says he’s “very much a person that relies on a community and being something like bigger than myself to feel like I’m doing something successful with my life.”
He will be shipping out March 7 to start his service doing some pretty amazing things. With his position in the Space Force he says its “essentially watching information feeds and trying to see if anybody is trying to take control of it or doing anything nefarious.” He goes on to say “it’s launching tracking satellites and deterring threats to satellites.”
Joining the space force alongside him will be an Air Force veteran, Tyler Bostick, also from Traverse City. He was in the Air Force from 2010-2016 but got out to spend more time with family when he realized he was leaving a family with the military. He states that “that’s a big reason that i want to get back in, is that sense of community, the sense of having a common goal with the people that are around me.”
Disbrow is excited to have recruited Northern Michigan’s first ever space guardian. He tells us he’s “pretty excited about it.” He cannot wait to but someday tell my grandchildren that he recruited the very first ever guardian in northern Michigan.
Stivani looks forward to his time in the Space Force, “why not aim for the stars? At least I’ll still be able to in the sky.”
