Jack’s Plastic Welding: The Unique Connection Between  River Trips and Space Travel

On Friday, April 10, 2026, Artemis II completed a ten day lunar flyby mission. Right about now, you might be asking yourself what space travel has to do with a Grand Canyon river trip. As it turns out, there’s a unique connection between the two and it comes in the form of equipment. No, our boats aren’t quite like rockets (though we think they’re just about as cool). The real link is our gear bags and the company that makes them: Jack’s Plastic Welding.

Jack’s Plastic Welding is based in Aztec, New Mexico, and has a staff of fewer than 15 employees. Jack’s has been manufacturing Paco pads, rafts, gear bags, and much more since their start in the 80s. Back when the company was just getting started, Ted Hatch loved their Paco pads and dry bags so much that he wanted enough to outfit his entire operation. To this day we still use the iconic orange dry bags, or as our guides lovingly call them pumpkins, on all our trips!

Now, here’s where Jack’s connects river trips to space travel. Jack’s developed the platform rafts used by Artemis II when the spacecraft landed back on Earth. These one of a kind rafts took them around 528 hours to make!

They developed two types of raft to help with recovery. The first being a Stabilization Collar, like the name suggests this raft is a collar that wraps around the capsule to make sure it stays safe and stable in the water while the astronauts are extracted. The next raft is called the “Front Porch” recovery raft. This is the raft that the recovery crew and the astronauts are on once they have exited the capsule! 

From Paco pads and dry bags to NASA recovery rafts, we have always known that Jack’s Plastic makes amazing products and it’s exciting to see their work support something as big as space travel! 

You can learn more about the rafts and Jack’s Plastic Welding from this video!