To fly! 

High, higher and beyond! 

To journey into the vast infinity of space and discover new worlds.

Desires, dreams, aspirations... To be daring!

A young boy's dreams

It was quite a long time ago, in 1986. Then a teenager, a 16-year-old boy was in his second year at high school in Ljubljana. This was a time of his becoming of age, of great aspirations, dreams of achieving great things and surpassing what was achievable or imaginable at the time. At one point, the iconic movie TOP GUN "came flying" with full force into this world of his! 

A love story, but at the same time a display of human courage, audacity and surpassing of human and technological capabilities, carrying the then-current narrative of the West and its capitalist system's predominance over Europe's Eastern bloc. Everyone wanted to be "Maverick", including the boy from our story! But in reality, in a world that was still bipolar and so much different from the one painted by Hollywood, there was hardly any room to accommodate our thoughtful protagonist. What followed was the harsh reality of doing military service in the Yugoslav People's Army, the crumbling of the socio-economic system of what was then our shared country of Yugoslavia, military conflicts and the horrors of war in our immediate vicinity...

But as always, every cloud has a silver lining – so then came the gradual and at times agonizing building, setting up of something new: country and career. Decades passed – with their shares of ups and downs – and life happened along the way, too! And long and behold, all of a sudden it's 2022, 36 years later... In a movie theater – yes, you read that right, going to the movies is still a thing! And a new blockbuster is coming to the movies: TOP GUN 2!! Except that this time around, the "teenager from 1986", now a man of mature years and baldheaded but otherwise still in good health, and his 14-year-old teenage son are sitting in the crowd!

"Déjà vu?"

Spring 2023. Attending the Space Symposium 2023 in Colorado Springs, USA.

Well, now it’s probably beginning to dawn on you who the central character is in this story. At one of the exhibition booths, a mature, middle-aged man is evocatively explaining something to a group of high-school students while playing videos on a big-screen TV. I move closer and... I'm flabbergasted! I can't believe my eyes... This man is none other than the actual pilot from the movie TOP GUN (Part 1, 1986) who in fact flew the F-16 and flipped the bird to the hostile pilot while flying upside-down!?!?!

Time stood still for a few moments... But it felt like eternity. A teenager from the then-socialist country who dreamed of great deeds is now here, on 20 April 2023, standing face to face with his "true" idol from his early days!

Ergo

Yes, Aleš, many years have passed, life has so far sent your way many good and a few not-so-good things, your face is beginning to show signs of the years, but your persistence and unwavering desire to go forward, further, higher, along with constantly adapting and staying true to your inner self, has brought you back to the starting point after a 36-year-long journey!

To the starting point of what exactly? To the starting point of your next journey. This one is going to be long, perhaps too long for the length of life in this world that has been granted to you. But I'm not giving up! I want to go further, the extra mile, higher, and beyond – into space! 

Do you see/recognize the mirror image of the presented personal account/story? Do you really? Of course you do! This is the story of FerroČrtalič, a company that is reaching for the stars after 60 years of doing business! 

Thank you, FerroČrtalič, and thank you, all my colleagues and the company owners, for making it possible for us to live our shared mission together:

"THE SKY IS NO LONGER THE LIMIT!"