Marco Cross recently completed his Masters degree in space engineering at Brown University, and is now Engineering & Commercialization Advisor at Cold Star Technologies. His experience includes developing and commercializing products, chief engineer on satellite design projects, and commercial space launch.
Marco Cross on Commercializing Engineering
Host Jason Kanigan and Marco Cross discuss:
- SBUDNIC satellite
- Mission overview
- Learnings from building a multidisciplinary team
- Learnings from super lean/super fast construction
- Lightweight hardware prototyping/process
- Industrial design process in the context of mechanical/space engineering
- Use what’s available, not what’s theoretically best
- Prototyping always starts with good learnings up front -I’ve seen a lot of people fail because they get super far down the process without front-end validation
- Selling space, talking about the dream of exploration
- Why selling the idea of space is important
- NASA budgets are shrinking relative to GDP
- Is space recession proof?
- Future of space engineering as I see it
- Smallsats take over large satellites, more COTS
- Constellation-based sensing overtakes large singular sensing systems, like JWST Machine learning processing necessary for interpolation of data,
- Future areas that need articulation/opportunities for innovation in space
USEFUL LINKS:
SBUDNIC article by Brown University: https://engineering.brown.edu/news/2022-05-16/sbudnic-satellite-launch
Transporter Launch video: https://youtu.be/CAgiFU3NAo0
Marco’s video “Space Engineering Is Hard And Here’s Why”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNGZYQvCfUM
OpEx Society: https://www.opexsociety.org
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