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 commercalizing products, chief engineer on satellite design projects, and commercial space launch.  

Host Jason Kanigan and Marco Cross discuss:  

Topic: SBUDNIC satellite

Mission overview
Learnings from building a multidisciplinary team 
Learnings from super lean/super fast construction  


Topic: 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  


Topic: 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?  


Topic: 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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