TransAstra has built a world class team to help kick start a flourishing space economy.
Board of Directors
Joel Sercel, Founder & CEO
Joel Sercel is a proven space technology pioneer and team leader with technical expertise spans space mission design, space propulsion, satellite design, architectural design, and systems engineering. He runs an agile company where young engineers are inspired and empowered to build, test, break, and bust through technical limits and mature innovations at breakneck speed. Joel is also a certified KAI Practitioner (the psychology of creativity) and an expert in practical methods of innovation. His expertise and leadership have been sought out by world class organizations including NASA, Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, the US intelligence community, and the US Air Force. He holds the record for funding awarded by NASA’s prestigious Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. Joel’s PhD is from Caltech in plasma physics and space propulsion. He spent 14 years at NASA JPL where he served in nearly all of the technical roles and conceived the first ion propulsion system used in deep space missions to a comet and asteroids Ceres and Vesta. Sercel formerly served as the founding CTO of a Y Combinator Space company that has since gone public, before returning to TransAstra to fulfill his lifelong dream of working to establish a thriving in-space economy that will offer unbound potential for future generations.
Dr. Stanley G. Love
Dr. Stanley G. Love received his PhD in Astronomy from the University of Washington and is currently a planetary scientist and astronaut with 25 years of experience in the fields of small-body planetary science and spacecraft concept design and operations. He is first or contributing author on 100+ peer-reviewed technical articles and abstracts, including two each in Science and Nature. He has maintained a record of peer-reviewed publication in planetary science while training to fly in space and serving as a crew member aboard Space Shuttle mission STS-122. He has over 1,200 hours of aviation time, including zero and reduced gravity aircraft missions and 15 hours of Extra-Vehicular Activity (spacewalking) time. He has been involved in many "spaceflight analog" activities, which simulate geological exploration missions on the Moon, asteroids, and other solar system bodies in remote or extreme environments on Earth. His analog work has included the development of tools for collecting and manipulating geological samples in reduced gravity. He is a veteran of two 6-week Antarctic meteorite hunting expeditions. He is a co-inventor of the "gravity tractor" concept for modifying asteroid orbits. Dr. Love frequently appears in telecasts and in public, explaining space science and space exploration to general audiences. He has a patent on a novel manual control system for piloted spacecraft, and holds a fifth-degree black belt (International Master) in Taekwondo.
Paul Veger
Paul Veger is a successful entrepreneur, investor, and European business man who loves innovating and shaping this future. He is the Founder and CEO of Decos Information Solutions, a Netherlands based company which has grown over the past 30 years to become Europe’s leading IT solution provider for paperless office work. With over 165 employees, Decos defines tomorrow with advanced IT solutions and work processes that include paperless offices, robot office assistants, and agile self-managing teams. Paul’s passion is building a better future for all of humanity and for the past ten years he has been an angel investor in NewSpace including asteroid mining.
Board of Advisors
James French
Mr. James R. French has spent his lengthy professional career in the Aerospace Industry since it’s early days in the late 1950’s. He is co-author with Michael Griffiin of “Space Vehicle Design”, one of the seminal works in the field. Mr. French has been a successful consultant for the last 28 years. His clients have included JPL, USAF, NASA, The Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) and numerous others. Tasks have involved mission design; design and development of a number of spacecraft and rocket systems, a large number of review teams, etc. A highlight of his consulting to SDIO was to be the government’s Chief Engineer on the innovative and highly successful DCPX reusable rocket program. Mr. French continues as a consultant to the present day primarily consulting to Blue Origin LLC, a company with which he has been involved since its founding.
Dr. Jim Small
Creative and prolific inventor with track record of scaling programs from inception to massive returns for the commercial and government sectors; Holds Top Secret security clearance and unescorted visitor privileges at the CIA, DIA, and NRO; As Founding Director of Raytheon Bike Shop, grew prototyping and rapid response product development from $0 to $30M annual sales in 5 years; Is frequently called upon by military and private sector leadership to assess emerging disruptive technologies and evaluate possible acquisitions; 29 patents and counting.
Dr. Robert Jedicke
Dr. Robert Jedicke received his PhD in experimental particle physics from the University of Toronto, Canada. He held post-doctoral positions at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, and at the University of Arizona’s Lunar & Planetary Laboratory where he worked on the Spacewatch near-Earth asteroid survey. He spent more than five years at WYKO and Veeco Corporation in Tucson, Arizona, developing image analysis software for interferometers before accepting a faculty position at the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy. He was the development manager of their Moving Object Processing System for the Pan-STARRS telescope on Maui that is now the world’s leading discovery system for asteroids and comets. His current research interests with TransAstra involve studies related to in-situ resource utilization of asteroids to provide water as propellant for spacecraft missions.
Dr. Daniel Britt
Dr. Daniel T. Britt received his PhD in Geologic Science from Brown University and is currently a Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Science at the University of Central Florida specializing in the surface processes and physical properties of atmosphereless bodies. Space flight hardware work includes development of radiometric calibration targets for Mars Pathfinder, Mars Polar Lander, Mars Exploration Rovers, Mars Phoenix, and Mars Science Laboratory. Co-Investigator on the Mars Pathfinder, Deep Space 1, New Horizons, and Lucy missions. His research includes diverse topics such as the surface morphology of comets, the density and porosity of small bodies, and the mineralogy of asteroids and Mars. On Mars Pathfinder he was Deputy Imaging Team Leader and served as the Project Manager for the development of the imaging experiment, the Imager for Mars Pathfinder.
Key Employees
Rich Rieber, Head of Flight Systems Engineering
Before joining TransAstra, Rich Rieber spent 14 years at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory working on a wide variety of projects. Rich led the development of key parts of the Perseverance Mars Rover and has tremendous experience building, testing and operating space flight hardware. Rich leads TransAstra’s flight systems team, responsible for designing, fabricating, and flight qualifying the Worker Bee and Mini Bee vehicles.
Dr. Hayden Burgoyne, Deputy Head of Flight Systems Engineering
Dr. Hayden Burgoyne is the Deputy Head of Flight Systems Engineering at TransAstra. Previously, Hayden was a systems engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. JPL recognized his accomplishments as the Deputy Phase Lead for Europa Clipper by bestowing upon him the Charles Elachi Award for outstanding early-career achievement. Before JPL, Hayden was VP of Spacecraft Systems at Hedron (formerly Analytical Space), where he was responsible for all systems and mechanical engineering of the initial 2017 demonstration mission for a constellation of 6U cubesats intended to provide hybrid RF-optical data relay. Hayden received a BS in Engineering Sciences from Harvard and an MS & PhD in Space Engineering from Caltech. His thesis won the Caltech aerospace department’s Ballhaus Award for most outstanding doctoral dissertation.
Philip Wahl, Head of R&D Engineering
Philip Wahl, Mechanical Engineer, is the Head of R&D Engineering at TransAstra. Philip has a mechanical design background in aerospace and electromechanical systems, with experience and skills in physics-based design, mechatronics, agile engineering processes, engineering software design, optical image processing, and computer vision software. He has led TransAstra’s team of engineers in the design of the Apis™ spaceflight system technology demonstrations, development of the Omnivore™ thruster, and maturation of various lunar infrastructure solutions, including direct involvement and top-level management of CAD engineering models, systems analysis, fabrication, assembly, and systems testing. Philip has previously worked on a variety of technical engineering applications, including cryogenic, bipropellant, and electric-fed propulsion systems, robotics, and mechatronic systems. Philip has co-authored multiple patents pending for space system solutions in asteroid mining and lunar settlement infrastructure.
Alex Pilmer, Chief of Business Operations
R. Alexander Pilmer is TransAstra’s Chief of Business Operations. Previously, Alex spent more than 20 years as a senior partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, an elite global law firm. During his diverse legal career, Alex has handled a wide variety of legal and business matters relating to technology, finance, commercial, real estate and securities related matters. His clients have included some of the world-largest, and most sophisticated technical companies, private equity funds, as well as start-up ventures. As a litigator, Alex has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars through trials and settlements for clients, and he has successfully defended clients from claims seeking billions of dollars in damages. He has also successfully closed corporate transactions worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Alex graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors from Occidental College, and with Order of the Coif honors from Loyola Law School of Los Angeles.
Nicole Shumaker, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships
Nicole Shumaker is a space industry champion and radical facilitator focused on forging strategic alliances, developing proposals and flagship projects for TransAstra together with world class partners from the US and international commercial space sector, NASA, and the DoD. Prior to joining TransAstra, she launched a research initiative in extraterrestrial engineering and construction at Texas A&M University and established the Texas A&M Lunar Surface Experiment Program where she served as project manager for a lunar payload development project. Her efforts resulted in over $8M in competitive funding including awards from NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) and Game Changing Developments programs for lunar construction research. Nicole has a B.S. and NASA-funded atmospheric science research experience from Georgia Tech. She has dedicated her career to building new business programs from scratch for teams and technologies that inspire her. She is honored to work with the TransAstra team, customers, and suppliers to help realize the vast potential of humanity’s expansion into space.
In addition to company leadership, TransAstra has a carefully selected, diverse, and consistently growing team of dedicated engineers, scientists, and business professionals.
