Dr. Hans Koenigsmann

From SpaceWiki

Dr. Hans Koenigsmann, as Vice President and Chief Engineer of the Avionics, Guidance, and Control team, has perhaps the longest job title of any SpaceX employee. According to his bio on the SpaceX People page, he was in charge of building and operating a research microsatellite launched from the Space Shuttle while still in college at the University of Bremen, Germany. Admittedly, he was head of the Space Technology Division rather than a student at the time, though he had previously earned his Ph.D there.

After that, he came to the little town of Hawthorne, California (which is really more of a neighborhood in Los Angeles) to work for Microcosm, Inc and then SpaceX. (Both based in Hawthorne, both focused on lowering the cost of rocket launches by five or ten times . . . are these really two different companies? Has anyone seen them both in the same room at the same time?) At SpaceX, Dr. Koenigsmann is wiring up Falcon rockets' onboard computers with Ethernet cables, a novel approach that may reflect the company's Internet-startup roots.