SpaceX
Bill Riley has extensive experience in engineering, particularly within the aerospace and automotive industries. Currently serving as the Vice President of Starship Engineering at SpaceX since August 2010, Bill has held several key positions, including Senior Director of Design Reliability and Vehicle Analysis, Senior Director of Structures Engineering, and Director of Statics Engineering. Prior to SpaceX, Bill worked at General Motors as a Cylinder Head Engineer and Combustion Engineer from January 2007 to August 2010, and at Ford Motor Company as an Engine Component Design Engineer from 2002 to 2007. Bill's career began at Jaguar Racing as a Stress Engineer from 2001 to 2002 and included leadership in the Formula SAE team at Cornell University, where Bill earned a BS in Mechanical Engineering and later a Master’s degree in the same field.
SpaceX
890 followers
SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches the world’s most advanced rockets and spacecraft. The company was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk to revolutionize space transportation, with the ultimate goal of making life multiplanetary. SpaceX has gained worldwide attention for a series of historic milestones. It is the only private company ever to return a spacecraft from low-Earth orbit, which it first accomplished in December 2010. The company made history again in May 2012 when its Dragon spacecraft attached to the International Space Station, exchanged cargo payloads, and returned safely to Earth — a technically challenging feat previously accomplished only by governments. Since then Dragon has delivered cargo to and from the space station multiple times, providing regular cargo resupply missions for NASA. SpaceX believes a fully and rapidly reusable rocket is the pivotal breakthrough needed to substantially reduce the cost of space access. The majority of the launch cost comes from building the rocket, which historically has flown only once. Compare that to a commercial airliner – each new plane costs about the same as Falcon 9 but can fly multiple times per day and conduct tens of thousands of flights over its lifetime. Following the commercial model, a rapidly reusable space launch vehicle could reduce the cost of traveling to space by a hundredfold. While most rockets are designed to burn up on reentry, SpaceX rockets can not only withstand reentry but can also successfully land back on Earth and refly again. SpaceX’s family of Falcon launch vehicles are the first and only orbital class rockets capable of reflight. Depending on the performance required for the mission, Falcon lands on one of our autonomous spaceport droneships out on the ocean or one of our landing zones near our launch pads.