News and Events

Alumnus Sam DiMaggio Designer on First Privately Developed Liquid Fuel Rocket to Reach Orbit

11/12/2008

Alumnus Sam DiMaggio is currently a Visiting Professor at Harvey Mudd College and runs his own consulting business called DiMaggio Engineering Company (DEC). Sam received his B.S. (1989) in Civil Engineering and his M.S. (1990) and Ph.D. (1993) in Engineering Mechanics from Columbia University.  One of DEC’s current clients is Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), where Sam was employed full time from 2003 through 2007, serving in a variety of positions including Director of Structures, Director of Structural Dynamics and Director of Dynamics.

SpaceX was established in 2002 with the intent of designing launch vehicles which would provide breakthrough advances in reliability, cost and time to launch. The Falcon 1 launch vehicle was the first rocket designed by SpaceX and has been the pathfinder for all subsequent SpaceX launch vehicles, including the higher performing and larger Falcon 9 vehicle. On September 28, 2008, the fourth flight of the Falcon 1 launch vehicle became the world’s first privately developed liquid fueled rocket to reach orbit. While the first three rockets launched by SpaceX failed to reach orbit, all of the structural subsystems for which Sam was partially responsible performed successfully.

While at SpaceX, Sam was a Director of several groups that were specifically responsible for ensuring that the launch vehicles could withstand static and dynamic loads, while keeping mass and cost to a minimum. He was accountable directly to the CEO, President or a Vice President for all aspects of loads and dynamics, as well as additional tasks related to structural and system-level design, analysis and test. Specific technical responsibilities included, but were not limited to, launch vehicle dynamic modeling, strength and stability assessment of structural subsystems, coupled loads analysis and environments (vibration, acoustics and shock) derivation.