In the inaugural episode of Nerds of the Roundtable, Hoover Distinguished Research Fellow Dan Berkenstock reflects on his path from aerospace engineer and startup founder to space and defense policy expert. He discusses the technologies transforming the space industry, the intensifying competition surrounding the Moon, and the growing role of AI in aerospace and national security. Berkenstock also shares lessons from entrepreneurship, including the value of failure, rapid iteration, and effective leadership. The conversation concludes with advice for the next generation of engineers, innovators, and technology leaders.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Dan Berkenstock is a distinguished research fellow at the Hoover Institution. His work aims to ensure sustained American aerospace leadership well into the twenty-first century and provides space-related scholarship and policy recommendations through Hoover's Technology Policy Accelerator. From 2008 to 2017, Berkenstock was the founding chief executive officer and later chief product officer, of Skybox Imaging.
In his policy research, Berkenstock focuses on the critical advancements needed to reduce the risk of conflict in space during a forthcoming period of rapid expansion. His technical research focuses on expanding convex and polynomial optimization techniques to identify globally optimal vehicle designs in aerodynamic shape optimization problems, with a focus on low-observability hypersonic vehicles.
Walter J. Manuel is a PhD student in the Space Rendezvous Laboratory. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from Purdue University (2020), and a Master of Science in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University (2022). Walter previously completed internships with the Crew Systems and Aviation Operations Branch at NASA Langley Research Center, and the SLS Flight Software Test and Verification Team at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. His research at Stanford focuses on trajectory design, optimal control algorithms, and astrodynamics modeling in the context of the three-body problem. Walter is the recipient of an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.
