Ricardo Lang

• • Built and led a 15-engineer team covering structures, propulsion, piping, avionics and test facilities in a New Space startup focused on OTVs.

• • Designed, contracted and supervised construction of ∼3 hectares of test facilities, including buildings, infrastructure, GSE, and integration areas.

• • Managed approximately USD 1.5M in materials, test equipment and infras tructure for OTV spacecraft and ground systems.

• • Acted as lead for structures and mechanisms, covering both flight hard ware and GSE, in close collaboration with propulsion and avionics.

• • Generated finite-element models in FEMAP and exported .op4 files to SpaceX numerical integration requirements (through FEM department).

• • Supported payload integration in the SpaceX LC-40 PPF clean room, in cluding documentation, mechanical checks and overhead crane operations.

• • Introduced systems engineering practices to improve interface tracking and verification within startup constraints.

• • Achieved delivery of two OTV prototypes in two years each, under demand ing schedules and limited resources.

• • Designed and tested thrust vector control (TVC) mechanisms for experimen tal launch vehicles (VEx series).

• • Adapted non-space COTS EMAs (Kollmorgen) for flight, achieving >50% cost reduction.

• • Designed fixed/movable EMA mounts and mechanical interfaces with the gimbaled rocket engine.

• • Designed hardware for LVDTs and encoders, enabling redundant nozzle posi tion sensing.

• • Participated in three launch campaigns including calibration, tests and go/no-go decisions; best performance achieved with VEx-1B.

• • Designed fixtures and procedures for center-of-gravity measurement of the VEx-5 rocket.

• • Performed experimental and analytical studies on compressor surge and fluid–acoustic interactions, including test-bench instrumentation, data acquisition setup, Matlab-based analysis, and presentation of performance and stability results.