Pushing Boundaries: Abhishek Tripathi’s Experience with NASA, SpaceX, UC Berkeley and Startups

Abhishek Tripathi, is the Director of Mission operations of the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. Abhi is also the Chair of the Air and Space track startups at Skydeck, which is UC Berkeley's startup accelerator program.

For over two decades, Abhi has been at the forefront of human and robotic space exploration. At SpaceX, he spearheaded the certification of both the cargo and crew Dragon programs, a pivotal achievement in commercial spaceflight. His expertise was further showcased as Dragon Mission Director, where he orchestrated a dozen critical cargo resupply missions to the International Space Station. Abhi's technical acumen reached new heights when he assumed the role of Dragon Chief Engineer for Flight Reliability on the groundbreaking Crew Demo 1 and Demo 2 missions. Prior to his transformative work at SpaceX, Abhi honed his skills during a decade-long tenure as an Aerospace Systems engineer at NASA, laying the foundation for his remarkable career in space technology. 

We talked about the lessons learned from Abhi’s journey at NASA, SpaceX and his work at the University of California, Berkeley, where he continues to lead several space missions. He shared some of the lessons learned from working at a highly demanding job at SpaceX; and also translated his experiences into lessons for startups and life in general. And Yes, he did share some of his experiences working with Elon Musk.

Show Notes:

• Abhishek Tripathi https://www.ssl.berkeley.edu/
• Setting overarching goals that ties with the vision for a company
• Building factories to vow consumers and the larger population (new age moats)
• Journey at NASA
• Try to work at a cutting edge company before launching a startup, (except if you are a deeply involved in a research area during postdoc or similar compelling situation)
• Picking advisors: Pick tactical advisors instead of strategic ones
• End all instances of gatekeeping (one of the rules set by Musk)
• Leading the Dragon mission to deliver cargo to ISS
• Regulations: Working with NASA/government for approvals ‘Bring me a rock exercise”
• Experiences working on Falcon 9 mission
• Transition to academia https://www.ssl.berkeley.edu/
• “Other than the brutal pace of Space X, we have many of the elements of Space X at Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley.”
• Space track https://skydeck.berkeley.edu/
• What startups in the space track should possess
• Timing, funding, technology readiness
• SSL LEADERSHIP AND ADMINISTRATIVE CONTACTS
• https://www.ssl.berkeley.edu/administrative-contacts/
• https://x.com/SpaceAbhi