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Dan DeLong
Vice President and Chief Engineer
Dan DeLong is a world-recognized innovator in rocket propulsion development. He has been designing, fabricating, and testing advanced prototype hardware and systems intended for extreme conditions for the last 36 years.
Dan co-founded XCOR in September 1999, where he is design lead for all new hardware development including 11 rocket engines and ignition systems, using alcohol, methane, ethane, nitroethane, and kerosene fuels and cryogenic oxidizers. The piston-pump-fed 1500 lb thrust LOX/kerosene engine on the X-Racer was his concept and preliminary design. He is also leading current building of the Lynx suborbital reusable launch vehicle and the advanced planning of the future XCOR orbital vehicle.
Dan was a co-founder of Rotary Rocket Company in 1997 where he was engineering lead over 17 people developing a 5,000 lb thrust high pressure rocket engine.
Prior to Rotary Rocket, Dan spent 10 years working on Space Station life support hardware and development projects for Boeing, and Space Shuttle payload hardware for Teledyne Brown. From 1974 through 1983, he developed military and commercial life support systems for Westinghouse and manned and unmanned underwater systems for Perry Oceanographics. He also owns rights to an orbital spaceplane concept he developed at Teledyne Brown.
In 2002 Esquire magazine named Dan as one of America’s “Best and Brightest” 43 People Who Will Revolutionize the World. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering from Cornell University. Dan flew as flight test engineer in the X-Racer in 2008. He is a pilot and a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), American Society for Materials (ASM), the Experimental Aircraft Association, and the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA).
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