Fred Kennedy is the President of Momentus, a space transportation startup located in the San Francisco Bay Area, and a member of multiple space company advisory boards. Dr. Kennedy served as the inaugural Director of the Defense Department’s Space Development Agency during 2019 and led the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Tactical Technology Office from 2017 to 2019. He also served as a senior advisor for space and aviation in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Obama Administration (2016). Dr. Kennedy retired from the Air Force as a colonel in 2016 after a 23-year career in space and airborne systems engineering and acquisition. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Surrey for work on small satellite propulsion systems and has multiple degrees in Aerospace Engineering from MIT. Following his departure from the government, Fred worked as an executive at Astra, a small rocket company in Alameda, California. Fred is also an active Forbes contributor; his interest areas include the accelerating pace of technological change, the impact of the private sector’s primacy in technology investment, and how civil, defense, and commercial interests can work together over the coming decades to build new ecosystems on earth and in space.