About
Joe Laurienti is the founder and CEO of Ursa Major, America's leading independent rocket-propulsion company and the country's largest privately funded engine maker. A USC aerospace engineer who cut his teeth in the school's Rocket Propulsion Laboratory, he worked on Blue Origin's BE-3 engine and on SpaceX's Dragon, Merlin, and Merlin Vacuum engines before founding Ursa Major in 2015 to build propulsion as a standalone product line. Ursa was the first U.S. company to fire an oxygen-rich staged combustion engine - a milestone previously achieved only by the Russian engine industry. Today its Hadley liquid engine, Draper hypersonic engine, Arroway 200,000-lbf liquid engine, and new solid rocket motor line power U.S. defense, hypersonic, and commercial space programs; the company has signed contracts with the U.S. Navy and won DoD funding to scale solid motor production.
Previous roles
- Propulsion Engineer, SpaceX
- Propulsion Engineer, Blue Origin
Notable work
- Ursa Major
- rocket propulsion
- aerospace engineering
- hypersonics
- solid rocket motors
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