The management team at KinetX, Inc., brings a unique perspective, extensive engineering experience, and proven project management skills to every business challenge we face.
Board of Directors
Kjell K. Stakkestad — Chairman of the Board
Dr. Michael R. Fisher
Christopher Bryan — Chief Financial Officer
B.A. Claussen
Rick Sarmento
Dannie Stamp
Dr. Lyman Hazelton
Management Team
Kjell K. Stakkestad — President
Dr. Michael R. Fisher — Executive Vice President of Strategic Business Development
Dr. Bobby Williams — Director of Space Navigation and Flight Dynamics
Tony Goen — Director of Systems Engineering Services
Dr. Lyman Hazelton — Chief Scientist
Craig Cigich — Director of Operations
Kjell K. Stakkestad
Mr. Stakkestad received both his bachelor and master degrees in mathematics from the University of California at Davis, and then accepted a position as a staff orbit analyst at Lockheed Missiles and Space Company
(LMSC).
He produced orbit-planning products for an array of operational satellite programs run by the Air Force, NASA, and SDI.
In 1992, Mr. Stakkestad and a small team of engineers developed a prototype satellite ground system using off-the-shelf hardware and software products to demonstrate that a robust satellite ground system could be rapidly, cheaply, and reliably developed.
This prototype was used as the example for the future development of the AFSCN satellite ground systems.
His work on the prototype included implementation of the orbital dynamics portion of the ground system including development of the operational rule base.
In 1993, Mr. Stakkestad left LMSC to help found KinetX, Inc. and serve as its first President and Chief Financial Officer.
As the orbit dynamics lead for the development of the IRIDIUM® satellite ground control system, he developed the initial orbital dynamics requirements for the ground system.
He led the orbit trade study that chose the company to implement the requirements, worked as the liaison between the development and operational staffs, and was part of the initial operations team that assembled the IRIDIUM® constellation.
Mr. Stakkestad also led a variety of KinetX software, hardware, and system engineering projects for the IRIDIUM® project.
After leaving the IRIDIUM® project, he worked on new business development for KinetX andassisted Spectrum Astro in the design of the satellite constellation and ground system architecture for the SBIRS Low project.
He has written a number of papers on effective satellite operations and autonomy for large satellite constellations, a subject with which he is still actively involved.
Dr. Michael R. Fisher
Dr. Fisher received his Ph.D. degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and began his engineering career at Federal Express.
While there, he created software systems for aircraft and crew scheduling, aircraft fleet purchase planning, and express cargo system design.
In 1990, Dr. Fisher moved to GTE Laboratories to design and implement systems to facilitate telecommunications physical plant provisioning.
Dr. Fisher took a position with Motorola in 1994 on the IRIDIUM® project.
He was the Lead Engineer for resource allocation functionality in the network, including channel allocation, call routing, beam scheduling, and PSTN connectivity.
Following the completion of the IRIDIUM® system, Dr. Fisher joined United Airlines to engineer satellite broadband capability in aircraft passenger cabins.
Dr. Fisher is a recipient of the Best Technical Content award for his paper presented at the Annual International Airline symposium.
In May 2001, Dr. Fisher joined KinetX, Inc. as Chief Technical Officer and on March 2002, he assumed the role of Chief Operating Officer.
Christopher Bryan
Mr. Bryan graduated with a BS in Physics from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and received his MS in Computational Physics from San Jose State University.
From 1982 to 1993, Mr. Bryan supported the USAF Space Test Program as an employee of Lockheed Corporation.
During that time he held a number of technical lead positions, including Lead Orbit Analyst for the SDIO's successful Relay Mirror Experiment.
In 1993, he left Lockheed to help found KinetX.
Mr. Bryan was integral in Motorola's design, development, launch, and operation of the IRIDIUM® constellation for global satellite telecommunications.
He also designed several components of the System Control Segment including Tracking, Commanding, Orbit Control, and Activity Planning & Scheduling.
Since 1999, Mr. Bryan has supported Spectrum Astro with the design of the Space-Based Infra-Red System (SBIRS) for National Missile Defense.
He develops, codes, and tests Tracking and Data Association algorithms in the Modeling and Simulation Group.
Rick Sarmento
Rick Sarmento received his undergraduate degree in Information and Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine.
He subsequently completed coursework in mathematics and celestial mechanics at San Jose and Hayward State Universities.
Rick is one of the founding members of KinetX and has served as both CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors.
Rick supported many Air Force Space Test missions while at Lockheed.
He was lead orbit analyst on the Midcourse Space Experiment where he worked closely with colleagues from MIT and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics laboratory.
He contributed significantly to the MIT study on Space-Ground-Link-Subsystem tracking accuracies and developed on-orbit operations procedures for the MSX mission.
Rick also developed models on attitude determination using magnetometer data while at Lockheed.
Rick has most recently supported Spectrum Astro on the Department of Defense's Space Tracking and Surveillance System project.