Welcome

My name is Samuel Belden, and I am a Process Engineering Manager at SpaceX working on providing high speed, low latency internet to the world with Starlink. I graduated from MIT in 2018 with a Bachelor's Degree in Materials Science and Engineering. Since then I have been involved in a wide range of projects, from reliability testing the solar arrays and battery packs on the Dragon spacecraft, to formulating custom blends of injection molding plastics, printed electronics/inks, and radome coatings and materials for high volume consumer electronics for Starlink, and in the last 3-4 years creating and leading a team to bring up greenfield manufacturing of printed circuit boards (now the largest pcb manufactuer in North America), and solar cell manufacturing (soon to be largest in North America as well) for Starlink, from initial conception, buyoff, and capital procurement (>$1B), through process design, layout, facilities and construction design, install/commissioning, engineering and production org hiring, and process bringup to steady-state, and handover. I specialize in process engineering and in bringing up extremely complex manufacturing processes from scratch, cradle to grave.

I was also involved in various materials science projects and research in my time at MIT, ranging from lab work to hands-on prototyping and manufacturing. I enjoy hands-on, challenging engineering projects. I've built my own electron microscope that can 'see' atoms, made custom injection molded yo-yo's, designed and built my own carbon fiber bike, and built a variety of 3D printers/cnc machines, along with various other projects. I always have a few things in the works!

Outside of work, I'm an avid backpacker, camper, hiker, rock climber, canoer, rower, cook, baker, and entrepreneur. Recently I have also been doing more woodworking and stained glass projects as well.

While at Apple, I worked primarily on both the AirPower wireless charging mat and the next generation iPhone 8 and 8+. I designed and fabricated several test setups through collaboration with electrical engineering, materials, and product design teams for benchmarking technologies and conducting user experience studies. I extensively used NX CAD, ANSYS mechanical, thermal, and electromagnetic simulation software, and Matlab.

At CEiiA, I performed market analysis and research on battery managment system (BMS) options for a large 30kg UAV. I designed multiple BMS options in Eagle and had them manufactured and tested. I also performed several carbon fiber layups for another intern's 3-axis gimal design.