Cleveland, Ohio — September 8, 2025 — SpaceX’s William H. “Gerst” Gerstenmaier used his keynote at the Glenn Space Technology Symposium on Monday to call on the U.S. research community to move faster, adapt more aggressively, and partner more closely with commercial space companies or risk being left behind.
“The challenge is, can you learn to move at the speed the private sector needs?” said Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice president of build and flight reliability. “We’re going to fly as fast as we can fly. We don’t have time to wait.”
SpaceX’s Bill Gerstenmaier speaks at the 2025 AAS Glenn Space Technology Symposium (copyright, American Astronautical Society)
Starship as a Reusable Workhorse
Gerstenmaier spotlighted SpaceX’s progress with its Starship vehicle, which has now been caught successfully by the company’s Texas launch tower arms on multiple attempts — a maneuver designed to eliminate the slow turnaround of drone-ship recoveries. “Our goal is to turn a booster around within hours, not days,” he said, underscoring Starship’s role as the backbone of plans to make human spaceflight rapid, reusable, and affordable.
The most recent test flight, Starship Flight 10, included experiments ranging from non-ceramic heat shield tiles to aerodynamic stability assessments. Some gambles didn’t pay off — the metal tiles oxidized in flight — but Gerstenmaier said the lessons were invaluable. “You don’t need two years of analysis if one flight gives you the answer tomorrow,” he told the audience.
Starlink’s Path from Prototype to Infrastructure
Gerstenmaier contrasted Starship’s cutting-edge development with Starlink’s evolution into a near-ubiquitous communications network. He noted that Starlink’s initial service was unreliable, but that SpaceX iterated quickly into a constellation of nearly 9,000 satellites serving households, ships, planes, and disaster zones worldwide. “You don’t come in with a perfect product,” he said. “You come in with a minimum viable product, you learn, and you adapt.”
Research as a Missing Link
While SpaceX excels at flying fast and iterating hardware, Gerstenmaier said there is a gap the research community is uniquely positioned to fill: explaining why designs work — or don’t. He cited discrepancies between computational fluid dynamics, wind tunnel tests, and actual Starship flight data as an example. “We know it works because we flew it,” he said. “You can help us understand why.”
That expertise will be critical as SpaceX pushes into on-orbit cryogenic propellant transfer, a technology targeted for demonstration in 2026 that will be essential for Moon and Mars missions.
Breaking Out of Old Habits
Gerstenmaier also challenged government institutions to rethink outdated standards and slow approval processes. “Some inspection techniques still required by NASA documents are no longer valid,” he said. “Government needs to be responsive and allow the private sector to experiment.”
He encouraged researchers and regulators alike to channel the kind of entrepreneurial spirit he saw early in his own NASA career. “Don’t be afraid to challenge the standards,” he said. “The real question is not whether you fail — it’s how fast you learn.”
Eyes on Mars
Despite the near-term hurdles of heat shields, fluid transfer, and rapid reuse, Gerstenmaier closed by returning to SpaceX’s core mission: enabling human settlement of Mars. “My passion has always been to move human presence into the solar system,” he said. “That’s what drives us every day.”
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