Michael Altenhofen

Michael Altenhofen is SpaceX’s Director of Human Spaceflight Sales and Products. As the key global interface for all human spaceflight sales, Michael uses his unique engineering background to define new product capabilities of the Dragon and Starship vehicles for all current and future human spaceflight missions. Michael joined SpaceX in 2009, building the Falcon 9 and Dragon vehicles’ bi-coastal recovery teams in addition to overseeing the engineering development of all vessels, vehicle interfaces, and operations. He also served as a structural and fluids engineer at SpaceX’s launch sites, designing and analyzing primary structural connections on the Falcon 9 v1.1 transport erector. Michael later joined SpaceX’s mission management team, managing four NASA cargo resupply missions and Dragon’s first human spaceflight (NASA’s Demo-2 mission) to and from the International Space Station. Since then, Michael has developed multiple advanced and customized human spaceflight missions to low-Earth orbit, the space station, the Moon’s orbit, and beyond for SpaceX customers. Michael holds a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering and a Master of Science in Engineering Management from the University of Kansas.