Stuart Charles Keech is a second-generation aerospace engineer. Since Stu was very young, he wanted to be an aerospace engineer. When the library system at his elementary school was digitized, the library staff discovered that he'd checked out every space book! Stu received his BS Aerospace degree from University of Virginia in 2011.

As a student, Stu had two engineering internships. During his first internship as a USRP intern at the NASA Glenn Research Center in 2009, he studied the impact of nozzle and plume geometrics on decreasing aft sonic boom using Navier-Stokes CFD simulations. His second internship was in the High Speed Aerodynamics Group at Boeing in 2010, where he analyzed new airplane designs for 2020-2025.

After graduation, from 2011 thru 2014, Stu worked in the Future Programs team at Rolls-Royce in Indianapolis, IN. As a Performance Engineer, he analyzed gas turbine engines for 2015-2030 applications and narrowed down the design space using Design of Experiments, Monte Carlo simulations and multi-objective optimization.

In 2014 Stu moved to SpaceX in Hawthorne, CA. He initially worked as a fluid system analyst for the Falcon 9 launch vehicle, and later became the senior manager of the Dragon Propulsion team. In this role, he led design, testing and operations development of propellant and helium pressurized tanks, propellant plumbing and hardware, and the Draco and SuperDraco hypergolic engines. While in this role, the SpaceX team successfully executed the Demo-2 mission, bringing Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley safely to and from the International Space Station and ushering in a new era of commercial human spaceflight providers.

In 2021 Stu was promoted to lead the Dragon program within SpaceX, responsible for structures, software, avionics, life support, thermal control systems, space suits and crew equipment. Stu is now the Sr. Director of Dragon Engineering.