The Dyson Sphere Architects: Engineering Blueprint for a Star-Sized Megastructure

Cassandra Jannsen is a space systems engineer and science communicator specializing in megastructure architecture and in-space manufacturing. She holds a Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where her thesis focused on autonomous assembly of large orbital structures using swarm robotics. She has worked as a propulsion systems engineer at SpaceX, contributing to the Raptor engine program, and as a senior structural analyst at Blue Origin, where she designed radiation shielding for the Blue Moon lunar lander.

Jannsen's work has been published in the *Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets*, *Acta Astronautica*, and *Space Policy*, with papers on orbital swarm coordination, high-temperature composite materials for space applications, and the governance frameworks required for multi-generational space projects. She serves on the advisory board of the Space Studies Institute and is a Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society.

As a communicator, Jannsen has appeared as a guest expert on the *StarTalk* podcast and the BBC's *The Infinite Monkey Cage*, and her writing on space infrastructure has been featured in *Wired*, *IEEE Spectrum*, and *Aeon*. She maintains the popular engineering blog *Structural Ephemera*, where she explores the intersection of hard science fiction and real-world engineering constraints. *The Dyson Sphere Architects* is her first book. She lives in Boulder, Colorado, with her partner and two cats, and spends her weekends building scale models of space habitats in her workshop.