don.pedersen

Software since 1989.

I build mission-critical systems where the consequences of failure are measured in dollars, lives, or kilometers above the Earth — and the AI-powered infrastructure that runs them down here.

League City, TX 30+ years building software Founder, DartNode

About

I'm a technical executive and lifelong software builder. By day I run the Flight Software and Systems Integration Lab for Starlab — a commercial successor to the ISS — at Cimarron Software Services. By night (and the other night, and most weekends) I'm Founder & CTO of DartNode, an AI-powered infrastructure and business platform serving thousands of clients.

Across thirty years and a dozen programs I've shipped flight software to the Moon and the ISS, architected the avionics for NASA's next-generation space suit, built a NASA Software-of-the-Year scheduling system still in daily use, and stood up an autonomous AI-driven operations platform for a globally distributed network. I like cradle-to-grave ownership: proposal, architecture, build, certification, and the long quiet years of sustaining the thing.

In 2025 I co-founded ip.space, a nonprofit dedicated to bringing open standard protocols to space systems. I think the next decade of space infrastructure ought to look more like the internet and less like a one-off vendor stack.

Featured work

RAC — Lunar Surface Payload

PI & PM · Blue Ghost CLPS lander · 2020–2024

Regolith Adherence Characterization payload. Motor control, dual-computer flight software, photo capture, and full command & data handling for lunar surface operations.

xEVAS — Next-Gen Space Suit

Principal Architect · Power, Comms, Avionics & Informatics · US Patent 12,047,196

Dual rad-hard processor architecture with multiple boot methods for a life-critical system. Power, battery, and communications architecture for ISS and the lunar terrain vehicle.

DartNode — AI Infrastructure Platform

Founder & CTO · 2014–present · Owns AS399646

Hybrid on-prem + Claude API inference, autonomous server-management agent, MCP-based tool orchestration, real-time POP monitoring, full billing/CRM/scheduling stack — all in-house.

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Recent writing

Eating my own dog food

2026-04-25

you gotta use your own creations

Hello, world (still)

2026-04-25

Many decades of writing software, why I'm starting a blog now, and what I plan to put here.

Task Hound

2026-04-25

Task Hound working towards Open Source

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