Rick Tumlinson
SpaceFund Inc./The EarthLight Foundation Chairman
Austin, Texas
Rick Tumlinson is a space revolutionary, and has been called one of the world’s top space “Visionaries” - credited with helping create the NewSpace commercial space industry, whose players include Elon Musk, Paul Allen of MicroSoft and Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, In 2015 he won the World Technology Award along with Craig Venter of the Human Genome project.
Rick co-Founded the Space Frontier Foundation, led the team that took over the Mir Space Station for a year as the world’s first commercial space facility, signed up the first “space tourist” Dennis Tito, and has spoken as an expert witness before the US Congress 6 times on space policyas well as working with the planners of the new US Space Force. A founding Board Member of the XPrize, we worked with the founders of the International Space University, helped kick start the Lunar Prospector Project that first discovered water on the Moon and helped or founded several other Frontier Enabling projects and organizations. He edited the book Return to the Moon, and is published and interviewed on space topics around the world.
Recently he co-Founded and is Chairman of SpaceFund, a leading edge venture capital company using the power of blockchain based security tokens to raise capitol to support “frontier enabling” space start ups. He started the Texas Space Alliance and Foundation and the EarthLight Foundation that will be putting on the New Worlds 2019 Conference and Space Cowboy Ball Nov 15-16 in Austin. He is considered one of the best speakers in the space field, and his new book “A Space Manifesto” will be available at the end of the year.