The Texas Space Foundation was founded by Rick Tumlinson and Geoff Tudor.
Rick Tumlinson is listed as one of the top 100 influential people in the space field. Called one of the world’s top space “visionaries,” Rick coined the term “NewSpace” and is credited with helping create the new commercial space industry highlighted by Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. A leading writer, speaker and six-time Congressional witness, he helped start the first mission to find water on the moon, signed the first ever commercial data purchase agreement with NASA, led the commercial takeover of the Russian Mir space station, signed the first private astronaut to fly to the space station, co-founded the Space Frontier Foundation and was a founding board member of the X-Prize. As a result of his world-changing work, in 2015 he won the World Technology Award along with Craig Venter of the Human Genome project. He founded the SpaceFund venture capital company, and his non-profit organizations, the EarthLight Foundation and New Worlds Institute are creating an inclusive movement to use space to protect the Earth and expand life into the cosmos.
He can be reached at rick@txspace.org
Geoff Tudor is a technology executive and previously Legislative Director to the former Chairman of the House Science Committee, Congressman Lamar Smith. In his work on Capitol Hill, Geoff authored the first commercial space launch amendments to enable scientists to fly microgravity research payloads on private spaceflights. He led Congressional funding for the Clementine Lunar Mission that discovered the first signatures of ice on the lunar south pole, as well funding for the DCX-1 Delta Clipper that was first to demonstrate a reusable, vertically landing spacecraft design. He received the Boeing Corporation’s Outstanding Achievement award for his work in building the financial business case for the X-33 reusable launch vehicle. In his technology career he co-founded GNS technologies acquired by Symantec, Tellaire, Inc. acquired by MRV Communications and then Nirvanix acquired by Oracle Corporation. He won the Discover Magazine Award for technological innovation and was an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award nominee. Geoff is an active private pilot and aviation enthusiast and lives in Austin, Texas. He can be reached at geoff@txspace.org