Rick Tumlinson

Prior to co-founding the Space Frontier Foundation, Rick Tumlinson worked for noted scientist Gerard K. O’Neill at the Space Studies Institute, founded the New York L-5 Society and was a key player in starting the Lunar Prospector project which discovered hints of water on the Moon. He also helped pass the Space Settlement Act of 1988, testified before President Reagan’s National Commission on Space and was a founding trustee of the X-Prize. Over the years he has been a lead witness in six congressional hearings on the future of NASA, the U.S. space program and space tourism. This includes testifying before Senator John McCain and the Senate Space and Technology Committee on the Moon, Mars and Beyond program.

Tumlinson has helped raise funds for projects as wide ranging as the Air Force’s DC-X rocket project, the International Space University and the X-33 rocket program. He founded the firm LunaCorp,which produced the first ever TV commercial shot on the International Space Station for Radio Shack. He led the team which turned the Mir Space Station into the world’s first commercial space facility, and was a co-founder of the space firm MirCorp. Tumlinson has served as the Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Foundation for the International Non-Governmental Development of Space (FINDS), a foundation which funded breakthrough projects and activities such as Helium 3 research, laser launch studies and asteroid processing projects.

Tumlinson has made multiple media appearances, speaking and writing on various space topics in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, Washington Post, Reader’s Digest, on CNN, ABC’s World News Tonight, Politically Incorrect, CBS Evening News with Dan Rather and CNBC’s Open.