Rick is one of the world’s leading space “visionaries” and one of the most influential people in the space field. Both a rebel and a respected leader, he co-founded the Space Frontier Foundation, which coined the term “NewSpace” and is credited with breaking open government control of all things space and helping create the multi-billion dollar commercial space industry highlighted by Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
A leading writer, speaker, and six-time Congressional witness, Rick helped start the first mission to find water on the Moon, signed the first-ever commercial data purchase agreement, and was part of the group that started NASA’s Lunar Exploration Analysis Group. He led the commercial takeover of the Russian Mir space station (where he flew a pirate flag), signed the first private astronaut to fly to the space station, 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 with over 20 space companies in its portfolio and is a member of the US Space Force Doctrine Advisory Group. The EarthLight Foundation he started hosts the New Worlds Conference and the legendary Space Cowboy Ball in Austin, and is creating an inclusive movement to use space to protect the Earth and expand life into the cosmos.
Founding the New York City L-5 Society in the 1980s on the aircraft carrier Intrepid, Rick went to work for Gerard K. O’Neill in Princeton. He was also on the team that started the Sci-Fi channel, and produced the fundraising videos to kick-start the International Space University – the first to ever shoot on the set of Star Trek (Star Trek Next Generation). He also produced the first pro-space radio public service announcement for the National Space Society.
He soon became known for his fiery speeches and OpEds decrying the “aerospace industrial complex” in space media publications, and for whipping up space activists with his speeches and lectures. He led the effort to replace the space shuttle with private space fleets – a battle he and his colleagues eventually won. Space Frontier created the first-ever roadmap to develop private orbital space stations and held the first Return to the Moon conferences starting in 1998. So disruptive to the space status quo was their work that the Space Frontier Foundation was featured in Dan Brown’s novel “Deception Point” as a radical group of pro-private sector revolutionaries trying to overthrow NASA’s domination of space.