Leadership Board

Dr. Joseph N. Pelton is the former Vice President of Academic Programs, Dean and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the International Space University of Strasbourg, France. He is also the Director Emeritus of the Space and Advanced Communications Research Institute at George Washington University.

Dr. Pelton is a Co-Editor of the newly completed book ‘Global Space Governance: An International Study’. He is currently on the Executive Board of the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety and chair of its International Academic Committee. He is the award-winning author and editor of some 50 books and over 300 articles in the field of space, satellite communications systems, future technologies and urban planning.

Dr Pelton has also served as Director of the Interdisciplinary Telecommunications Program at the University of Colorado-Boulder and in a number of executive capacities at Intelsat and the Comsat Corporation earlier in his career, including as Director of Strategic Policy and Director of Project SHARE at Intelsat.

He obtained his PhD in International Relations and Affairs from Georgetown University, a Master’s Degree in International Relations and Affairs from New York University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Physics, Math and Political Science from the University of Tulsa.

Space News named Rick Tumlinson  one of the 100 most influential people in the space field.  He is considered one of the people who helped create the current commercial space industry. He led the team that took over the Mir Space Station as the world’s first commercial space facility, signed up financier Dennis Tito to become the first citizen explorer to stay on the International Space Station and was a Founding Trustee of the X Prize. He co-founded the Space Frontier Foundation and founded the Texas Space Alliance, the EarthLight Institute and Orbital Outfitters – provider of commercial space suits to the new industry of suborbital space travel. He has testified on space policy issues twice for the US Senate, four times in the US House of Representatives and assisted NASA in the creation of its plan to return to the Moon and the formation of the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group. He is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post and Space News.

Robert C. Springer is a veteran of both NASA and the United States Marine Corps. He has logged more than 6,500 flying hours in his career, including as a mission specialist on two space shuttle flights, the STS-29 mission aboard Discovery and the STS-38 mission aboard Atlantis.

A graduate of the United States Naval Academy, Col. Springer has served two tours in Vietnam, where he completed more than 300 combat missions flying F-4 phantoms and more than 250 missions flying helicopters.

He served as a test pilot for more than 20 different aircraft during his military career.

In 1980, Springer was selected to be an astronaut by NASA. He worked as orbit Capsule Communicator, or CAPCOM, in the Mission Control Center for seven flights between 1984 and 1985.

Col. Springer is an active member of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots, the Marine Corps Aviation Association, and the United States Naval Academy Alumni Association. He is also a member of the Operations Research Society and the Military Operations Research Society. Col. Springer has served as Chairman of the Board of Directors for Space is Special, a non-profit organization dedicated to using the hands-on applications of the space program to educate children with learning disabilities. He has also served on the Brevard County School Board and is on the board of Keep Brevard Beautiful, The Astronaut Memorial Foundation, and is President of the Board of Directors for the Education Foundation.

James R. Hansen has written about aerospace history and the history of science and technology for the past thirty years. He has published books and articles on a wide variety of topics ranging from the early days of aviation, the first nuclear fusion reactors, and the Moon landings, to the environmental history of golf courses.

His book, First Man (Simon & Schuster, 2005), the first and only authorized biography of Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon, spent three weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list and has garnered several major book awards including the American Astronautical Society’s Eugene Emme Prize for Astronautical Literature and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ Outstanding Book Award. First Man has also been published in the United Kingdom and in Japanese translation and is scheduled to appear in Chinese, Russian, Croatian, and Turkish. The film rights to the book are held by Universal Studios and a screenplay for the film has recently been completed by Mike Rich, whose movie screenwriting credits include Finding Forrester, The Rookie, Miracle, Radio, The Nativity Story, and the 2010 Disney release Secretariat.

Derek Webber is dual nationality US/UK, an advocate of commercial space, and for over 25 years has provided US-based entrepreneurial consulting and advisory services as Founder of Spaceport Associates. He directed landmark studies in space tourism and spaceport business planning which established the existence of a viable business for space tourism, and worked with the FAA to establish balanced regulation for the industry. He furthermore provided testimony on space tourism’s potential to the President’s Commission on the Future of the US Aerospace Industry. He was Vice-Chair of the panel of International Judges for the Google Lunar XPRIZE, which aimed at landing a non-governmental mobile robotic payload on the Moon and sending images back, and in that capacity he had particular responsibility for Lunar Heritage Site protection amongst the competing teams.   He has recently created the Gateway Earth Development Group, an initiative to provide a low-cost joint commercial/governmental space architecture for regular interplanetary travel, and advocates for the inclusion of space settlement as a long-term goal of US space policy.

Mr. Webber’s contributions began as a launch vehicle and satellite engineer in the UK, in what became EADS/Astrium Space Systems. He became Head of Procurement at the London-based International Maritime Satellite Organization, a UN intergovernmental organization, where he was responsible for negotiating and contracting over a billion dollars-worth of communications satellites and their launch vehicles.  Subsequently, Mr Webber moved to Amsterdam as Managing Director of Tachyon Europe – providing satellite broadband and Internet access across the continent. Mr Webber is a Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society, a Senior Member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and is on the visiting faculty of the London Institute of Space Policy and Law. He has been a visiting lecturer at the International Space University in Strasbourg, Toronto, Kitakyushu, Huntsville and Barcelona, has conducted space business in over 40 countries, and is a frequent commentator in space publications, and on radio and TV shows, on matters of commercial space. He has been an enthusiastic volunteer docent guide to visitors at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution.

Mr. Webber, in addition to having authored countless articles and conference papers, has published three books which treat various aspects of space history and space futures: “The Wright Stuff: The Century of Effort Behind Your Ticket to Space”, “No Bucks, No Buck Rogers: Creating the Business of Commercial Space”, and “Afterglow: Reflections on the Golden Age of Moon Explorers”.  He has citations in “Who’s Who in Science and Engineering”, and “Who’s Who in the World”, was awarded a certificate of recognition for his contributions by the Space Tourism Society at its Orbit Awards event in 2006, and received an award for “contributions to space activity, and in particular private access to space” from the International Academy of Astronautics in 2011.

People first went to the moon during my first year in high school (December 1968), and the last person left the moon during my first year in college (December 1972). I am involved in getting back to the moon, to stay! I am the founder and CEO of InterPlanetary Ventures, and Chief Synergist for Synergy Moon International, one of the 5 finalist teams from the Google Lunar XPRIZE still working with team partners to get the private sector on the Moon in 2019. Our Mission and Motto is Getting People Into Space!

I am both an artist and a technologist, a theatrical designer and an Information Technology Systems Manager. I have a B.Sc. in Computer Science and a Bachelors in Information Technology, with graduate course work in Space Studies from the University of North Dakota.

I have participated in workshops and briefings with NASA on the preservation of lunar sites of historical significance, known as Heritage Sites, and I am proud to work with and be a part of “For All Moonkind” on a mission to insure the protection and preservation of these Lunar Heritage Sites.

Robert Boehme is founder and CEO of PTScientists – the Berlin-based space company aiming to land the first private mission on the Moon. His vision for the future involves developing reusable infrastructures on the Moon that could be used as a blueprint for enabling deeper exploration of the solar system.

Robert did not take a traditional route into the space industry.  In his former life Robert was a Microsoft, CISCO and RedHat trained IT security specialist and at just 18, he was the youngest person to hold both RedHat System Administrator and System Engineer certifications. This led him to a career with the German government, where he designed and built several data centres and tested the security of laptops, mobiles and other devices used by politicians.

Robert has now made the transition from “Part-time Scientist” to full-time space pioneer and never looked back. Working with key partners Audi and Vodafone,  he hopes that Mission to the Moon – the company’s first mission – will increase access to space and enable non-traditional players to take part in lunar exploration.