58 Space advocates

Paul Gardner Allen was an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He was best known for co-founding Microsoft Corporation with childhood friend Bill Gates in 1975, which helped spark the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, later making Microsoft the world's largest personal computer software company. Allen was ranked as the 44th-wealthiest person in the world by Forbes in 2018, with an estimated net worth of $20.3 billion at the time of his death.

Greg Autry is an American space policy expert, educator, entrepreneur and author. He serves as Chair of the Safety Working Group on the COMSTAC. He was an Assistant Professor of Clinical Entrepreneurship in Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. Prior to that, he served as an adjunct professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at the Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine. Autry served on the NASA Agency Review Team for the incoming Trump administration in 2016 and temporarily as the White House Liaison at NASA in 2017. He holds an MBA and PhD from the University of California, Irvine.

James Lance Bass is an American singer, dancer, actor, film and television producer, and author. He grew up in Mississippi and rose to fame as the bass singer for the American pop boy band NSYNC. NSYNC's success led Bass to work in film and television. He starred in the 2001 film On the Line, which his company, Bacon & Eggs, also produced. Bass later formed a second production company, Lance Bass Productions, as well as a now-defunct music management company, Free Lance Entertainment, a joint venture with Mercury Records.

Kristian von Bengtson is a Danish architect, specializing in manned spaceflight, a resident of Copenhagen and married to animation director Karla von Bengtson. He is most notable for his involvement in founding Copenhagen Suborbitals and European launcher company Orbex

James William Benson was an American aerospace engineer who founded SpaceDev, a commercial satellite and satellite component development company, and the Benson Space Company, a civilian spaceflight venture focused on commercial space tourism.

Jeffrey Preston Bezos is an American internet entrepreneur, industrialist, media proprietor, and investor. He is best known as the founder, CEO, and president of the multi-national technology company Amazon. The first centi-billionaire on the Forbes wealth index, Bezos has been the world's richest person since 2017 and was named the "richest man in modern history" after his net worth increased to $150 billion in July 2018. According to Forbes, he is the first person in history to have a net worth exceeding $200 billion.

Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson is an English business magnate, investor, author and former philanthropist. In the 1970s he founded the Virgin Group, which today controls more than 400 companies in various fields.

Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun was a German-born American aerospace engineer and space architect. He was the leading figure in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany and a pioneer of rocket and space technology in the United States.

William Seward Burroughs II was an American writer and visual artist. Burroughs was a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author whose influence affected popular culture as well as literature. Burroughs wrote eighteen novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays. Five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians and made many appearances in films. He was also briefly known by the pen name William Lee. Burroughs created and exhibited thousands of paintings and other visual artworks, including his celebrated 'Gunshot Paintings'.

Sir Arthur Charles Clarke was an English science-fiction writer, science writer, futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host.

Brian Edward Cox is an English physicist and former musician who serves as professor of particle physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester. He is best known to the public as the presenter of science programmes, especially the Wonders of... series and for popular science books, such as Why Does E=mc²? and The Quantum Universe. He has been the author or co-author of over 950 scientific publications.

Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. was an American broadcast journalist who served as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years (1962–1981). During the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trusted man in America" after being so named in an opinion poll. Cronkite reported many events from 1937 to 1981, including bombings in World War II; the Nuremberg trials; combat in the Vietnam War; the Dawson's Field hijackings; Watergate; the Iran Hostage Crisis; and the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, civil rights pioneer Martin Luther King Jr., and Beatles musician John Lennon. He was also known for his extensive coverage of the U.S. space program, from Project Mercury to the Moon landings to the Space Shuttle. He was the only non-NASA recipient of an Ambassador of Exploration award. Cronkite is known for his departing catchphrase, "And that's the way it is", followed by the date of the broadcast.

Konrad Dannenberg was a German-American rocket pioneer and member of the German rocket team brought to the United States after World War II.

Peter Diamandis

Peter H. Diamandis is a Greek American engineer, physician, and entrepreneur best known for being founder and chairman of the X Prize Foundation, cofounder and executive chairman of Singularity University and coauthor of The New York Times bestsellers Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think and BOLD: How to Go Big, Create Wealth, and Impact the World. He is former CEO and cofounder of the Zero Gravity Corporation, cofounder and vice chairman of Space Adventures Ltd., founder and chairman of the Rocket Racing League, cofounder of the International Space University, cofounder of Planetary Resources, cofounder of Celularity, founder of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space, vice chairman and cofounder of Human Longevity, Inc.

Steven J. Dick is an American astronomer, author, and historian of science most noted for his work in the field of astrobiology. Dick served as the Chief Historian for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration from 2003 to 2009 and as the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology from 2013 to 2014. Before that, he was an astronomer and historian of science at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, DC, from 1979 to 2003.

Hugh Malcolm Downs was an American radio and television broadcaster, announcer and programmer; television host; news anchor; TV producer; author; game show host; and music composer. A regular television presence from the mid 1940s until the late 1990s, he had several successful roles on morning, prime-time, and late-night television. For several years he held the certified Guinness World Record for the most hours on commercial network television before being surpassed by Regis Philbin.

Francisco Javier "Frank" Duarte is a laser physicist and author/editor of several well-known books on tunable lasers and quantum optics. He introduced the generalized multiple-prism dispersion theory, has discovered various multiple-prism grating oscillator laser configurations, and pioneered polymer-nanoparticle gain media. His contributions have found applications in a variety of fields including astronomical instrumentation, atomic vapor laser isotope separation, geodesics, gravitational lensing, laser medicine, laser microscopy, laser pulse compression, laser spectroscopy, nonlinear optics, and tunable diode lasers.

Freeman John Dyson was a British-American theoretical and mathematical physicist, mathematician, and statistician known for his works in quantum field theory, astrophysics, random matrices, mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics, condensed matter physics, nuclear physics, and engineering. He was Professor Emeritus in the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College, and a member of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Krafft Arnold Ehricke was a German rocket-propulsion engineer and advocate for space colonization.

Laetitia Garriott de Cayeux is an American entrepreneur and executive who serves as CEO of Global Space Ventures and was the president and COO of Escape Dynamics.

Sheyene Gerardi is a Venezuelan actress, producer and media executive. She is the Lead of Robotics Outreach at NASA (CLASS). Gerardi is the founder of the Sheyene Institute and the Sheyene Gerardi Network (SGN), and operates two philanthropic organizations through the Sheyene Gerardi Foundation. The Sheyene School, to address technological literacy. The Sheyene e-health, an electronic healthcare information delivery network for rare diseases, after becoming a survivor of an unclassifiable splenic hairy small B-Cell lymphoma non-Hodgkin, a rare cancer. Sheyene is member of The International Political Science Association (IPSA), the American Society of International Law and member to the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom

Alan Hale is an American professional astronomer, who co-discovered Comet Hale–Bopp along with amateur astronomer Thomas Bopp.

Thomas Jeffrey Hanks is an American actor, filmmaker and comedian. Known for both his comedic and dramatic roles, Hanks is one of the most popular and recognizable film stars worldwide, and is regarded as an American cultural icon. Hanks's films have grossed more than $4.9 billion in North America and more than $9.96 billion worldwide, making him the fourth-highest-grossing actor in North America.

Todd B. Hawley was one of the three founders of the International Space University (ISU) and a lifelong advocate of human space exploration. He was born on April 13, 1961, the day after the first flight of Yuri Gagarin.

William Thomson Hay was an English comedian who wrote and acted in a schoolmaster sketch that was popular all over the world, and later transferred to the screen, where he also played other authority figures with comic failings. His film Oh, Mr. Porter! (1937), made by Gainsborough Pictures, is often cited as the supreme British-produced film-comedy, and in 1938 he was the third highest-grossing star in the UK. Many famous comedians have acknowledged him as a major influence. Hay was also a keen amateur astronomer.

Howard Keith Henson is an American electrical engineer and writer. Henson writes on subjects including space engineering, space law, memetics, cryonics, evolutionary psychology, and the physical limitations of Transhumanism. In 1975, Henson founded the L5 Society with his then-wife Carolyn Meinel to promote space colonization. In 1987 the L5 Society merged with the National Space Institute to form the National Space Society.

Albert Roach Hibbs was a mathematician and scientist best known as "The Voice of JPL" due to his gift for explaining difficult science in lay terms. He helped establish the Space Science Division at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1960 and served as its first chief. He was the systems designer for the USA's first satellite, and established the framework for exploration of the solar system through the 1960s. Hibbs qualified as an astronaut in 1967 and was slated to be a crew member of Apollo 25, but with the Apollo program ending at 17 he did not get to the Moon.

Lyndon Baines Johnson, often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969, and previously as 37th vice president from 1961 to 1963. He assumed the presidency following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. A Democrat from Texas, Johnson also served as a United States Representative and as the Majority Leader in the United States Senate. Johnson is one of only four people who have served in all four federal elected positions.

Michio Kaku is an American theoretical physicist, futurist, and popularizer of science. He is a professor of theoretical physics in the City College of New York and CUNY Graduate Center. Kaku has written several books about physics and related topics, has made frequent appearances on radio, television, and film, and writes online blogs and articles. He has written the New York Times best sellers Physics of the Impossible (2008), Physics of the Future (2011), and The Future of the Mind (2014). Kaku has hosted several TV specials for the BBC, the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, and the Science Channel.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, often referred to by his initials JFK, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963. Kennedy served at the height of the Cold War, and the majority of his work as president concerned relations with the Soviet Union and Cuba. A Democrat, Kennedy represented Massachusetts in both houses of the U.S. Congress prior to becoming president.

Geoffrey Alan Landis is an American aerospace engineer and author, working for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on planetary exploration, interstellar propulsion, solar power and photovoltaics. He holds nine patents, primarily in the field of improvements to solar cells and photovoltaic devices and has given presentations and commentary on the possibilities for interstellar travel and construction of bases on the Moon, Mars, and Venus.

Willy Otto Oskar Ley was a German-American science writer and proponent of cryptozoology. The crater Ley on the far side of the Moon is named in his honor.

Bruce Lusignan is an emeritus professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University and a visiting professor at Portland State University. He earned his B.S.E.E ('58), M.S.E.E. ('59) and Ph.D. ('63) degrees from Stanford. In the early 1960s, he worked in radio astronomy at Stanford. He has been director of Stanford's Communication Satellite Planning Center and Stanford's Center for International Cooperation in Space. He has also owned a small company designing cellular phones and pagers.

Peter Langkjær Madsen is a Danish convicted murderer, former engineer and entrepreneur. In April 2018 he was convicted of the 2017 murder of Swedish journalist Kim Wall on board his submarine, UC3 Nautilus, and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Michael Mealling is co-founder of Pipefish Inc, and was the cofounder, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Vice President of Business Development of Masten Space Systems, CEO of Refactored Networks, long time participant within the IETF, a Space Frontier Foundation Advocate, and a former Director of the Moon Society. He operates a blog site called Rocketforge and has been interviewed twice on The Space Show and twice on SpaceVidcast.

James Albert Michener was an American author. He wrote more than 40 books, most of which were lengthy, fictional family sagas covering the lives of many generations in particular geographic locales and incorporating solid history. Michener had numerous bestsellers and works selected for Book of the Month Club, and was known for his meticulous research behind the books.

Elon Reeve Musk is a business magnate, industrial designer and engineer. He is the founder, CEO, CTO and chief designer of SpaceX; early investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; founder of The Boring Company; co-founder of Neuralink; and co-founder and initial co-chairman of OpenAI. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2018. Also that year, he was ranked 25th on the Forbes list of The World's Most Powerful People, and was ranked joint-first on the Forbes list of the Most Innovative Leaders of 2019. As of December 19, 2020, Musk’s net worth was estimated by Forbes to US$153.5 billion, making him the second-richest person in the world, behind Jeff Bezos.

Geoffrey Notkin is an American actor, author, and entrepreneur. Notkin is known as one of the hosts of Meteorite Men, a documentary reality television series from Science Channel, which ran for three seasons. He is the president of the National Space Society, and holds a seat on the National Space Society Board of Governors. He is a long-time member of The Explorer's Club. In 2013, Notkin's Twitter account was nominated for a Shorty Award, honoring the best in social media. Notkin has also been interviewed on the Today show, Coast to Coast, and NASA Edge TV, and is a regular guest speaker at TusCon, an intimate science fiction, fantasy, and horror convention held annually in Tucson, Arizona.

William Sanford Nye, popularly known as Bill Nye the Science Guy, is an American mechanical engineer, science communicator, and television presenter. He is best known as the host of the PBS and syndicated children's science show Bill Nye the Science Guy (1993–1998), the Netflix show Bill Nye Saves the World (2017–2018), and for his many subsequent appearances in popular media as a science educator.

Brian Todd O'Leary was an American scientist, author, and NASA astronaut. He was part of NASA Astronaut Group 6, a group of scientist-astronauts chosen with the intention of training for the Apollo Applications Program.

Gerard Kitchen O'Neill was an American physicist and space activist. As a faculty member of Princeton University, he invented a device called the particle storage ring for high-energy physics experiments. Later, he invented a magnetic launcher called the mass driver. In the 1970s, he developed a plan to build human settlements in outer space, including a space habitat design known as the O'Neill cylinder. He founded the Space Studies Institute, an organization devoted to funding research into space manufacturing and colonization.

John Whiteside Parsons was an American rocket engineer, chemist, and Thelemite occultist. Associated with the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Parsons was one of the principal founders of both the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the Aerojet Engineering Corporation. He invented the first rocket engine to use a castable, composite rocket propellant, and pioneered the advancement of both liquid-fuel and solid-fuel rockets.

Robert Zane Pearlman is an American space historian and the founder and editor of collectSPACE, a website devoted to news and information concerning space exploration and space-related artifacts and memorabilia, especially in popular culture. He is also a contributing writer to Space.com.

Philip Cary Plait, also known as The Bad Astronomer, is an American astronomer, skeptic, writer and popular science blogger. Plait has worked as part of the Hubble Space Telescope team, images and spectra of astronomical objects, as well as engaging in public outreach advocacy for NASA missions. He has written two books, Bad Astronomy and Death from the Skies. He has also appeared in several science documentaries, including How the Universe Works on the Discovery Channel. From August 2008 through 2009, he served as president of the James Randi Educational Foundation. Additionally, he wrote and hosted episodes of Crash Course Astronomy, which aired its last episode in 2016.

Muhammad Shahid Qureshi or Shahid Qureshi, styled as M. Shahid Qureshi, is a Pakistani mathematician, astrophysicist and a renowned astronomer. He is an academic and an eminent educationist from Pakistan who has published articles in the fields of astrophysics and astronomy. He is the retired professor of astrophysics and astronomy at Karachi University and Institute of Space and Planetary Astrophysics (ISPA), and former director of ISPA, the country's prominent institution in the field of planetary astrophysics and planetary astronomy. He previously served as an assistant professor of mathematics and computer science. He also the founding director of the Department of Mathematics at Institute of Business Administration, Karachi.

Rona Ramon was a public activist STEM influencer and supporter of the education and advancement of youth in Israel. Ramon was the widow of Colonel Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut. He died in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003. She was the mother of Captain Assaf Ramon, a fighter pilot in the Israeli Air Force who was killed in a training accident on September 13, 2009.

Gabriel Rothblatt, born October 5, 1982 is a technoprogressive political activist, a 2014 congressional candidate, and a writer and speaker in the futurist and transhumanist movements.

Elbert Leander "Burt" Rutan is a retired American aerospace engineer and entrepreneur noted for his originality in designing light, strong, unusual-looking, and energy-efficient air and space craft. He designed the record-breaking Voyager, which in 1986 was the first plane to fly around the world without stopping or refueling, and the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer, which in 2006 set the world record for the fastest and longest nonstop non-refueled circumnavigation flight in history. In 2004, Rutan's sub-orbital spaceplane design SpaceShipOne became the first privately funded spacecraft to enter the realm of space, winning the Ansari X-Prize that year for achieving the feat twice within a two-week period.

Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, poet, and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is research on extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation. Sagan assembled the first physical messages sent into space: the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record, universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find them. Sagan argued the now-accepted hypothesis that the high surface temperatures of Venus can be attributed to and calculated using the greenhouse effect.

Mohammad Abdus Salam, was a Pakistani theoretical physicist. He shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics with Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg for his contribution to the electroweak unification theory. He was the first Pakistani and Muslim to receive a Nobel Prize in science and the second from an Islamic country to receive any Nobel Prize.

George Harry Stine was one of the founding figures of model rocketry, a science and technology writer, and a science fiction author.

Captain Robert C. Truax (USN) was an American rocket engineer in the United States Navy, and companies such as Aerojet and Truax Engineering, which he founded. Truax was a proponent of low-cost rocket engine and vehicle designs.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is an American astrophysicist, planetary scientist, author, and science communicator.

Douglas Vakoch is an American astrobiologist, search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) researcher, psychologist, and president of METI International, a nonprofit research and educational organization devoted to transmitting intentional signals to extraterrestrial civilizations. Vakoch led METI's participation in Sónar Calling GJ 273b, which transmitted a series of interstellar messages to Luyten's Star, located 12.4 light years from Earth. Vakoch advocates ongoing transmission projects, arguing that this does not increase risks of an alien invasion as suggested by British cosmologist Stephen Hawking. He has participated in several SETI observation programs, and after sixteen years at the SETI Institute, where he was director of Interstellar Message Composition, Vakoch founded METI International. He has edited over a dozen books in SETI, astrobiology, the psychology of space exploration, and ecocriticism. He is general editor of two book series in ecocriticism and in the intersection of space and society. Vakoch has appeared widely on television and radio as a commentator on SETI and astrobiology. He is an emeritus professor of clinical psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS).

Ariel Waldman is an explorer, creator and writer specializing in the intersection of science, space, technology and art. She describes herself as "on a mission to make science and space exploration disruptively accessible."

Günter F. Wendt was a German-American mechanical engineer noted for his work in the U.S. human spaceflight program. An employee of McDonnell Aircraft and later North American Aviation, he was in charge of the spacecraft close-out crews at the launch pads for the entire Mercury and Gemini programs (1961–1966), and the manned phase of the Apollo program (1968–1975) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC). His official title was Pad Leader.

Per Wimmer is a Danish philanthropist, space advocate, entrepreneur, financier and author.

Robert Zubrin is an American aerospace engineer, author, and advocate for human exploration of Mars. He and his colleague at Martin Marietta, David Baker, were the driving force behind Mars Direct, a proposal in a 1990 research paper intended to produce significant reductions in the cost and complexity of such a mission. The key idea was to use the Martian atmosphere to produce oxygen, water, and rocket propellant for the surface stay and return journey. A modified version of the plan was subsequently adopted by NASA as their "design reference mission". He questions the delay and cost-to-benefit ratio of first establishing a base or outpost on an asteroid or another Apollo program-like return to the Moon, as neither would be able to provide all of its own oxygen, water, or energy; these resources are producible on Mars, and he expects people would be there thereafter.