People to Watch

There really is no telling who will make the biggest difference in space during the next 15 years. As Mark Twain famously said, "the art of prophecy is very difficult, especially with respect  to the future." With that in mind, the Space News editorial team, with input from SPACE.com and readers, picked a dozen individuals remarkable either for their accomplishments to date or their potential to affect tremendous change in the space industry in the not too distant future. Surely, some of tomorrow's most important movers and shakers escaped our attention.

Brett Alexander -- In the wake of the Columbia disaster, this analyst in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, together with Gil Klinger of the National Security Council, was instrumental in forging a sustainable new vision for NASA and selling it all the way up to the president.

Eric Anderson -- Anderson co-founded the Space Adventures travel agency at 23, and in just seven years can already claim at least partial credit for getting Dennis Tito and Mark Shuttleworth to the international space station. Anderson and Space Adventures are banking on suborbital rockets like those vying for the X Prize to greatly expand business opportunities in the years ahead.

Bezos

Jeff Bezos -- The Amazon.com founder is combining his love of space with his large personnel fortune to fund Blue Origins, a highly secretive Seattle-based firm that will only say that it is developing vehicles and technologies that will enable an enduring human presence in space. His non-disclosure agreement is already the stuff of legends, referred to only in hushed tones.

Robert Bigelow -- The Las Vegas real estate developer and owner of the Budget Suites of America hotel chain is putting millions of dollars into inflatable space modules that draw heavily upon NASA’s Transhab technology. Bigelow Aerospace has contracted for a 2005 launch of its Genesis Pathfinder prototype. Bigelow’s plan is to establish a habitable commercial space station for research, manufacturing, and entertainment. Insiders visiting Bigelow’s Nevada digs are impressed with the progress being made.

John Carmack -- The co-founder and chief technical engineers of id Software, makers of the the best selling video games Quake and Doom, is putting some of his lucre into Armadillo Aerospace, which is building a hydrogen peroxide fueled X Prize contender.

Steve Isakowitz -- From White House Budget wonk to NASA comptroller, Isakowitz is known for both his technical knowledge and his financial acumen. Isakowitz was one of the motivating forces behind NASA’s fairly recent decision to put development of a fully reusable launch vehicle onto a back bruner and concentrate near term efforts on a crewed vehicle designed to launch atop an expendable. Friends and well wishers see Isakowitz taking a more hands on role in the U.S. space program in the not too distant future.

Jim Maser -- As President of a company in one of the must cutthroat industries on the planet, Maser’s task is making Sea Launch a major player in the launch industry. The company, a partnership of Boeing and Ukrainian and Norwegian companies, uses a modified oil rig to launch satellites to geostationary orbit straight from the equator. While it has struggled to get to its goal of five to seven launches a year, Sea Launch offers some of the most competitive prices on the market.

Clay Mowry -- The 40 year old president of Arianespace Inc., the North American marketing arm of the European launch services provider, learned his way around thorny international trade issues as a satellite industry analyst and senior international trade specialist at the U.S. Department of Commerce. Prior to that he ran the Satellite Industry Association, and became a major voice in Washington speaking out against the tough U.S. satellite export control regime that has cut into the American aerospace industry’s marketshare.

Musk

Elon Musk -- A $6 million ride to LEO? If it happens, low cost launch will finally be a reality thanks to Elon Musk. Of course, the Falcon 1 could just as easily go bust and the PayPal founder turned rocket-jock will join a depressingly long list of folks who have tried and failed to bring a revolutionary new launcher to the market.

Dave Ryan -- As president of Boeing Satellite Systems, once the dominant player in the global satellite manufacturing industry, Ryan has worked hard to follow up the work of Randy Brinkley, his predecessor, to fix the quality problems on the company’s 602 and 702 satellite platforms. Ryan also is determined to return the unit to profitability. If he succeeds in that turnaround, industry officials say he could be a rising star at Boeing.

Dave Taylor -- Ball Aerospace & Technology Corp. has experienced impressive growth in the two years since Taylor replaced Don Vanlandingham as president and CEO of the Boulder, Colo.-based spacecraft builder, recording a $50 million profit for 2003 on sales of $500 million. Taylor has set about reenergizing the company’s work force to aggressively pursue double-digit growth.

George Whitesides -- Whitesides emerged on the scene at the founding convention of the Mars Society in 1998 delivering a stirring address calling on Generation X to unite behind human exploration of the red planet. Since then, the 30-year-old Whitesides has earned a remote sensing degree from Cambridge University, started a charity that gives telescopes to children around the world, organized an annual worldwide celebration of Yuri Gagarin’s historic spaceflight, and worked as vice president of marketing for the parabolic flight start-up Zero Gravity Corp. Whitesides took the reins of the National Space Society in 2004.