Entrepreneurs

In an industry dominated by giant companies, one of the important developments in the last 15 years has been the rise of space entrepreneurs. Like the No. 1 person on our Top 10 list, PanAmSat’s legendary founder Rene Anselmo, these are the people who are willing to mortgage their homes and risk their careers and life savings to start a business.

Jim Benson -- The former software entrepreneur raised eyebrows in 1997 when he formed SpaceDev to undertake the first commercial mission to an asteroid. Benson soon put that venture on the backburner and shifted his focus to small satellites and hybrid propulsion. By 2003, SpaceDev had put its first satellite on orbit, the $6.8 million CHIPSat built for the University of California at Berkeley. In June 2004, Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne reached suborbital space powered by SpaceDev-supplied hybrid rockets.

Rick Fleeter -- Fleeter founded AeroAstro in 1988 and has been a leading proponent of spacecraft miniaturization. The company has developed and built several microsatellites and many space systems and components for customers around the world.

Graziani

Paul Graziani -- Graziani built Analytical Graphics from the ground up over the last 15 years, turning the space software company into a $40-million-a-year business and the best small company in America to work for in 2004, according to the Society for Human Resource Management’s annual rankings. Graziani also has been a leader in the uphill effort to convince government agencies that off-the-shelf commercial software can save millions and improve capabilities.

Stanley S. Hubbard -- The son of a local broadcasting pioneer, Stanley E. Hubbard, formed the U.S. Satellite Broadcasting Co. in the 1980s, blazing a trail for the direct-to-home satellite broadcasting and breaking cable’s stranglehold on consumers. The company was sold to the DirecTV Group in 1999.

W. David Thompson -- The outspoken founder of spacecraft builder Spectrum Astro has bested the biggest aerospace contractors on occasion, proving that quality satellites could be built for less. Thompson took Spectrum Astro from a single-person research-and-development company to a $150 million-a-year business in the last 15 years. The company he and his wife Martha built from the ground up was sold to General Dynamics in August. Thompson’s reputation for slinging barbs at his competitors and even his government customers peaked in a public drubbing of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) delivered during a dinner speech at the National Space Symposium in 2002. “Over the past decade, the NRO has posted a sorry decline into mediocrity and aristocracy. Today’s NRO is a rogue agency, arrogant and holier than thou,” Thompson said. It got him a meeting.

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