Rick Tumlinson - Background

Background

Tumlinson was born to a Texas family whose roots were involved with the co-founding of the Texas Rangers and fighting at the Alamo. He was the son of a retired U.S. Air Force Sergeant and English wife, and was educated primarily in England and Texas.

To support his space activism in his early years, Tumlinson produced a series of animated videos used to gain funding for the Air Force's DC-X rocket project, the International Space University, the X-33 rocket program, the Air Force's Space Command and created the first ever paid political announcement for space, which was featured on NPR's All Things Considered.

Mr. Tumlinson worked for noted scientist Gerard K. O'Neill at the Space Studies Institute and was a key player in starting the Lunar Prospector project which discovered hints of water on the Moon. He also lobbied to help pass the Space Settlement Act of 1988, testified before President Ronald Reagan's National Commission on Space, and was a founding trustee of the X-Prize.

Over the years he has been a witness in six congressional hearings on the future of NASA, the US space program and space tourism. In early 2004, Tumlinson testified before Senator John McCain and the Senate Space and Technology Committee on the Moon, Mars and Beyond program.

Mr. Tumlinson conducts many talks and speeches in the field of space advocacy. Topics of his talks range from critiques and discussions of current national space policy, presentation of a "Frontier" ideology for opening space, to the how and why of returning to the Moon, to a spiritual discussion of our place in the universe, the search for other life and the reasons why humans are reaching for the stars.