Space Frontier Foundation Founders

Founder and Board Member
James A. M. Muncy

James A. M. Muncy founded PoliSpace, an independent space policy consultancy, in early 2000 to help space entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs succeed at the nexus of business, public affairs, and technology. His clients have included several companies in the emerging private human space flight industry, firms offering commercial services to NASA spaceflight programs, and government managers of Air Force military space projects.

In 2004 and 2005 Muncy led two successful industry lobbying efforts: winning enactment of the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004 (P.L 108-492), and securing an amendment to the Iran Nonproliferation Act to allow NASA to buy commercial space goods and services with Russian content.

Immediately prior to establishing PoliSpace, Muncy spent over five years working for the U.S. House of Representatives. From 1997 through early 2000 he served on the Professional Staff of the House Science Committee’s Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee. In addition to being Chairman Dana Rohrabacher’s staff designee, Muncy held the lead responsibility for issues and programs such as reusable launch vehicles, human space flight commercialization, military space technology, export control reform, range modernization, and future NASA programs. Prior to this, Muncy spent over two years on Rep. Rohrabacher’s personal staff as his Legislative Assistant for Space.

Before joining congressional staff in late 1994, Muncy spent nine years as a space policy and marketing consultant for various clients including NASA, NOAA, several private firms, and the not-for-profit space community, while also securing a graduate degree. In the mid-1980’s he worked for two and a half years as a policy assistant in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under President Reagan, where he served as the White House’s Staff Liaison to the National Commission on Space. Muncy began his career in space policy in 1981 as a staff advisor in the Office of Congressman Newt Gingrich, where he helped Mr. Gingrich co-found the Congressional Space Caucus and develop visionary space policy legislation and initiatives.

A long-time leader in the space advocacy community, Muncy co-founded the Space Frontier Foundation in 1988 and served as its Chairman of the Board for six years. Earlier he had served on the Board of Directors of both the National Space Society and the L5 Society. He is a frequent speaker and writer on space policy issues.

Muncy holds an MS in Space Studies from the Center for Aerospace Sciences at the University of North Dakota and a BA from the University of Virginia, where he was an Echols Scholar.

Founder
Rick Tumlinson www.ricktumlinson.com

Named one of the world’s top “Visionaries” and one the top one hundred most influential people in the space field by Space News, Rick Tumlinson is the Co-Founder of the Space Frontier Foundation, which has been called “pound for pound the most effective space organization on Earth.” From an old Texas family whose pioneering credits include helping start the Texas Rangers and fighting in the Alamo, Rick has spent his life fighting to open the space frontier. The son of an Air Force Sergeant and his English wife, he was educated primarily in England and Texas.

Mr. Tumlinson worked for noted scientist Gerard K. O’Neill at the Space Studies Institute, founded the New York L-5 Society, and was a key player in starting the Lunar Prospector project which discovered hints of water on the Moon. He also helped pass the Space Settlement Act of 1988, testified before President Reagan’s National Commission on Space, and was a founding trustee of the X-Prize. Over the years he has been a lead witness in six congressional hearings on the future of NASA, the U.S. space program and space tourism, including testifying before Senator John McCain and the Senate Space and Technology Committee on the Moon, Mars and Beyond program.

To support his activism in his early years, Tumlinson produced the animated videos used to gain funding for the Air Force’s DC-X rocket project, the International Space University, the X-33 rocket program and the Air Force’s Space Command. He also created the first ever paid political announcement for space, which was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. Not satisfied to just talk, write about and help get funding for projects, Mr. Tumlinson has put his time and money where his mouth is. He co-founded the firm LunaCorp which produced the first ever TV commercial shot on the International Space Station for Radio Shack. He led the team which turned the Mir Space Station into the world’s first commercial space facility, and was a co-founder of the space firm MirCorp. (The story is told in the book NASA: Lost in Space.) Along the way he personally signed up Dennis Tito, the world’s first “citizen explorer,” to fly on the International Space Station, and has assisted in numerous other such projects.

Rick was also Executive Director and co-Founder of the Foundation for the International Non-Governmental Development of Space (FINDS), a foundation which funded breakthrough projects and activities such as Helium 3 research, laser launch studies, and asteroid processing projects. The organization provided the first $100k in seed money for the founding of the Mars Society, operated the Cheap Access to Space Prize and supported such projects as The Watch asteroid search program. FINDS also underwrote and co-sponsored a very successful series of Senate Roundtables on space issues. Rick founded the Permission to Dream project, which has over the years placed dozens of telescopes in the hands of schools and educational groups around the world, from Sri Lanka to Iran and Russia. In 2005 Rick also Co-Founded The Institute for Space Law and Policy, a Washington based think-tank.

A regular contributor to the space industry paper Space News, Tumlinson’s writings and quotes have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, Washington Post, Reader’s Digest and dozens of other publications. He has appeared on the front page of the New York Times, has been featured in two issues of Popular Science and around the world from Britain’s conservative Economist to the People’s Daily in China. He has appeared on such television programs as ABC’s World News Tonight, and Politically Incorrect and appeared as an expert guest on the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, CNBC’s Open Exchange and is a frequent commentator on CNN. Internationally he has appeared on TV sets from Russia to China’s CCTV and the BBC.

In 2004 Rick was one of only 20 guests invited by the White House to hear President Bush announce his plans to return to the Moon and explore Mars. Often a public critic of the agency, last year he joined NASA’s prestigious Lunar Exploration Analysis Group, helping behind the scenes to lay out the framework for the first human outpost on the Moon and steps towards putting humans on Mars. He has also been a consultant to the Heinlein Prize Organization, and is starting his own space firm “XTreme Space.” His book, Return to the Moon was just published and is available at your local bookstore.

Mr. Tumlinson is known as one of the best speakers in the field of space. His stirring and freewheeling talks range from critiques and discussions of current national space policy, to the presentation of a “Frontier” ideology for opening space, to the how and why of returning to the Moon, to a deeply spiritual discussion of our place in the universe, the search for other life and the reasons we are reaching for the stars.

Founder and Treasurer
Bob Werb

Bob Werb was an active partner in Rivercrest Realty Investors from 1976 until 2001. Rivercrest Realty Investors is a privately held, real estate firm that owns and manages a portfolio of garden apartments, shopping centers and office buildings with properties in

New York, New Jersey, Maryland, North Carolina and Florida. Since 2001 he has assumed a more passive role in Rivercrest Realty Investors and has been spending more time working on a variety of projects including the Space Frontier Foundation. Bob is one of the three founders of the Space Frontier Foundation.