Jeffrey Manber

Jeffrey Manber is regarded as one of the pioneering commercial space entrepreneurs. As CEO of NanoRacks, from 2009, Manber has steered the growth of the first company to own and market its own hardware and services on board the International Space Station. Manber has been involved in several of the key breakthrough commercial space projects, principally those revolving around the commercialization of space assets as well as the integration of the Russian space industry into major space programs, including that of the International Space Station. Manber is believed to be the only American to be an official part of the Russian space corporation, RSC Energia, during their privatization period of the 1990s.

His early interest in space took the form of writing on microgravity business opportunities for publications such as The New York Times, McGraw-Hill, and Town & Country magazine, among others.

This work led him to be invited by the Reagan Administration to help establish the Office of Space Commerce within the U.S. Department of Commerce. In so doing, he became involved in the early efforts by the Soviet Union to privatize and commercialize that nation's space efforts. In 1988 he assisted in the first ever commercial contract between the brand-new Soviet space station Mir and a U.S. company, Boston-based Payload Systems. The highly controversial pharmaceutical research undertaken on this project showed that microgravity was not always conducive to industrial research, despite the claims of NASA at that time. He was invited to the Soviet Union in 1989 to witness the launch, and began working with the Russians and the international banking community to privatize post Soviet space assets.

In 1992, Manber became the Managing Director of Energia Ltd, which represented the Russian space company NPO Energia. His initial task was to help support the first contact between the U.S. space agency NASA and the Russian space program for use of the Soyuz TM manned spacecraft as a lifeboat for the then-planned space station Freedom. His work with senior NASA officials Arnie Aldrich and Sam Keller helped open the door between the Russian space program and key U.S. aerospace firms, including Lockheed, Boeing and Rockwell Aerospace. His efforts to market the space station Mir played a role in bringing the Russian and American space industries together, ensuring greater safety for astronauts and continuity for the International Space Station project. The payoff in terms of safety took place when the Clinton Administration agreed to raise the orbital inclination of the U.S. space station to allow for flights from the Russian Soyuz and cargo ship Progress, which proved critical after each of the two groundings of the space shuttle program.

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