Space Frontier Foundation

Space Frontier Foundation

Space Frontier Foundation
Founded	1988
Founders	Rick Tumlinson Bob Werb James A. M. Muncy
Type	Space advocacy, 501(c)3, Education
Area served	Worldwide
Method	Advocate driven projects enabling the growth of the NewSpace community
Slogan	"unleash the power of free enterprise and lead a united humanity permanently into the solar system"
Board of Directors
Chairman	Jeff Feige
Member	Gary Oleson
Member	Aaron Oesterle
Member	Amaresh Kollipara
Member	Alexandra Hall
Member	Meagan Crawford
Member	Sean Mahoney
Member	Ana Tarano
Other Officers
Treasurer	Paul Fuller
Director of Communications	Alexandra Abrams
Director of Venture Strategy and Research	Jeff Matthews
Staff
Executive Director	Hannah Kerner
Partnerships and Workforce Analysis	Michael Merchant
Website	spacefrontier.org

The Space Frontier Foundation is an American space advocacy nonprofit corporation organized to promote the interests of increased involvement of the private sector, in collaboration with government, in the exploration and development of space. Its advocate members design and lead a collection of projects with goals that align to the organization's goals as described by its credo.

The Space Frontier Foundation is an organization of people dedicated to opening the Space Frontier to human settlement as rapidly as possible.

Our goals include protecting the Earth’s fragile biosphere and creating a freer and more prosperous life for each generation by using the unlimited energy and material resources of space.

Our purpose is to unleash the power of free enterprise and lead a united humanity permanently into the Solar System.

The Foundation was founded in 1988 by space activists led by Rick Tumlinson, Bob Werb and Jim Muncy who felt that: "it was technically possible to realize their shared vision of large-scale...settlement of the inner solar system... [but] they knew this was not happening (and couldn't happen) under the status-quo centrally planned and exclusive U.S. government space program."

Since 2005 the Foundation has relied heavily on NASA funding including a recent $110,000 award for business competition. Thomas Olson appeared on The Space Show to promote the competition. The competition takes place during the Foundation's New-Space 12 conference, which is sponsored by NASA.

The Foundation supported the George W. Bush Administration's Vision for Space Exploration. In March, 2005, the Foundation praised the selection of Dr. Michael Griffin as the next administrator of NASA. A press release said "Mike Griffin will be a good captain for NASA." Bob Werb, the Foundation Chairman, said "Mike Griffin knows more about space and capitalism than the last three administrators combined. Vision-killing bureaucrats inside and outside of government should be trembling in their boots." Richard Tumlinson said, "This bodes well for the emerging New Space industry."

In recent years, the Space Frontier Foundation has been supportive of various private sector efforts such as the Ansari X Prize, the SpaceShipOne project, and entrepreneur Robert Bigelow's plans to build a space hotel. The Foundation has been critical of the U.S. government's efforts in space, particularly those of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. For example, the Foundation has criticized NASA's Space Shuttle and Ares I, claiming that the shuttle's work could be better done by private sector companies. However, the Foundation has supported some recent NASA efforts, such as NASA's Centennial Challenges prize program for stimulating private-sector innovation and the new NASA direction of cancelling Constellation in favour of technology development and supporting commercial companies.