One of the top 100 influential people in space and called one of the world’s top space “visionaries,” Rick helped coin the term "NewSpace," and is credited with helping birth the new commercial space industry highlighted by Musk, Bezos and Branson.
A leading writer, speaker, and six-time Congressional witness, Rick helped start the first mission to find water on the Moon, signed the first space commercial data purchase agreement, led the commercial takeover of the Russian Mir space station, signed the first private astronaut to fly to the space station, co-founded the Space Frontier Foundation, and was a founding board member of the X-Prize.
In 2015 he won the World Technology Award along with Craig Venter of the Human Genome project. He founded the SpaceFund venture capital company with 20 space companies in its portfolio and is a member of the US Space Force Doctrine Organization Group.
Rick's Space Revolution "radiopod" is on IHeart Radio Network's iRoc Space Radio and most podcast sites. He hosts the New Worlds Conference and Space Cowboy Ball in Austin, and his non-profit EarthLight Foundation is working to save the Earth while expanding life into the cosmos. They recently initiated Permission to Dream, to raise funds for placing a telescope in every middle school on Earth that wants one, so that new generations can see the rings of Saturn and the mountains of the Moon.