"I'm on a Crusade to Expand the Domain of Life" Space Pioneer Rick Tumlinson on Creating the NewSpace Movement, Working With Dr. O'Neill, and His 40-Year Mission to Expand Humanity Beyond Earth

Look up at the night sky. What do you see? For Rick Tumlinson, those distant lights represent not just wonder, but destiny—a canvas for humanity's greatest masterpiece.

In the shadow of towering rockets and beneath the glow of lunar dreams, a quiet revolution has been unfolding for decades. While governments planted flags and gathered moon rocks, a band of visionaries imagined something far grander: a future where the cosmic frontier belongs not just to astronauts and agencies, but to all of us—teachers and artists, engineers and dreamers, pioneers all.

At the heart of this movement stands Rick Tumlinson, a man whose bloodline traces back to the Texas Revolution, whose ancestor fell at the Alamo, and whose own revolution may someday be remembered as far more consequential. For forty years, this space pioneer—affectionately recognized as an "OG" by those who know the history—has built several space organizations, mentored entrepreneurs, challenged aerospace giants, and articulated a philosophy of cosmic expansion that transcends mere exploration. His is not a conquest of territory, but a liberation from limits—a crusade, as he calls it, to expand the very domain of life itself.

As humanity stands at the threshold of becoming truly multi-planetary, Tumlinson's once-radical ideas have become the bedrock of a new industry. SpaceX rockets return to Earth. Blue Origin prepares for lunar missions. Companies plan orbital habitats. The future that Tumlinson and his fellow dreamers envisioned after Apollo is finally taking shape—not as government programs, but as a frontier of infinite possibility.

I spoke with this pioneer about the origins of the NewSpace movement, the profound influence of physicist Gerard K. O'Neill's vision, and why expanding life beyond Earth may be humanity's most crucial mission—not just for our species, but for the story of life in the universe.

Your family has a pioneering heritage dating back to the Texas Revolution. How did this background influence your vision of humans expanding into space, and what characteristics do you think pioneers share across different frontiers?

My family's frontier heritage is something we're very proud of. My ancestors were among the first 300 settlers in Texas under Moses Austin. John Tumlinson, my ancestor, was the alcalde (mayor) of Gonzales and helped found the Texas Rangers. During the Texas Revolution, four of my family members stood under the famous "Come and Take It" flag that sparked the conflict, and one of them, George, died at the Alamo. There have been 28 Texas Rangers in my family since then.

Growing up with this frontier legacy probably made me more open to the idea of space as a frontier, though I was also an Air Force kid with a military background. My dad was a sergeant—we called him "Sarge"—and he was often away on duty in places like Vietnam. We weren't a wealthy family; my dad worked three jobs while in the Air Force to support us.

As for what characteristics space pioneers share, it varies. When we founded the Space Frontier Foundation, there were three of us with completely different political backgrounds—one was a protégé of right-wing politician Newt Gingrich, another was a liberal libertarian social worker who had adopted several kids from Latin American countries, and then there was me. What united us was a shared fascination with science fiction and the thrill of seeing space exploration happen in real time when we were kids.

I think there's a streak of rebelliousness in space people. Those who open frontiers aren’t content with the status quo. Frontiers call to the discontented, to those who want the freedom to experiment. We see a lot of resonance with crypto folks, for instance. The first wave of space development isn’t driven by people looking to make money—Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos didn’t go to space to make money; they made money to open space. That’s the absolute truth most people don’t realize.

You've been part of the space movement since the 1970s. Could you walk us through how the modern commercial space industry evolved from those early post-Apollo days?

What people see today is the result of 40-50 years of work that started in the mid-1970s. Coming out of the Apollo program and the first space race, there was a non-physical spin-off: a generation of kids who had grown up watching the moon landings on TV, cross-legged on the floor. We’d been reading Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and Isaac Asimov—“the three gods of science fiction.” We had just watched 2001: A Space Odyssey, which made space feel real.

We rolled into the ’70s, Star Wars was coming, and we were all pumped. What we didn’t realize was that none of the Apollo program was ever intended for us. It was a government response to another government’s program. Once that race was over—after we took what I now call “the most expensive selfie ever” of Neil and Buzz on the Moon—it ended.

But there was a byproduct: us. Some call us the Space Generation. We were sitting there going, “Okay, we’re going to the solar system,” because we were reading science fiction that showed us possible futures, and we’d also just witnessed real-life moon landings.

In the middle of all that, Gerard K. O’Neill, a physicist at Princeton, asked his students, “Is the surface of a planet the right place for an expanding technological civilization?” Their answer was no. He ended up writing a book called The High Frontier, which might be one of the most important books ever written. It landed in the hands of what I call “Apollo’s children,” who looked at it and said, “This is it.”

In that book, Dr. O’Neill laid out the idea that anyone could go to space—you didn’t have to be an astronaut, a government employee, or a pilot. We all had “the right stuff.” Part of the book is even written from the perspective of a little girl living in a space colony and writing back to Earth. You couldn’t break down barriers any better than that.

O’Neill created an organization and started holding conferences so people could meet and realize they were part of a tribe. Other organizations spun off, like the L5 Society. Later, aerospace companies merged the L5 Society with Wernher von Braun’s National Space Institute, creating what’s now called the National Space Society.

The High Frontier also ended up in other places. A kid in Florida named Jeff Bezos had a book club, and one of the books was The High Frontier. Some of his writings—including parts of his valedictorian graduation speech—basically said, “I’m going to make this happen in my lifetime.”

I ended up working for Dr. O’Neill at Princeton, commuting from New York City, where I had founded the New York L5 Society on the Intrepid aircraft carrier. A few of us from O’Neill’s Institute decided there needed to be a more radical political organization, so we created the Space Frontier Foundation in 1988-89. We collected 40,000 signatures on a petition—old-school style, standing outside with paper—and delivered it to President George H.W. Bush, helping influence his decision to announce a return-to-the-Moon program on Apollo’s 20th anniversary.

Gerard K. O’Neill’s The High Frontier proposed a radical idea: that humanity’s future may lie not on planetary surfaces, but in orbiting space habitats. The book became a foundational text for the NewSpace movement.

Then we went to war with the aerospace industrial establishment that President Eisenhower had warned about. We believed the government shouldn’t “drive trucks and build buildings”—those were private-sector roles. Everything we did was based on the “Frontier Model”: using imagination, space resources, free enterprise, capitalism, and democracy to move humanity into space. We almost killed the International Space Station by one vote—or, as my friends at NASA say, they saved it by one vote. That wasn’t because we were anti-space; we just felt the private sector should handle that work.

After we lost the space station battle, we pivoted to private space transportation. In 1995, I testified before the House Space Subcommittee in a presentation called “Alpha Town,” calling for all-private transportation to and from the space station, commercial development of future space stations, and space solar power. The first two became crucial, and over the next few years, we fought for them. Eventually, through a lot of influence from Space Frontier Foundation members, those core concepts led to companies like SpaceX carrying payloads and astronauts to the station.

One caveat: in our vision, multiple companies would compete in the market to drive costs down. We hadn’t banked on someone like Elon Musk who would push costs down for his own reasons—he’s been a blessing, but our original plan was to see multiple competitors.

You've often mentioned the "New Space" movement. What exactly is New Space, and how did the term originate?

To me, a New Space company is one that was founded by, has the purpose of, or creates products for use in, opening and developing the frontier of space. That’s the essence.

I believe naming something has power—it helps define or even create it. If it doesn’t create it, it gives it structure. I came across a list I made back in 1992 comparing “new space” to “old space.” By 1998, I was quoted in a book discussing a “new space order,” and there’s even a YouTube clip of me speaking about it.

In the early 2000s, some friends in D.C. told me that calling it “new space” came off as dismissive toward “old space.” Around that time, the music world was seeing a shift—indie bands were pushing back against the mainstream under the banner of “Alternative Music.” That inspired me to try calling our movement “Alt Space.” We even hosted two Space Frontier Foundation conferences under that name.

But not everyone was on board. Charles Miller—who leans conservative—and Bill Boland—a Democrat—weren’t fans of the “Alt Space” label. They proposed we combine the words into “NewSpace,” capital S and all. I recognized that naming style from companies like MirCorp, LunaCorp, and SpaceFund, where the internal capital letter had a kind of branding punch. It was a smart suggestion. I wasn’t sold at first, but within a year, I came around.

Bill, Charles, and a few others literally coined “NewSpace” as one word, and that became the name of our next conference—the very first NewSpace conference.

The term gave us clarity. It defined what made us different. Now, it’s starting to blur into the broader category of just “space,” which is probably a good sign. NewSpace did what it was meant to do—like other cultural markers we pushed forward, from “No More Flags and Footprints” to “Return to the Moon, This Time to Stay.”

Looking ahead, how do you see the first permanent off-Earth communities being developed? Who will be in charge, and what will they look like?

I think it’s going to unfold in different ways. But it all starts with what I deliberately call rocket ships. You don’t throw ships away—they come back, get reused, and go out again. That’s the fundamental shift from everything we’ve done before. When vehicles like SpaceX’s Starship, Blue Origin’s New Glenn, Rocket Lab’s lineup, or Firefly’s crafts can fly reliably and affordably, space truly opens up.

Elon will probably execute NASA’s “flags and footprints” mission, then move forward with his own Mars plans. That’s fine with me—that’s what frontiers are for. Everyone should be free to chase their vision. What matters most to me is Starship itself—because once it works, it means the rest of us can follow.

People say, “We’ll never live on the Moon.” That’s shortsighted. Humans live anywhere we can. The Moon is harsh—but so is Manhattan if you ask an Inuit elder. We go where we want, for all kinds of reasons.

Here’s something I haven’t talked about much before: I have a not-so-secret plan. We should give society’s “retired” experts—people who’ve built careers and been pushed aside with a golf cart and a pension—a chance to go to the Moon. Let them build the future. The first hundred of them would be heroes.

I also see orbital communities emerging. I believe Jeff Bezos will work on lunar operations first, then tap those resources for deeper-space projects—eventually moving toward asteroid mining and building massive habitats in what I call free space, beyond any planet’s gravitational hold.

It won’t be a single path. We’ll see a thousand approaches bloom. And yes, I believe it’ll happen in our lifetime—which is why I spend time around people working on life extension.

Right now, I’m urging space groups to get moving. There’s going to be a lag. SpaceX will prove Starship’s capability, but it’ll take 5–10 years for governments, big investors, and major construction firms to take action. We need to lay the groundwork now so that when the time comes—early 2030s—we have shovel-ready lunar and Martian projects. Free space habitats will follow, beginning as space stations. I hope we’ll see at least five new stations by the end of this decade, lining what I call the orbital street.

Those stations will unlock “magic bullet” technologies that could change everything. One of my favorites is biomedical: imagine growing human lungs in zero gravity—something we can’t easily do on Earth because lungs collapse without the body’s support. In space, that limitation disappears.

Remember, when the Pilgrims sailed along the American coast, they had no idea they were laying the groundwork for a society that would lead to this conversation—for a democracy and everything else that came from the United States and other American nations. That’s what a frontier does—it invites the next generation to build something bigger than we can imagine.

Bezos once told me he wants to make building in space so cheap it feels like early Silicon Valley—where two kids in a dorm could dream something up and make it real. I love that vision. Drive down infrastructure costs, make life and work in space possible, and off we go. That’s how humanity expands.

I want to emphasize that the goal is to expand the domain of life and humanity. This isn’t about conquering dead rocks; it’s about defeating death itself. I want to bring life to places that never had life before. That’s our true mission. And I celebrate all my crazy friends, even when we have disagreements. We push forward together because we share a single vision—a Purpose with a capital P.

I don’t want underwater cities or ocean floor mining. Earth’s already under strain. When people ask, “Aren’t you afraid we’ll ruin space’s ecosystem?”—well, let’s be clear: ecosystems are living systems, and most of space is lifeless. And would you rather rip apart a mountain’s ecosystem on Earth to get minerals—destroying billions of living things in the process—or get those resources from a dead rock in space? That question tells me whether someone really cares about Earth—or just wants to defend a set doctrine.

About Rick Tumlinson 

Considered both a rebel and a respected leader, Rick is one of the most influential people in the space field. Called one of the world's top space "visionaries," he helped coin the term "NewSpace" and has been called the "Godfather" of commercial space in the U.S.

 A leading writer, speaker, and six-time Congressional witness, Rick signed the first private astronaut to fly to theInternational Space Station, led the commercial takeover of the Russian Mir space station, helped start the first mission to find water on the Moon, signed the first-ever space commercial data purchase agreement, was part of a group that beganNASA's Lunar Exploration Analysis Group, co-founded the Space Frontier Foundation, and was a founding board member of the X-Prize.

As a result of his world-changing work, in 2015, he won the World Technology Award along with Craig Venter of theHuman Genome Project. In 2024 he received the Future of Humanity Lifetime Achievement Award. He founded theHouston-based SpaceFund venture capital company with over 20 space companies in its portfolio and is a U.S. SpaceForce Doctrine Organization Group member. He hosts The Space Revolution radio podcast on iRoc Space Radio, a division of the iHeart radio network, and started the New Worlds Conference and the Space Cowboy Ball in Texas, run by his non-profit EarthLight Foundation. He regularly contributes to Scientific American, Space News and Space.com and his new book "Why Space? The Purpose of People" will be out this summer.