Rick Tumlinson Quotes
We need Big Ideas, as we are in a time of small people, and as Kennedy showed with Apollo, doing something grand in space is the biggest. At a time of huge national doubt and fear of losing our leadership as a nation to others, it focused us, gave us something positive and inspired a generation.
Tumlinson, Rick. "Apollo 11: The Most Expensive Selfie in History." HuffPost, BuzzFeed, 20 Jul. 2014.
The American space program developed an intellectual schism between those who favored less emphasis on manned space flight and more on automated and robotic probes and those like Franz who thought there should be more manned missions. The manned missions generated the most excitement from the public and tended to get the most public support. The unmanned missions were far less expensive as the multiple layers of safety was not needed to protect lives, they could go one for many years, and they provided much more scientific information. Kranz and many others thought that the movement towards unmanned missions reflected a lack of leadership. Opponents felt that what Kranz wanted was leadership style that did not take sufficient account to the likely scientific contribution for the money spent and placed more value on drama and adventure.
Rick Tumlinson is the co-founder of several space companies and non-profits including Deep Space Industries, Orbital Outfitters, the New Worlds Institute, and the Space Frontier Foundation. He is an active space entrepreneur and space activist. He has testified on space-related topics before the U.S. Congress six times since 1995. In 2004, Space News magazine listed Tumlinson as one of the 100 most influential people in the space industry, stating:
