Eric Anderson
President & CEO, Space Adventures

Mr. Eric Anderson is one of the leading entrepreneurs in the commercial human space flight and space tourism industry, an astropreneur (as coined by Wired magazine). As the president and CEO of Space Adventures, Mr. Anderson has led the world's premier space tourism company to several years of profitable success and has sold more than $80M in space tourist flights; including the first and only two tourists to fly to the International Space Station (ISS); Dennis Tito and Mark Shuttleworth and the most recent private space explorer, Dr. Gregory Olsen.

Mr. Anderson co-founded Space Adventures in 1997 with several former astronauts and leading visionaries from the aerospace, adventure travel, and entertainment industries. Mr. Anderson's vision is to open the space frontier to private citizens, and to develop and utilize space resources for the benefit of people on Earth. He has been and remains an outspoken advocate of commercial space transportation, private space exploration, and space tourism. Through the development of myriad space experiences on Earth, via Space Adventures' commercial sub-orbital space flight program, and through the continued flight of commercial passengers such as Tito, Shuttleworth, and Olsen to the ISS, Space Adventures has created a paradigm that makes space flight available to people all over the world.

Mr. Anderson believes that space exploration is vital to human progress and that by opening the space frontier, we can greatly enhance technological development and cultural understanding in a variety of areas.

Previously, Mr. Anderson was the principal and co-founder of Starport.com which was sold to SPACE.com in June 2000. Mr. Anderson also worked as a business development lead for Analytical Graphics, the leading aerospace software firm; and has held various consulting and research positions with NASA, where he authored several technical papers and articles, on topics ranging from space tourism to launch vehicle analysis to business and economic evaluations of various space-related ventures. He is also a guest speaker and lecturer on various topics in the aviation and aerospace industry.

Mr. Anderson graduated magna cum laude from the University of Virginia, with a bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering, and was selected by USA Today as one of the nation's Top 40 graduating seniors of 1996.