Out of curiosity, I check several major private corporations that tried to launch space flight, and their founders. I get some interesting results. They basically divided into 2 groups, 1 group like SpaceX/Musk are young .com billionaires and founds those companies out of their passions as probably their childhood dreams (Geeks like us
). And the other group are actual NASA or other countries' engineers who previous working as airplane or already in rocket building businesses (mostly outside U.S.). And the more interesting thing is that its the amateurs beat the professionals in actual working system and designs. (They probably understand more about how to run businesses properly and hire experts with better salaries)
Examples like :
Blue Origin / Jeff Bezos : founder of Amazon.com
Armadillo Aerospace / John D. Carmack : designer of Doom, Quake. (yes, those games)
Some wild card players :
Bigelow Aerospace / Robert Bigelow : Don't laugh at his name. He owns Hotel chains, and not surprised he is the one who wants to open hotel in space.
Excalibur Almaz / Arthur M. Dula : lawyer!
. (He is the literary executor for major science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein, this explains a lot.), and he works with real astronaut - Leroy Chiao.
Others :
Scaled Composites / Burt Rutan : He is legit, modifying his aerospace aircraft design into spacecraft. Probably the most successful of the real professionals. (Working as flight test project engineer for the U.S. Air Force)
Canadian Arrow / Geoff Sheerin, Dan McKibbon and Chris Corke, Dr. Chirinjeev Kathuria : Oh! the Canadian.