Taber MacCallum is the co-founder and co-CEO of Space Perspective, a human spaceflight company planning to take people and payloads to the edge of space by balloon, and the former Chairman of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF). He is co-founder and former CTO of World View Enterprises, a stratospheric balloon company using its un-crewed Stratollite for remote communications and sensing. MacCallum was also a founding member of the

Biosphere 2 Biosphere 2 is an American Earth system science research facility located in Oracle, Arizona. Its mission is to serve as a center for research, outreach, teaching, and lifelong learning about Earth, its living systems, and its place in the univer ...

design team and a crew member from the original two-year mission inside the materially-closed ecological system. Prior to World View, MacCallum served as co-founder, CEO and CTO of

Paragon Space Development Corporation Paragon Space Development Corporation is an American company headquartered in Tucson, Arizona. Paragon is a provider of environmental controls for extreme and hazardous environments. They design, build, test and operate life-support systems and l ...

, a designer and manufacturer of hazardous environment life support equipment. During his tenure at Paragon, MacCallum served as the CTO and safety officer for

Alan Eustace Robert Alan Eustace (born 1956/1957) is an American computer scientist who served as Senior Vice President of Engineering at Google until retiring in 2015. On October 24, 2014, he made a free-fall jump from the stratosphere, breaking Felix Bau ...

's world record altitude skydive, a project that launched Eustace to under a helium balloon in 2014. He also served as Chief Technology Officer for

Inspiration Mars Foundation Inspiration Mars Foundation was an American nonprofit organization founded by Dennis Tito that in 2013 proposed to launch a crewed mission to flyby Mars in January 2018, or 2021 if they missed the first synodic opportunity in 2018. Their websi ...

, which detailed plans for an almost two-year fly-by mission around Mars with two crew members, and published performance data from a complete life support system hardware demonstration, demonstrating recycling of wastewater and oxygen.

Space Perspective

Space Perspective Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider ...

is a high-altitude flight tourism company, founded and incorporated in 2019 by Taber MacCallum and Jane Poynter with plans to launch its nine-person "Spaceship Neptune" manned balloon from

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedin ...

Kennedy Space Center The John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC, originally known as the NASA Launch Operations Center), located on Merritt Island, Florida, is one of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) ten field centers. Since December 196 ...

. On June 18, 2020, Space Perspective announced its plans to balloon passengers to nearly 100,000 feet above the Earth for roughly USD$125,000 per ticket. On December 2, 2020 Space Perspective closed its seed funding round; US$7 million of funding was gathered. The company plans first unmanned test flight in the first half of 2021 and manned operational flights by end of 2024.

World View

'' World View Enterprises'',

doing business as A trade name, trading name, or business name, is a pseudonym used by companies that do not operate under their registered company name. The term for this type of alternative name is a "fictitious" business name. Registering the fictitious name w ...

''World View'', is a private American near-space exploration and technology company headquartered in

Tucson, Arizona , "(at the) base of the black ill , nicknames = "The Old Pueblo", "Optics Valley", "America's biggest small town" , image_map = , mapsize = 260px , map_caption = Interactive map ...

, founded with the goal of increasing access to and the utilization of the

stratosphere The stratosphere () is the second layer of the atmosphere of the Earth, located above the troposphere and below the mesosphere. The stratosphere is an atmospheric layer composed of stratified temperature layers, with the warm layers of air h ...

for scientific, commercial, and economic purposes.

The Stratollite

The Stratollite is a remotely operated, navigable, uncrewed stratospheric flight vehicle designed and engineered to station-keep over customer-specified areas of interest for long periods of time (days, weeks, and months). The Stratollite uses proprietary altitude control technology to rise and lower in the stratosphere, harnessing the natural currents of varying stratospheric winds to provide point-to-point navigation and loitering. The Stratollite operates at altitudes up to with a payload capacity of and 250W of continuous power to payloads. The Stratollite is primarily used for applications including remote sensing, communications, and weather.

Paragon Space Development Corporation

Taber is a co-founder and served as CEO for over 20 years. He was the Principal Investigator on four microgravity experiments on the

Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program n ...

, Mir Space Station and

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest Modular design, modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos ( ...

using Paragon's patented Autonomous Biological System, a long duration plant and aquatic animal life support system and has supported numerous other biological experiments on the Space Shuttle and International Space Station. He conceived and was involved in the design of a Mars space suit portable life support system technology funded by NASA, life support and thermal control systems for commercial manned orbital and suborbital spacecraft, as well as hazardous environment life support technology for U.S. Navy divers. In 2008, ''Popular Science'' named MacCallum Inventor of the Year.

Biosphere 2

Prior to Paragon, MacCallum was a founding member of the Biosphere 2 Design, Development, Test and Operations team, and a crew member in the first two-year mission. MacCallum's training for Biosphere 2 led him to work on a research vessel, eventually holding every level of command, sailing to over 40 ports and over 30,000 miles around the world. Training in Singapore, he became certified as a dive controller and Advanced Open Water Diving Instructor. He served as dive master for a project to reintroduce two captive dolphins to the wild.

References

External links

SpacePerspective.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:MacCallum, Taber Living people Space scientists American chief technology officers American technology chief executives Year of birth missing (living people)