Richard is Chief Technology Officer at AstroAgency Ltd. He previously worked as Programme Manager at launcher company, Skyrora Ltd, and as a launch systems and strategic foresight consultant at companies including Reaction Engines, Airborne Engineering and Raptor Aerospace, systems engineering and analysis for numerous space industry projects ranging from ESA payloads to the Mir space station, to NASA and Russian Mars missions, as well as spaceport analysis for the UK Space Agency and BNSC with Commercial Space Technologies.
Richard’s space industry experience extends back to the early 1990s, ranging from remote sensing, through launch systems (launchers, rocket propulsion, spaceports), orbit (Earth observation, geospatial, astrodynamics) to beyond earth orbit (Mars, interstellar studies), and strategic foresight (using Bayesian analysis), including developing long range roadmaps and forecasts for spaceflight and associated technologies.
A Chartered Physicist, he has degrees in Physics and Remote Sensing (specialising in Planetary Physics), and studied for a Solar Astrophysics PhD (specialising in stellar magnetohydrodynamics).
Richard joined the Society in 1983, became a Fellow in 1993, was elected to Council in 2008, and serves on the Technical Committee and is a member of the Constitutional Review Working Group, after previously chairing the Technical Committee.
Richard is keen to see wider representation from industry in the BIS, as well as ensuring the future studies, for which the BIS is famed, are encouraged further, to help inspire and promote astronautics to the public.
