Jim Cantrell Highlight

Jim Cantrell

CEO/Co-Founder,

Vector Space Systems

You better be doing with tomorrow exactly what you would be doing if you only had a few days left.

About Jim

He has had a lifelong obsession with machines: “As long as I was building, I was happy.”
Went to high school in Silicon Valley, California, and attended summer programs at Stanford University where he was inspired to pursue a career in entrepreneurship and technology.
Attended Utah State University, where he initially pursued a degree in electrical engineering—quickly realized he hated it, so he switched to mechanical engineering which better suited his interests.
Says the biggest turning point in his career was pursuing a NASA JPL-funded design course; he ended up doing so well that they gave him a one-year fellowship working on Mars exploration technologies.
Got involved with the Planetary Society, working on a joint French-Soviet Mars program where he designed and developed the Mars Snake, a mechanical rope that could move across Martian terrain.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he worked on various joint missile defense programs conducted between America and Russia—became a leading expert on Soviet missile systems.
Began collaborating with Elon Musk in 2001 on projects geared towards showing that humanity could expand into the cosmos; this relationship resulted in the formation of SpaceX.
He now works as the CEO of Vector Launch and serves on the advisory boards of several companies in the aerospace industry.