Mark Russell is the founder and CEO of HyperSciences, a Spokane, Washington company turning a piece of aerospace exotica - the ram accelerator - into a tool that drills through rock up to ten times faster than a conventional rig. A former Blue Origin lead engineer on the crew capsule and a self-described third-generation miner, Russell fires projectiles at hypersonic speed every few seconds to crack rock for geothermal energy, mining and tunneling, and to lob payloads toward space through his sister venture Pipeline2Space. He raised roughly $9.6 million from thousands of small investors and won early backing from NASA and Shell.
Eric Emerson Schmidt is a billionaire technologist, former Google CEO, and relentless polymath who quietly shaped the digital age while most of us were still figuring out dial-up. After steering Google from scrappy startup to global colossus (2001-2011), he pivoted to national security advisory, quantum computing ventures, ocean research, and as of March 2025, rocket manufacturing as CEO of Relativity Space. With a net worth around $54.5 billion, five co-authored books on AI, and philanthropic commitments exceeding $1 billion, Schmidt operates at the intersection of geopolitics, frontier science, and Silicon Valley ambition.