The world knows the names of Jeff Bezos (owner Amazon), Elon Musk (SpaceX/Tesla cars) and Sir Richard Branson (Virgin Group) as being more than casually interested in space, rockets and communications. But a report on Bloomberg TV highlighted another dozen or so, drawn from amongst the 500 richest people on the planet, who are backing space ventures in one form or another.

Besides, Bezos, Musk and Branson, Bloomberg lists them as:

·     Bill Gates, backing satellite antenna specialists Kymeta

·     Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and his backing for SETI (Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence)

·     Larry Page (Google) Planetary Resources

·     Sergey Brin (Google) SpaceX

·     Li Ka-Shing (CK Hutchinson) Windward and its Maritime data project

·     Ma Huateng (Tencent) backing Moon Express

·     Sheldon Adelson (Las Vegas hotelier) and SpaceIL (seeking to land on the Moon)

·     Paul Allen (Microsoft) and Stratolaunch

·     Eric Schmidt (Google) Planetary Resources

·     Ricardo Salinas (Grupo Electra) OneWeb broadband constellation

·     Lynn Schusterman (Samson Invest’s) SpaceIL

·     Yuri Milner (DST Global) backing Planet, a search for an Earth-like planet

·     Marc Benioff (Salesforce) using satellites for imagery, weather, crop studies

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Categories: Articles, Business, DTH/Satellite, Funding