Tony Vaughn
Earth is the only place in the universe that we know for certain has life, and especially intelligent life. Humans have a responsibility to see that life migrates from its planet of origin into the galaxy. As the closest astronomical body to the Earth, the Moon is the logical first step in that expansion. It is never too far away to send a mission to, and never too far away to return from. Support for construction, resupply and population are always available while we learn to live offworld.
Seeing projects to completion, taking efficient paths to an objective, ignoring the naysayers. Move a project forward, even when you only have some of the answers. You don't have to know every detail of the end product before you begin.
While he has always had a passion for space travel, Tony has worked mostly in the electronics manufacturing industry, primarily in the Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina. He founded a contract engineering firm in the early 2000's and began developing software solutions for his clients. In 2008, he became involved in the Google Lunar X-Prize, contributing to the communications and robotics cohorts of Team Stellar while they were an active team associated with North Carolina State University. An active maker, he founded an effort in 2013 to organize a shared workspace and lab space in Fayetteville, NC for engineering related coworking with an integrated hackerspace/makerspace called Tesseract Point. As part of that organization, he participated in the 2016 NASA Space Apps Challenge, entering a communications solution called "Fractalnet" that would provide a communications network useful in exploring lava tubes and other underground environments on the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere. Fractalnet was selected from all entries globally as Best Mission Concept for 2016. Most recently, in 2017, Tony has been putting his ideas together concerning teams of robots that are capable of working together with humans on construction worksites and other environments, both on and off the Earth, founding a start-up company called Triplanetary Exploration Systems to bring these ideas to market.
Triplanetary Exploration Systems is developing software, communications, orchestration and physical systems for robots that are capable of real work, in collaboration with other robots and humans, enabling complex construction and other missions.
Real tasks, achievable objectives.
Electronics, Software, Robotics, Physics