The team working at Bristol Spaceplanes, who will use the £150,000 investment being pitched for via Crowdcube to advance the company’s spaceplane programme:
David Ashford
The founder and Managing Director of BSP is David Ashford. He graduated from Imperial College, London, in aeronautical engineering and spent one year at Princeton doing post-graduate research on rocket motors. His first job, starting in 1961, was with the Hawker Siddeley Aviation hypersonics design team, working on spaceplanes, among other projects. He has since worked at Douglas Aircraft and at what is now BAE Systems on various aerospace projects, including the DC-8, DC-10, Concorde, the Skylark sounding rocket, and various naval missile and electronic warfare systems. He has written three books on spaceplanes and space tourism. His latest book, ‘Space Exploration: ‘All That Matters’ was published by Hodder in 2013. He has had published about 20 papers on space transportation in the professional press. For four years, he was on the Board of the West of England Aerospace Forum (WEAF), and in 2010 was team leader for a creating a technology roadmap for a small UK satellite launcher. This work was sponsored by the UK Space Agency.
David Warby
The Chairman is David Warby. Graduating from King’s College London, his career started in the power generation industry, including the mechanical engineering construction of nuclear power stations. Following this, he was managing director and shareholder of an engineering company that grew sales to £25m in the manufacture of oil, nuclear, petrochemical and architectural equipment. For the last 20 years he has used his business skills and experience in consultancy with owner-managed companies in a variety of roles, and across a variety of industries.
John Williams
The Commercial Director is John Williams, who has had a successful career in advertising and marketing. He set up his own integrated marketing agency, Marketing Perspectives, which was acquired by WPP. John is also the Executive Director of The Marketing Agencies Association Worldwide, a global association of CEO’s and Senior Partners of Marketing Service Companies.
David Kent
The Chief Designer is David Kent, who will lead the team to design and build the Spaceplane demonstrator. David led the team that designed and built the Leopard small business jet.