Michael Laine – Non-Executive Director

Michael Laine’s career spans a variety of disciplines and specializations.  It starts directly out of high school, by enlisting for four years in the United States Marine Corps. Soon after, Laine would begin his seven years of Investment Management with a small, exclusive boutique in Portland. In 1995, after returning from Boston University (where he focused on Organizational Behavior) he did two things. He bought a 6-story commercial office building and started an Internet company.  In 2001, Laine shifted careers to the one he’d been dreaming about for years: the commercialization of space.  Initially Laine started a consulting firm, and then was brought on full-time to NASA’s Institute of Advanced Concepts team that was researching the development of the Space Elevator.   He has been the commercial force behind the Space Elevator project for the last 10 years.  In that time, his team pioneered work in super-materials (ultra-strong, ultra-conductive carbon nanotubes), and built 18 robots that climbed into the sky on tethers held aloft by balloons (9 tests sanctioned by the Air Force, Navy and Federal Aviation Administration).  His team has developed professional research relationships with more than 50 world-class universities and government research centers – including Harvard, Stanford, U. Washington, U. Texas, U. British Columbia, McGill, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and many others. He also serves in an advisory role to the International Space Elevator Consortium and the Leeward Space Foundation.