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Robert A. Citron, often called Bob Citron (September 14, 1932 – January 31, 2012) was an American entrepreneur and aerospace engineer who was born in Brooklyn, New York, and educated at the University of the Philippines (liberal arts) and aeronautical engineering from Northrop University (1953–1959).[1] Citron helped establish and manage the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Operation Moonwatch and Precision Optical Satellite Tracking Programs (STP) after the launch of Sputnik I in 1957.[1] He founded or co-founded five companies dealing with documentary film production (Limpopo Films Pty. Ltd. – 1964), publishing (Adventure Travel, Inc. – 1976), space research and space logistics support (SPACEHAB, Inc. – 1983), reusable satellite launch systems (Kistler Aerospace Corporation – 1993), and Lunar transportation and logistics (Lunar Transportation Systems, Inc. – 2004). Citron also started three nonprofit foundations dealing with scientific field research (Educational Expeditions International with Clarence Truesdale, superintendent of Vermont public schools, in 1971, which became Earthwatch,[2] short-lived phenomena (Center for Short-Lived Phenomena – 1975), and the study of the long-term future of humanity Foundation For the Future – 1996). He died on January 31, 2012, at his home in Bellevue, Washington, at the age of 79, due to complications from prostate cancer.
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Transcription
There's a great big elephant in the room called the economy. So let's start talking about that. I wanted to give you current picture of the economy. That's what I have behind myself. (Laughter) But of course what we have to remember is this. And what you have to think about is, when you're dancing in the flames, what's next? So what I'm going to try to do in the next 17 and a half minutes is I'm going to talk first about the flames -- where we are in the economy -- and then I'm going to take three trends that have taken place at TED over the last 25 years and that will take place in this conference and I will try and bring them together. And I will try and give you a sense of what the ultimate reboot looks like. Those three trends are the ability to engineer cells, the ability to engineer tissues and robots. And somehow it will all make sense. But anyway, let's start with the economy. There's a couple of really big problems that are still sitting there. One is leverage. And the problem with leverage is it makes the U.S. financial system look like this. (Laughter) So, a normal commercial bank has nine to 10 times leverage. That means for every dollar you deposit it loans out about nine or 10. A normal investment bank is not a deposit bank, it's an investment bank; it has 15 to 20 times. It turns out that B of A in September had 32 times. And your friendly Citibank had 47 times. Oops. That means every bad loan goes bad 47 times over. And that, of course, is the reason why all of you are making such generous and wonderful donations to these nice folks. And as you think about that, You've got to wonder: so what do banks have in store for you now? (Laughter) It ain't pretty. The government, meanwhile, has been acting like Santa Claus. We all love Santa Claus, right? But the problem with Santa Clause is, if you look at the mandatory spending of what these folks have been doing, and promising folks, it turned out that in 1967, 38 percent was mandatory spending on what we call "entitlements." And then by 2007 it was 68 percent. And we weren't supposed to run into 100 percent until about 2030. Except we've been so busy giving away a trillion here, a trillion there, that we've brought that date of reckoning forward to about 2017. And we thought we were going to be able to lay these debts off on our kids, but, guess what? We're going to start to pay them. And the problem with this stuff is, now that the bill's come due, it turns out Santa isn't quite as cute when it's summertime. Right? (Laughter) Here's some advice from one of the largest investors in the United States. This guy runs the China Investment Corporation. He is the main buyer of U.S. Treasury bonds. And he gave an interview in December. Here's his first bit of advice. And here's his second bit of advice. And, by the way, the Chinese Prime Minister reiterated this at Davos last Sunday. This stuff is getting serious enough that if we don't start paying attention to the deficit, we're going to end up losing the dollar. And then all bets are off. Let me show you what it looks like. I think I can safely say that I'm the only trillionaire in this room. This is an actual bill. And it's 10 trilliion dollars. The only problem with this bill is it's not really worth very much. That was eight bucks last week, four bucks this week, a buck next week. And that's what happens to currencies when you don't stand behind them. So the next time somebody as cute as this shows up on your doorstep, and sometimes this creature's called Chrysler and sometimes Ford and sometimes ... whatever you want -- you've just got to say no. And you've got to start banishing a word that's called "entitlement." And there reason we have to do that in the short term is because we have just run out of cash. If you look at the federal budget, this is what it looks like. The orange slice is what's discretionary. Everything else is mandated. It makes no difference if we cut out the bridges to Alaska in the overall scheme of things. So what we have to start thinking about doing is capping our medical spending because that's a monster that's simply going to eat the entire budget. We've got to start thinking about asking people to retire a little bit later. If you're 60 to 65 you retire on time. Your 401(k) just got nailed. If you're 50 to 60 we want you to work two years more. If you're under 50 we want you to work four more years. The reason why that's reasonable is, when your grandparents were given Social Security, they got it at 65 and were expected to check out at 68. 68 is young today. We've also got to cut the military about three percent a year. We've got to limit other mandatory spending. We've got to quit borrowing as much because otherwise the interest is going to eat that whole pie. And we've got to end up with a smaller government. And if we don't start changing this trend line, we are going to lose the dollar and start to look like Iceland. I got what you're thinking. This is going to happen when hell freezes over. But let me remind you this December it did snow in Vegas. (Laughter) Here's what happens if you don't address this stuff. So, Japan had a fiscal real estate crisis back in the late '80s. And its 225 largest companies today are worth one quarter of what they were 18 years ago. We don't fix this now, how would you like to see a Dow 3,500 in 2026? Because that's the consequence of not dealing with this stuff. And unless you want this person to not just become the CFO of Florida, but the United States, we'd better deal with this stuff. That's the short term. That's the flame part. That's the financial crisis. Now, right behind the financial crisis there's a second and bigger wave that we need to talk about. That wave is much larger, much more powerful, and that's of course the wave of technology. And what's really important in this stuff is, as we cut, we also have to grow. Among other things, because startup companies are .02 percent of U.S. GDP investment and they're about 17.8 percent of output. It's groups like that in this room that generate the future of the U.S. economy. And that's what we've got to keep growing. We don't have to keep growing this bridges to nowhere. So let's bring a romance novelist into this conversation. And that's where these three trends come together. That's where the ability to engineer microbes, the ability to engineer tissues, and the ability to engineer robots begin to lead to a reboot. And let me recap some of the stuff you've seen. Craig Venter showed up last year and showed you the first fully programmable cell that acts like hardware where you can insert DNA and have it boot up as a different species. In parallel, the folks at MIT have been building a standard registry of biological parts. So think of it as a Radio Shack for biology. You can go out and get your proteins, your RNA, your DNA, whatever. And start building stuff. In 2006 they brought together high school students and college students and started to build these little odd creatures. They just happened to be alive instead of circuit boards. Here was one of the first things they built. So, cells have this cycle. First they don't grow. Then they grow exponentially. Then they stop growing. Graduate students wanted a way of telling which stage they were in. So they engineered these cells so that when they're growing in the exponential phase, they would smell like wintergreen. And when they stopped growing they would smell like bananas. And you could tell very easily when your experiment was working and wasn't, and where it was in the phase. This got a bit more complicated two years later. 21 countries came together. Dozens of teams. They started competing. The team from Rice University started to engineer the substance in red wine that makes red wine good for you into beer. So you take resveratrol and you put it into beer. Of course, one of the judges is wandering by, and he goes, "Wow! Cancer-fighting beer! There is a God." (Laughter) The team from Taiwan was a little bit more ambitious. They tried to engineer bacterias in such a way that they would act as your kidneys. Four years ago, I showed you this picture. And people oohed and ahhed, because Cliff Tabin had been able to grow an extra wing on a chicken. And that was very cool stuff back then. But now moving from bacterial engineering to tissue engineering, let me show you what's happened in that period of time. Two years ago, you saw this creature. An almost-extinct animal from Xochimilco, Mexico called an axolotl that can re-generate its limbs. You can freeze half its heart. It regrows. You can freeze half the brain. It regrows. It's almost like leaving Congress. (Laughter) But now, you don't have to have the animal itself to regenerate, because you can build cloned mice molars in petri dishes. And, of course if you can build mice molars in petri dishes, you can grow human molars in petri dishes. This should not surprise you, right? I mean, you're born with no teeth. You give away all your teeth to the tooth fairy. You regrow a set of teeth. But then if you lose one of those second set of teeth, they don't regrow, unless, if you're a lawyer. (Laughter) But, of course, for most of us, we know how to grow teeth, and therefore we can take adult stem teeth, put them on a biodegradable mold, regrow a tooth, and simply implant it. And we can do it with other things. So, a Spanish woman who was dying of TB had a donor trachea, they took all the cells off the trachea, they spraypainted her stem cells on to that cartilage. She regrew her own trachea, and 72 hours later it was implanted. She's now running around with her kids. This is going on in Tony Atala's lab in Wake Forest where he is regrowing ears for injured soldiers, and he's also regrowing bladders. So there are now nine women walking around Boston with regrown bladders, which is much more pleasant than walking around with a whole bunch of plastic bags for the rest of your life. This is kind of getting boring, right? I mean, you understand where this story's going. But, I mean it gets more interesting. Last year, this group was able to take all the cells off a heart, leaving just the cartilage. Then, they sprayed stem cells on to that heart, from a mouse. Those stem cells self-organized, and that heart started to beat. Life happens. This may be one of the ultimate papers. This was done in Japan and in the U.S., published at the same time, and it rebooted skin cells into stem cells, last year. That meant that you can take the stuff right here, and turn it into almost anything in your body. And this is becoming common, it's moving very quickly, it's moving in a whole series of places. Third trend: robots. Those of us of a certain age grew up expecting that by now we would have Rosie the Robot from "The Jetsons" in our house. And all we've got is a Roomba. (Laughter) We also thought we'd have this robot to warn us of danger. Didn't happen. And these were robots engineered for a flat world, right? So, Rosie runs around on skates and the other one ran on flat threads. If you don't have a flat world, that's not good, which is why the robot's we're designing today are a a little different. This is Boston Dynamics' "BigDog." And this is about as close as you can get to a physical Turing test. OK, so let me remind you, a Turing test is where you've got a wall, you're talking to somebody on the other side of the wall, and when you don't know if that thing is human or animal -- that's when computers have reached human intelligence. This is not an intelligence Turing rest, but this is as close as you can get to a physical Turing test. And this stuff is moving very quickly, and by the way, that thing can carry about 350 pounds of weight. These are not the only interesting robots. You've also got flies, the size of flies, that are being made by Robert Wood at Harvard. You've got Stickybots that are being made at Stanford. And as you bring these things together, as you bring cells, biological tissue engineering and mechanics together, you begin to get some really odd questions. In the last Olympics, this gentleman, who had several world records in the Special Olympics, tried to run in the normal Olympics. The only issue with Oscar Pistorius is he was born without bones in the lower part of his legs. He came within about a second of qualifying. He sued to be allowed to run, and he won the suit, but didn't qualify by time. Next Olympics, you can bet that Oscar, or one of Oscar's successors, is going to make the time. And two or three Olympics after that, they are going to be unbeatable. And as you bring these trends together, and as you think of what it means to take people who are profoundly deaf, who can now begin to hear -- I mean, remember the evolution of hearing aids, right? I mean, your grandparents had these great big cones, and then your parents had these odd boxes that would squawk at odd times during dinner, and now we have these little buds that nobody sees. And now you have cochlear implants that go into people's heads and allow the deaf to begin to hear. Now, they can't hear as well as you and I can. But, in 10 or 15 machine generations they will, and these are machine generations, not human generations. And about two or three years after they can hear as well as you and I can, they'll be able to hear maybe how bats sing, or how whales talk, or how dogs talk, and other types of tonal scales. They'll be able to focus their hearing, they'll be able to increase the sensitivity, decrease the sensitivity, do a series of things that we can't do. And the same thing is happening in eyes. This is a group in Germany that's beginning to engineer eyes so that people who are blind can begin to see light and dark. Very primitive. And then they'll be able to see shape. And then they'll be able to see color, and then they'll be able to see in definition, and one day, they'll see as well as you and I can. And a couple of years after that, they'll be able to see in ultraviolet, they'll be able to see in infrared, they'll be able to focus their eyes, they'll be able to come into a microfocus. They'll do stuff you and I can't do. All of these things are coming together, and it's a particularly important thing to understand, as we worry about the flames of the present, to keep an eye on the future. And, of course, the future is looking back 200 years, because next week is the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth. And it's the 150th anniversary of the publication of "The Origin of Species." And Darwin, of course, argued that evolution is a natural state. It is a natural state in everything that is alive, including hominids. There have actually been 22 species of hominids that have been around, have evolved, have wandered in different places, have gone extinct. It is common for hominids to evolve. And that's the reason why, as you look at the hominid fossil record, erectus, and heildelbergensis, and floresiensis, and neanderthals, and Homo sapiens, all overlap. The common state of affairs is to have overlapping versions of hominids, not one. And as you think of the implications of that, here's a brief history of the universe. The universe was created 13.7 billion years ago, and then you created all the stars, and all the planets, and all the galaxies, and all the Milky Ways. And then you created Earth about 4.5 billion years ago, and then you got life about four billion years ago, and then you got hominids about 0.006 billion years ago, and then you got our version of hominids about 0.0015 million years ago. Ta-dah! Maybe, the reason for creation of the universe, and all the galaxies, and all the planets, and all the energy, and all the dark energy, and all the rest of stuff is to create what's in this room. Maybe not. That would be a mildly arrogant viewpoint. (Laughter) So, if that's not the purpose of the universe, then what's next? (Laughter) I think what we're going to see is we're going to see a different species of hominid. I think we're going to move from a Homo sapiens into a Homo evolutis. And I think this isn't 1,000 years out. I think most of us are going to glance at it, and our grandchildren are going to begin to live it. And a Homo evolutis brings together these three trends into a hominid that takes direct and deliberate control over the evolution of his species, her species and other species. And that, of course, would be the ultimate reboot. Thank you very much. (Applause)
Early career
Citron worked for the Smithsonian Institution for 17 years, establishing satellite tracking stations around the world, and creating and managing scientific field research projects. While at the Smithsonian he built and managed astrophysical research observatories in the US, Spain, Norway, Ethiopia, South Africa, and India (1959–1968) and founded the Smithsonian Institution Center for Short-lived Phenomena (CSLP) in 1968.[3] The purpose of the Smithsonian Satellite Tracking Program was to track satellites to determine their precision orbits in order to better understand the Earth's atmosphere and to better define the geodesy of planet Earth. Citron created and managed the Smithsonian Transient Lunar Phenomena (TLP) program for NASA during the Apollo Program (1968–1972) and established the NASA/Smithsonian Skylab Earth Observing Program (1973–1974) during the post-Apollo period. He established a global Student Environmental monitoring network (1974), involving high school students from 20 countries, to report on significant environmental events (1974).
While at the Smithsonian, Citron was a consultant to a number of United Nations organizations including UNESCO and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). As a consultant to these organizations he was involved in helping to define the goals and operations of UNESCO's "Man and the Biosphere" Programme (1973) and he helped develop requirements for UNEP's "Global Environmental Monitoring System" (1974). Citron also participated in a number of other United Nations programs involved with global environmental monitoring and assessing the human effect on planet Earth (1972–1975).
Companies
Citron founded or co-founded five companies: Limpopo Films, Pty. Ltd. (1964); Adventure Travel, Inc. (1976); SPACEHAB, Inc. (1984); Kistler Aerospace Corporation (1993); and Lunar Transportation Systems, Inc. (2004).
Limpopo Films Pty. Ltd.
In 1964, while living in Africa, Citron founded Limpopo Films, Pty. Ltd. to produce documentary films for television. Limpopo Films produced a wide variety of films from 1964 to 1968 including Man in Ethiopia (which won numerous national and international awards), Vigeland on Life, Ten Thousand Mile Safari, From Zululand to Zambia, The Lions of Gorongoza, The Crocodiles of the Nile, The Elephants of Wankie, Meteorite Hunt, The Mystery of Zimbabwe, and many others.
Adventure Travel, Inc.
In 1976 Citron founded the American Adventurer's Association (AAA), which was an international organization for adventurers. The American Adventurer's Association eventually grew to a membership of over 10,000 and published a monthly national magazine, Adventure Travel; a monthly newsletter on worldwide adventure, Adventure Travel Newsletter; and an annual Worldwide Adventure TravelGuide (1978–1981). Adventure Travel magazine eventually reached a national circulation of over 100,000 and was distributed on half a dozen major international airlines. Citron sold his company to the Ziff Davis Publishing Company in 1981.
SPACEHAB
In 1983 Citron founded SPACEHAB, Inc., which designs, builds, and operates space research laboratories and space logistics modules that fly aboard the Space Shuttle fleet.[3] It began its space commercialization roots through the development of privately owned, pressurized modules that fly in the shuttle's cargo bay and double the amount of working and living space available to the astronaut crew.
Citron incorporated the company in 1984 and the company made its initial public offering in 1995. The company flew its first module on a Space Shuttle mission on June 21, 1993. The SPACEHAB modules that Citron and Tom Taylor invented have been the primary payload on 17 Space Shuttle missions, including research missions on board the fleet of orbiters, and resupply missions to both the Russian space station MIR and the International Space Station (ISS).
Kistler Aerospace
In 1993 Citron and Walter Kistler founded Kistler Aerospace Corporation to develop fully reusable, low-cost rocketships to take commercial satellites to Low Earth and Geosynchronous Earth Orbit as well as provide logistic support for the International Space Station.[1]
The K-1 was conceived to become the world's first fully reusable aerospace vehicle, designed to deliver payloads to orbit and provide a low-cost alternative to single-use launch vehicles. The company intended the K-1 rocketships to become the reliable, low-cost providers of launch services for commercial and government payloads destined for Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), and Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO), as well as for cargo resupply and recovery flights to and from the International Space Station (ISS).
Kistler Aerospace Corporation raised over $600 million in private financing and, in 2006, received a NASA contract for $207 million to further the development of the K-1 launch vehicle fleet.
Lunar Transportation Systems, Inc.
In 2004, after NASA announced plans to return humans to the Moon and build a lunar base, Citron and Walter Kistler founded Lunar Transportation Systems, Inc. (LTS).[1]
Lunar Transportation Systems, Inc. is developing a new lunar architecture that has a number of advantages over current known and evolving architectures. The LTS architecture uses new innovations for modularity and flexibility, leading to reduced development cost, a faster development schedule, and better evolvability.
LTS architecture will enable NASA to meet its near-term strategic objectives, including sending small payloads to the lunar surface in a few years, sending larger payloads to the lunar surface in succeeding years, and sending crews to the Moon and back to the Earth by the end of the next decade. In addition, the LTS architecture can provide routine logistic support for the lunar base now being planned by NASA.
LTS is a privately financed company that requires cooperation from NASA in order to raise the private capital required to design, build, ground test, flight test, and operate its Earth-Moon transportation system.
Nonprofit Foundations
Citron founded or co-founded three nonprofit foundations: Educational Expeditions International with Clarence Truesdale, superintendent of Vermont public schools, in 1971, which became Earthwatch,[2] the Center for Short-lived Phenomena (spun off from the Smithsonian Institution in 1975), and Foundation For the Future (with Walter Kistler in 1996).
Center for Short-Lived Phenomena
The Center for Short-Lived Phenomena was a global wire service that included a network of over 3,200 scientists and scientific institutions in 34 countries that reported on and undertook field research on short-lived phenomena such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tidal surges, oil spills, meteorite falls, unusual animal migration, insect infestations, moonquakes, and other short-lived events worthy of scientific investigation. The Center was involved in NASA's Apollo Program (1968–1972), NASA's Transient Lunar Phenomena Program (1969–1972), and NASA's Skylab Earth Observing Program (1973–1974), and established the global Student Environmental Monitoring Network (1973–1975). Citron spun off The Center for Short-lived Phenomena from the Smithsonian Institution in 1975 and established it as a nonprofit organization.
Earthwatch
Earthwatch Institute is an international nonprofit organization that brings science to life for people concerned about the Earth's future. Founded by Citron and Truesdell in 1969,[3] Earthwatch supports scientific field research by offering volunteers the opportunity to join research teams around the world. This unique model is creating a systematic change in how the public views science and its role in environmental sustainability.
Today, Earthwatch recruits close to 4,000 volunteers every year to collect field data in the areas of rainforest ecology, wildlife conservation, marine science, archaeology, and more. Through this process, it educates, inspires, and involves a diversity of people who actively contribute to conserving our planet. Currently raising approximately $15 million a year from the generosity of institutions, individuals, governments, and corporations, Earthwatch has a global reach. Earthwatch is currently supported by more than 150 staff, located in our headquarters in Maynard, Massachusetts, USA as well as in offices in Oxford, England; Melbourne, Australia; and Tokyo, Japan.
Foundation For the Future
Citron co-founded (with Walter Kistler) the nonprofit Foundation For the Future (FFtF). The foundation awarded the annual Kistler Prize, provided grants, and arranged events to discuss the long-term future of humanity.[citation needed] According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in 2008, "the foundation's main undertaking is holding several seminars a year on such things as climate change, energy security, and other important matters."[4]
Film and television production
1964 – present
Citron began making films in 1964 while living in Africa and founded a film production company, Limpopo Films Ltd., which produced a series of documentary and travel films for television. These films included Zululand to Zambia, Ten Thousand Mile Safari, Europe North, Africa South, An American Boy in Russia, and others.
In the 1960s, while with the Smithsonian Institution, Citron made a series of films in Africa on field research expeditions including The Wama Pygmies of the Congo, The Borana Tribe of Ethiopia, The Meteorites of Southwest Africa, and others.
In the 1970s Citron and National Geographic made a series of television documentaries and educational films based on his EARTHWATCH field research expeditions, including The Search for Fossil Man, The Day the Sun Died, The Violent Earth, Earth, the Restless Planet, and others. During this period Citron was also a consultant to a number of film projects for the National Geographic Society, David Wolper Productions, and MGM Documentary Films.
Recently Citron created a 15-minute film entitled Cosmic Origins: From the Big Bang to Humanity as a showcase for the work of the Foundation For the Future. He also supervises the production of a series of short films for the Foundation, including Where Does Humanity Go from Here?, Visions of the Future, and The Young Scholars Inquiry Program. Citron created a television series called The Next Thousand Years, now in development, for public television distribution.
Scientific field research expeditions
Citron has organized, managed, and/or participated in more than 60 scientific field research expeditions in Europe, Africa, Asia, South America, and the South Pacific in fields that include volcanic eruption research, paleoanthropology, archaeology, anthropology, ecology, ethology, zoology, astronomy, meteoritics, and geophysics. He has participated in eight total solar eclipse expeditions in the Philippines, Mexico, Canada, Turkey, Mauritania, Ethiopia, India, and the Libyan Sahara between 1956 and 2006.
Citron has organized, managed, and/or participated in more than a dozen archaeological excavations in Africa and Europe, including excavating early hominid and iron-age sites in South and East Africa with prominent archeological teams (1964–1974).
While working for the Smithsonian, Citron also organized and managed and was the principal cinematographer on 18 volcanic eruption expeditions in Africa, the South Pacific, North and Central America, Hawaii, the Philippines, and New Guinea (1968–1974). He recently donated 40 hours of volcano expedition films to the Smithsonian Institution archives for research and education.
In 2001 Citron organized a major expedition to the South Pacific to observe the reentry of the Russian MIR Space Station in a remote area of the Pacific Ocean. That expedition included chartering two aircraft from Fiji with 31 observers on board. The observers included the Russian Chief Designer of the MIR Space Station as well as three cosmonauts who lived aboard MIR for lengthy durations.
Memberships
Citron was a member of many professional organizations and special-interest groups, including the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, British Interplanetary Society, The Planetary Society, African Wildlife Federation, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists, Seattle Astronomical Society, The Nature Conservancy, The Wilderness Society, American Film Institute, Seattle Film Society, Space Frontier Foundation, and the National Space Society.
Awards
Citron has received numerous awards for the projects he's created and managed, and the films he's made. He was a two-time recipient of the Smithsonian Institution Outstanding Achievement Award for his management of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory Satellite Tracking Program and for founding and managing the Smithsonian Institution Center for Short-lived Phenomena. He also received the Space Pioneer Award from the National Space Society for his invention of the SPACEHAB modules that fly on the Space Shuttle, and he received the Space Entrepreneur of the Year Award from the Space Frontier Foundation for his contributions to the development of space tourism. In 1967 Emperor Haile Selassie presented Citron with the Haile Selassie Gold Medal for his contributions to the people of Ethiopia.
Publications
Citron has published over 200 articles and has written, and/or edited dozens of books and reports dealing with short-lived phenomena, adventure travel, space exploration, meteorite distribution, global environmental monitoring, and the future of humanity.
References
- ^ a b c d Robert Citron, Private Space Pioneer, Dies at 79
- ^ a b Darling, Birt (Nov 1984). "Vacation Scientists". The Rotarian. 146 (5): 18–21.
- ^ a b c Woo, Elaine (8 February 2012). "Robert Citron, pioneering engineer who envisioned space travel, dies at 79". The Washington Post. Retrieved 11 February 2019.
- ^ Beirich, Heidi (20 May 2008). "Walter P. Kistler Becomes Sole Donor to the Racist Pioneer Fund". Intelligence Report. Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved 16 July 2020.
External links
- Bob Citron's Personal Website
- Obituary of Bob Citron
- Foundation For the Future
- Center for Short-Lived Phenomena Archived 2012-10-24 at the Wayback Machine
- Earthwatch Institute
- Kistler Aerospace
- Lunar Transportation Systems
- SPACEHAB
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