About the President

J. David Baxter
Utah Space Association, President

J. David Baxter has been involved in political activism in support of space exploration since the 1970s and is a founding member of the Utah Space Association (USA). He has served as president since its reinstatement in 1998.

Under his leadership, USA has grown steadily, taking a role in promoting events and education from the background, and more of a grassroots approach to getting things done. The result of the activities was that USA was named the 2002 Space Activism Chapter of the Year by NSS. He has also been elected to represent Region 4 on the National Space Society Board of Directors for the 2002–2004 term.

Region 4 consists of 14 states and three Canadian provinces. States in NSS Region 4 include Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, Nevada, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming, as well as the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

As the Region 4 representative on the NSS Board of Directors, Baxter will participate in, help promote and help start regional activities such as conferences, summits and projects. He will also attend the Board of Directors meeting on Oct. 16, 2002, in Houston in conjunction with the World Space Congress.

He served in this same capacity from 1992–1994. During his previous term, he attended the Board meeting held in Toronto, Canada, in 1994 where George Hathaway gave a presentation about breakthrough propulsion physics (BPP). Baxter was first introduced to BPP in 1980, when he read an article about it in the AIAA Student Journal by Alan Holt of the NASA Johnson Spaceflight Center. Following the 1994 ISDC session, Baxter contacted Hathaway, who started advising him in how to conduct his own research. Since, Baxter has conducted his own research into exceeding the light barrier, particularly through exploitation of zero-point energy, which has required regular correspondence with top physicists within the United States and beyond, with the following highlights.

In 1995, Baxter attended an ISDC presentation by Marc Millis concerning the then NASA Lewis Research Center's BPP Project. In 1997, Millis invited Baxter to present his work at that year's Breakthrough Propulsion Workshop. In 1999, Baxter was invited to submit a grant proposal to NASA to conduct research into Casimir Force Thrusters.