Adam Gilmour

Adam Gilmour has always had a passion for space.

As a child, he loved playing with his toy rockets and robots, and watching the Star Wars movies. His imagination was captured by the achievements of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the United States, especially the Apollo missions to the moon, and the Skylab mission (the first space station launched by NASA, in 1973). To Adam, it seemed inevitable that by the time he grew up, people would have populated space, and he felt sure he would be up there, too.

Adam’s career took him into the banking industry, where he had a successful career for 20 years, working in Singapore. But the lure of space persisted, especially as the field of space exploration continued to advance, with a focus on experimental rockets for travel to other planets. With those childhood dreams still unfulfilled, Adam decided to take one giant leap into the world of space rockets!

Although not an aerospace engineer by training, Adam began educating himself, reading more than 100 books and 500 papers on all things related to rocket design. In 2015, he launched Gilmour Space Technologies (now Gilmour Space), which quickly became the leading space rocket company in Australia. Surrounding himself with a team of scientists, engineers, astrophysicists and space enthusiasts, Adam is pushing boundaries with his hybrid propulsion technology, and finding innovative solutions for rocket designs and testing, including using 3D-printed materials and fuel! With no rocket-launching facility in Australia, Adam’s team came up with a unique solution: they constructed a mobile rocket launcher on the back of a truck, which can be driven into the remote Queensland bush to conduct rocket trials.

Adam dreams of achieving permanent human settlement across the galaxy, and hopes one day to visit the moon – just a quick seven-day round trip. (Mars might be a little too far to go – it’d take about two years to get there and back.) He also hopes that during his lifetime he’ll see the design of a spaceship capable of travelling to a nearby star.

So what would be Adam’s dream vehicle to travel around space? An intergalactic motorhome! (Pressurised and with a supply of oxygen, obviously, to handle the conditions of space …)