Michael Mealling

Michael Mealling (born 1969) is co-founder of Pipefish Inc, and was the cofounder, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Vice President of Business Development of Masten Space Systems, CEO of Refactored Networks, long time participant within the IETF, a Space Frontier Foundation Advocate, and a former Director of the Moon Society. He operates a blog site called Rocketforge and has been interviewed twice on The Space Show and twice on SpaceVidcast.

Early career
From 1990 through 1996, Michael Mealling worked at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Georgia. While at Georgia Tech he created and ran much of what became Georgia Tech's web presence. He left Georgia Tech in 1996 to join Network Solutions as a developer and researcher. In 2000 VeriSign purchased Network Solutions and Michael Mealling became one of several R&D engineers within VeriSign. From 1991 through 2002 he was actively involved with the IETF where he published 22 RFCs.

Many of his industry efforts and activism have been driven by a desire maximize individual freedom. Over the past decade he has developed the idea that the only way to do this is by opening up new frontiers. Therefore, he spent several years with the Artemis Society, where he served for a time as president, and the Moon Society where he served on the board of directors. He is with Masten Space Systems where he hopes to be most effective in paving the way for settlement in space. He has maintained his space industry blog, Rocketforge, since 2003.

Political career
Prior to his activism within the space industry, Michael Mealling was recruited into the Libertarian Party by the late Ron Crickenburger in 1989. He served for one election cycle on the Libertarian Party of Georgia state executive committee, but became discouraged after realizing the amounts of money required to make an impact and especially discouraged about the idea of repairing the United States. He embraces the philosophy of neo-libertarianism and is not actively participating in the Libertarian Party over differences on the war issue.

Education
Michael is enrolled in the Executive MBA program at the Georgia Institute of Technology, with a focus in Management of Technology. He will graduate with his MBA in December, 2011.