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Mark Hopkins
Mark Hopkins is the Senior Vice President and Senior Operating Officer of the National Space Society (NSS). He has a BS in economics from the California Institute of Technology and an MA in economics from Harvard. He is responsible for all aspects of the NSS, except for strategic and legislative issues. He is a former Rand Corporation economist and he has written numerous publications concerning space economics and is responsible for most of the early economic studies of space settlements, including the economic study in the NASA publication Space Settlements: A Design Study) . The Executive Director, Secretary, Treasurer and all of the Vice Presidents (except the Executive Vice President) report to him. In addition to the foregoing duties, he chairs the Strategic Planning Committee.

History with the NSS
Hopkins first proposed the concept of NSS. He initiated the discussions and did most of the negotiating for the L-5 Society’s side of the 1987 L-5/NSI merger which created NSS. He has served continuously as an Officer and or Member of the Board of Directors of L-5 and after the merger of NSS for 32 years. Twenty-six of those years were spent as an Officer. He is responsible for most of the early economic studies of Space Settlements. These were done while working closely with Gerard O’Neill, Father of the first modern Space Settlement concept. During the late sixties and early seventies, Hopkins studied social movements and realized the need for a movement that supported the space program and later coined the term “Space Movement”, which is in widespread use today. He became formally active in 1972, when he co-founded and later served as President of the Harvard-Radcliffe Committee for a Space Economy, a precursor of L-5, dedicated to the goal of the large scale economic development of space. In 1975 Hopkins strongly encouraged the founding of the L-5 Society as a nucleus of a new social movement. He joined the L-5 Board of Directors at the society’s first election. Hopkins argued for the development of a strong chapter system within L-5. At the time of the merger, this system became the chapter system of the new organization, NSS. In this context, Hopkins developed, during the early eighties, the first comprehensive set of chapter rules and was in charge of chapters at the national level for six years. Realizing that participation in politics is the most important thing for the development of a movement, Hopkins built and led the political efforts of L-5 and later NSS for 18 years ending in 1997. He has served as President of Spacecause for 10 years and Chairman of Spacepac for 16 years. Hopkins played a significant role in the successful effort to defeat the anti private enterprise Moon Treaty. Today Hopkins is particularly concerned with developing an optimal strategy for the Space Movement and the question "What is the best way to drive humanity into space?"

Space Solar Power Initiative
Mr. Hopkins has partnered with Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, former president of the Republic of India, to promote a new global initiative of providing Space Solar Power to solve our global energy needs. Together they are working on creating colaboration between the US, India, Japan and UK to pursue the goal of creating a clear plan of action to market the idea of a livable planet Earth through Space Solar Power. Russia, China and other European nations will initially have an observer role in the development of this plan since they are persuing their own Space Solar Power Projects, but Mr. Hopkins is working towards bringing a realistic Global Plan of action to the G8 or G20 in 2014.