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Key people at New Worlds - Space Cowboy Ball.
New Worlds - Space Cowboy Ball was founded in 2011 by Rick Tumlinson (Founder).
New Worlds, featuring the iconic Space Cowboy Ball, operates as a premier annual conference fostering innovation and connection within the space industry. The event serves as a dynamic forum for visionaries and entrepreneurs, delivering powerful talks, facilitating hands-on discussions, and enabling critical networking opportunities focused on the future of space exploration and development. It integrates a distinctive social experience, known for its unique blend of costumes, live music, and vibrant community engagement.
The Earthlight Foundation orchestrates the New Worlds conference and Space Cowboy Ball, born from an insight into the necessity of bridging diverse expertise within the burgeoning space ecosystem. Recognizing the need for a dedicated platform where technical leaders, creative minds, and commercial innovators could converge, the Foundation initiated this series of events to catalyze dialogue and collaboration. The recurring nature of the conference underscores a commitment to sustained engagement across various space sectors.
The conference attracts a broad audience including space entrepreneurs, scientists, artists, and investors eager to engage with cutting-edge ideas and potential partnerships. New Worlds aims to inspire bold thinking and accelerate progress by creating an environment where future-oriented concepts can be openly explored and discussed. Its long-term vision centers on cultivating a robust, interconnected community dedicated to shaping humanity's expansion into the cosmos.
Key people at New Worlds - Space Cowboy Ball.
New Worlds - Space Cowboy Ball was founded in 2011 by Rick Tumlinson (Founder).
New Worlds - Space Cowboy Ball is not a company but an annual conference and themed fundraising event focused on space exploration, innovation, and human expansion beyond Earth, organized primarily by the non-profit EarthLight Foundation in Austin, Texas.[1][2][5] It brings together visionaries, engineers, entrepreneurs, astronauts, and investors for workshops, talks, startup showcases like Space Tank, and the signature Space Cowboy Ball—a costume gala described as "Burning Man on a rocketship" that raises funds for space education initiatives such as EarthLight's Permission to Dream.[1][2][5] The event fosters connections in the NewSpace ecosystem, featuring speakers like Robert Zubrin (Mars Society founder), Joel Mozer (first U.S. Space Force Chief Scientist), and surprise guests such as Jeff Bezos, who received the Space Cowboy Award in 2018.[2][3][5]
New Worlds emerged from the space settlement community, with roots in the EarthLight Foundation, founded by Rick Tumlinson—a longtime advocate for space frontiers, founding partner of SpaceFund, and co-founder of the Space Frontier Foundation.[2][4] The event debuted around 2018 as a symposium with talks, papers, business plan competitions like "Sharks in Space," and the inaugural Space Cowboy Ball, where Tumlinson surprised attendees by presenting Jeff Bezos with the Space Cowboy Award for his Blue Origin contributions.[2] It evolved in conjunction with educational efforts like the Cities In Space STEAM contest for schoolchildren designing space settlements, growing into a multi-day conference by 2023-2025 with workshops on space investing, policy, biomedicine, and moon communities.[2][5][6] Pivotal moments include high-profile attendees like Bezos and consistent expansion, with 2025 featuring Orson Scott Card, Dylan Taylor, and Frank White, alongside 2026 plans signaling ongoing momentum.[3][4]
New Worlds rides the surging NewSpace trend—private-led space commercialization fueled by SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Intuitive Machines—accelerating human expansion to the Moon, Mars, and cislunar economy amid falling launch costs and NASA Artemis momentum.[1][2][4][5] Timing aligns with 2025's maturing ecosystem: post-Polaris Dawn missions, rising space investing (e.g., workshops with Zaheer Ali), and policy shifts like U.S. Space Force insights, positioning it as a nexus for startups amid a projected $1T+ space economy by 2040.[1][5] Market forces like Luxembourg's space hub status and Breakthrough Prize involvement favor it, while its influence amplifies underrepresented voices (e.g., Space 4 Girls, equity founders) and educates the next generation, bridging academia, venture (DeepChecks.VC, SpaceFund), and operations to democratize space access.[1][4][5]
New Worlds will likely expand its 2026 edition with confirmed heavyweights like Apollo 11 astronauts and SpaceX execs, capitalizing on Austin's tech boom as a space hub.[4] Trends like cislunar industries, AI in space (Ahura AI), and biomedicine (Deep Space Biology) will shape it, potentially growing Space Tank into a major accelerator amid investor hunger for moon/Mars plays.[1][4][5] Its influence may evolve toward hybrid virtual access and global chapters, solidifying as the go-to for "permission to dream" in a multi-planetary future—echoing its core promise of not just talking space, but building it with the pioneers present.[1][2]
