Scott Millican is the founder and owner of HE Space. A veteran of the early NASA manned space missions from Gemini 10 through to Apollo 17, Scott has been in the space business for over 40 years. He was part of the Houston team which helped rescue Apollo 13 when a malfunctioning oxygen tank threatened disaster halfway to the moon.

It was Scott’s extensive experience in astronaut training at Johnson Space Center, including the 3 Skylab missions, which brought him to Europe. Hernandez Engineering, a company which he had co-founded with a former JSC colleague, Mike Hernandez, had been contracted by the German Space Agency to provide astronaut training for the Spacelab D1 mission. Follow-on contracts led to the establishment and expansion of the company in Europe and, ultimately, to its transformation into HE Space Operations with Scott as its sole shareholder. Under Scott the company became an important support contractor to ESA’s human spaceflight programmes.

Scott continued to play a full executive role in HE Space until 2008 when he handed over the reins to Claudia Kessler. This allowed Scott to devote more time and energy to his charitable interests including the establishment of the HE Space Children’s Foundation.

Scott maintains a keen interest in the success of the company and its employees and in the space sector in general. He can always be spotted at company functions chatting to employees and sharing the latest gossip.

Image credit: HE Space