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Iain Finer
Industry Subcommittee
A dreamer and a doer, is the way Iain describes himself. Having grown up dreaming of space but not seeing anything happening in NZ he had a burning desire to do something about it. A keen follower of the Ansari X-Prize and subsequent Lunar Lander Challenge reinforced this desire even more.
In 2008 while working in the USA he attended the Space Access Society Conference, meeting a few of the former X-Prize competitors and at the time current LLC entrants. Being at the heart of this new space industry in the country where it was all happening was the last straw for him.
So in late 2008 he entered a team into the N-Prize competition, under the banner Kiwi 2 Space , where upon returning home from overseas in mid 2009 has been working away feverishly to achieve this ultimate goal of putting a satellite into orbit. But under the bigger picture of getting New Zealand more established as a space faring nation and creating opportunities that he didn't have as a kid growing up, dreaming. |
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Billy Kapoor
Industry Relations
In early 2004, Billy formed Advanced New Zealand Technologies to compete in the Ansari X-Prize. However, the prize was soon won by Tier One and Billy returned to developing television systems.
In January 2010, he entered the N-Prize competition with his start-up Te Anahera Tere. This project is aimed at eventually providing New Zealand and the world with responsive, inexpensive access to space for small payloads.
Billy joined the KiwiSpace Foundation as an expression of his vision to see New Zealand build an economically strong space sector that competes globally.
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William Leizerowicz
Government and Policy
A founding board member of KiwiSpace, Will has been passionate throughout his life about the long term needs for space access. Following an interest in nuclear based propulsion, he grew his experience in the nuclear power industry working with CANDU reactors and improving the safety and reliability through the design of a new generation of solid state control systems.
He went on to work on research in agile manufacturing and rapid redesign with EIL towards SPAR Aerospace (currently MacDonald Dettwiler) for the Canadarm robotic manupulator used on the shuttle (SRMS). He has also contributed towards large propulsion systems for the X-Prize as well as a combination of tracking and aerodynamic simulation for landing site prediction for recovery.
He has participated internationally in various space meetings and conferences including LPSC, NASA Centenial Challenge, JAXA/JSF Satellite Competition, X-Prize in cities around the world including Flagstaff, Houston, London, Las Cruses, Maryland, Palo Alto, Ramnicu Valcea, Tokyo, Toronto, Tsukuba, Tucson and Yokohama and is currently heading the NZ Orion Project which will be New Zealand's first three stage rocket, and is looking to expand the role of flight computers for improved safetly as well as other scientific research applications.
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