A serious mourning has struck our community

Manuel Perez “Manny”, the President of Space Renaissance USA, passed away the 21^st of November 2022, at the age of 69, following a long illness.

Manny was a great space activist, embracing a broad, generous, humanist vision of the world and humanity.

For all of us, in the Space Renaissance community, Manny has been a fond friend, who never failed to provide assistance to enhance our outreach to the global community, making complex things simple to be understood and shared by our first interlocutor: the people, human society, at large.

Manuel Perez accepted the responsibility to chair the Space Renaissance USA chapter in 2016, succeeding Walter Putnam. Later that same year, Space Renaissance USA Inc. was incorporated as a 501(c)4, and Manny was elected as its President.Among the main initiatives he pursued, one of his greatest included participation in the 100andChange Grant (issued by the MacArthur Foundation), in collaboration with the Lifeboat Foundation, in 2016. This was a great initiative that, although it unfortunately did not win the prize, yet generated an excellent elaboration on the theme of “achieving low cost Earth orbit access for private industry and civilians, which will allow human expansion into the Solar System in the near and distant future”. Later, Manny enabled Space Renaissance USA to become a member of the Alliance for Space Development (ASD), a U.S. alliance of 16 space organizations, including some of the most prominent ones, such as the National Space Society and the Mars Society.

Manny’s main focus was on space policy, promoting civilian space development, manned space flight, and space settlement as primary themes of his restless activities, lobbying the U.S. Congress and political institutions.

Manny was also very active in a variety of social initiatives in his community in his New York City community, where he run for the New York City Council District 25 in 2021.

We have lost one of the most inspiring space advocates who truly understood the importance and the urgency of expanding civilization into outer space. Now we’ll have to double our efforts, to explain this urgency to every citizen on Earth.

We, at Space Renaissance, will bring him in our hearts forever, wherever we will go.

A memorial webpage will be published soon. By now, here you can have a quick glimpse of the Manny’s passion for civilization expansion into outer space https://youtu.be/3oNpBAOajmc

November 23^rd 2022