Early career

Cantrell joined the French Space Agency (CNES) in 1990 after completing his MS. He went to France to work on a joint French-Soviet Mars program and supported the development of the Mars Snake for the Mars 94/96 balloon mission.^[2] He returned to the U.S. in 1992 to join Space Dynamics Laboratory, where he led the spacecraft systems engineering on three small satellites for the Department of Defense. He also worked on various joint missile defense programs conducted between America and Russia. Cantrell was promoted to the position of director of program development in 1997.^[10]

In 2001, Cantrell started independent consulting and served as the program manager for the privately funded solar sail program known as Cosmos 1.^[11] The same year, Elon Musk approached him seeking his help in sending a mission to Mars using Russian rockets because of their low price compared to the US rockets. When Musk and Cantrell approached Russians, they refused to sell them rockets and Musk decided to build his own.^[12] Musk founded SpaceX with Cantrell as a consultant.^[13] SpaceX launched in 2002, with Cantrell as SpaceX's first vice president of business development and Musk's industry mentor.^[14][4] While at the company he helped develop the Falcon 1 launch vehicle.^[15]

Strategic Space Development

After leaving SpaceX, Cantrell founded Strategic Space Development, an aerospace and technology consultancy and took on the position of president and CEO.^[16] One of the significant projects undertaken by Strategic Space was the Light Sail project headed by The Planetary Society where Cantrell served as project manager from 2008 through 2012. Strategic Space participated in over 46 spacecraft developments including NuStar, Juno, Skybox Imaging, and Iceye X-1.^[17] In 2010, the founders of Moon Express approached Cantrell seeking his help to develop a business offering commercial lunar robotic transportation. Cantrell became a member of the founding team of Moon Express and subsequently became the CTO of the company. Forbes selected Moon Express as one of the "Names You Should Know" in 2011.^[18][19] StratSpace's clients have included NASA, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Orbital Sciences.^[20]

During his tenure at Strategic Space, Cantrell also became involved in the technical and financial development of several startups including Skybox Imaging, Atlas Ground Systems, Iceye, PlanetIQ, York Space Systems, and Black Sky.^[17]

IDair

In 2013, Cantrell was hired as the CEO of IDair, a biometric authentication technology company, to turn the company around and settle existing legal disputes.^[21] As CEO, he reorganized the firm and led product development efforts at the company. He stepped down from the position in 2014 after obtaining a $17M settlement in IDair's favor.^[22]

Vector

In 2015, Cantrell approached John Garvey with a business idea to develop micro launch vehicles to service the microsatellite community. Vector purchased Garvey's company, Garvey Spacecraft, to jumpstart launch vehicle development and speed up time to market.^[23] Cantrell stepped down as CEO of Strategic Space Development (now known as StratSpace) to serve as the CEO of Vector.^[24] By late 2019, Vector had raised $100 million in venture funding and $2.5 million in contracts. The company originally planned to launch its first orbital vehicle by mid 2018 but development problems delayed the first launch until mid 2020.^[25][24] In August 2019, one of Vector's major investors pulled out causing a mass layoff of Vector’s 180 employees.^[26]

Phantom Space

Cantrell founded Phantom Space in 2019 with Mike D’Angelo.^[27] The Arizona-based company plans to manufacture enough rockets to launch 100 missions a year. Cantrell has described Phantom Space as wanting to be the "Henry Ford" of the space industry,^[4] referring to the company's efforts to mass produce rockets and space vehicles. On the docket is Phantom's Daytona rocket, which is about 61 feet long and capable of launching nearly 1,000 pounds into low-Earth orbit at a cost of $4 million per mission.^[20]

Phantom is also working on a communications network called Phantom Cloud, which Cantrell calls "satellite internet for space." It is essentially a network that satellites can use to communicate with each other or with systems on the surface.^[4]

Board of advisors

Throughout his career, Cantrell served on corporate boards of several companies in the aerospace industry. In 2004, he became a board member at the Paragon Space Development Corporation and served there until 2013. He was on the Planetary Society's board of advisors from 2007 to 2012. He has also served on ATLAS Space Board of Advisors, Morf3D Board of Advisors, Iceye, and York Space Systems Board of Advisors. Cantrell also served on source selection panels for NASA reviewing proposals for deep space and space science missions for 15 years.^[2]

Road racing

Cantrell began racing on go-carts in his teen years later graduating to drag racing in 1982-1985. He began pursuing a career in racing in 2005. Since then he has participated in 25 Hours of Thunderhill, 24 Hours of Daytona Classic, SCCA GT-1 Championship events (placing 13th and 7th nationally in SCCA GT-1 championships) and vintage races all over the United States. He was the SCCA regional champion in Arizona in C Sports Racing in 2013 and 2014 and has been on the Arizona Region Sports Car Club of America's board since 2012 and currently serves as Regional Executive.^[5][28]

In 2005, he founded Vintage Exotics Competition Engineering, which designs and restores vintage racing cars.^[5] He was the Competition Driving Instructor at Raptor Motorsports from 2010 to 2012.^[29][30]

Books Published By Cantrell

In April 2023, Cantrell published his first book "Breaking All The Rules: The Inside Story Of The New Space Race". This book traces the origins of a second space race that began at the end of the 1960's US-Soviet space race and eventually led to the creation of SpaceX and the explosive growth in commercial space. The story covers how this revolution began with a band of misfit engineers and scientists and Cantrell describes the events in first person narrative detailing his early days with Elon Musk and SpaceX and how the new space economy was eventually ignited with the money and vision of billionaires such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson.^[31]