Dale Skran
NSS Senior Vice President/Chief Operating Officer
National Space Society Board of Directors
Dale Skran worked 17 years with Bell Labs (AT&T, Lucent Technologies) and continued his career at several companies including Ascend Communications (VP of Enterprise Engineering), Sonus Networks (Director of Engineering), and CMWare (Founder, CEO, COO, and VP of Engineering). He was also a negotiator/ manager (Rapporteur) at the UN (International Telecommunication Union) where he led the development of international Internet standards for video conferencing and voice services (VoIP).
Dale has held or currently holds the following NSS leadership positions:
- Senior Vice President/Chief Operating Officer (currently)
- Co-Chair of the Bylaws Committee (currently)
- Chair of the Strategic Planning Committee (currently)
- At-large Board Member (currently)
- Regional Board Member
- Executive Vice President
- Chair of the Policy Committee
- Chair of the Executive Committee
- Member of the Alliance for Space Development representing NSS
- ISDC Policy Track Chair
In addition to a large number of NSS blog posts, some of the articles Dale has written for Ad Astra include:
- “A Summer in New Space,” Winter 2013
- Book Review, “Scatter, Adapt, and Remember,” Spring 2014
- Book Review, “Starship Century,” Summer 2014
- Space Settlement Column, “Synergy Between Space Settlement and Robot Planetary Exploration,” Summer 2014
- “Hayabusa2: A Significant Milestone on the Road to Space Settlements,” Fall 2015
- “NSS Joins Forces with Space Frontier Foundation to Form ASD,” Fall 2015
- “International Lunar Decade Declaration Unveiled at National Space Society Conference,” Fall 2015
- “Battle of the Colossi: SLS vs Falcon Heavy,” Fall 2015
- “New to Flight: Reducing the Cost of Access to Space,” Fall 2016
- “Overview of H.R. 4752: The Space Exploration, Development, and Settlement Act of 2016,” Summer, 2016
- “How to Think about Going to Mars,” Spring 2016
- “NSS Working for you: What the Presidential Transition Team Means for NASA,” Spring 2017
- “Students Soar to International Space Station,” Fall 2017
- “New Rides to the Moon,” Winter 2018
- “Out of the Ashes: SpaceX Rockets to a Record Year,” Winter 2018
- “Battle of the Colossi: Round Two – SLS vs Falcon Heavy vs New Glenn,” Spring 2018
- “How 2018 Became the first year of Space,” Winter 2019
- “A Message from the Incoming Chair [of the Executive Committee],” Spring 2019
- “Space-Based Astronomy is our Future,” Winter 2020
- “Why SpaceX Has Not Won the Collier Trophy?”, Winter 2020
- “Why We are Non-Partisan,” Winter 2020
Some other articles Dale has published include:
- “Settling Space is the only sustainable reason for humans to be in Space,” The Space Review, February 1, 2016
- “Commentary on the Planetary Society’s ‘Principles for Human Spaceflight,” The Space Review, September 24, 2018 (with co-authors)
- “Space-based Astronomy is our future” (op-ed), space.com, March 14, 2020
- “Op-ed | H.R. 5666 will launch the U.S. in the wrong direction,” Space News, March 5, 2020 (with co-authors)
- “Humanity Can’t Afford to Keep Space Pristine,” Foreign Policy, October 30, 2019, co-authored with Greg Autry
- “Space Policy via the rearview mirror,” The Space Review, June 16, 2014
