Phil Salin

Who was Phil Salin?

Phillip Kenneth Salin was an American economist and futurist, best known for his contributions to theories about the development of cyberspace and as a proponent of private space exploration and development.

Salin was born in Hollywood, California and raised in San Rafael, California. Salin's father was Lothar Salin, a printer and public interest activist in San Rafael, and part of the General Semantics movement. His grandfather was Edgar Salin, an historian/economist/philosopher at Basel, Switzerland and a leader of the so-called "Historical School" of political and social philosophy. Salin earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from UCLA in 1970, and a Master of Business Administration from Stanford University. He did postgraduate studies with James G. March at Stanford University.

In the 1980s, Salin applied his economics expertise to the problem of access to outer space. He cofounded Starstruck, a private space launch company. On February 28, 1984, Salin testified to the US House Space Science and Applications Subcommittee of the Committee on Science and Technology, stating that NASA had substantially underestimated the cost of its launches and thus was massively subsidizing them, harming other competitors such as the Atlas and Delta rockets. NASA's published cost and price of $71 million per launch contrasted with Salin's calculated costs of $200 to $250 million per launch.