The meetings organized by FrenchFounders, the worldwide network of French-speaking executives, investors, and entrepreneurs, are an opportunity to discover great human adventures and companies with extraordinary growth potential.
Spotlight on the latest FrenchFounders event in San Francisco, where MerciSF had the pleasure of meeting Franck Marchis, Astronomer and Co-founder & Chief Scientific Officer of Unistellar, and François Dubrulle, Singapore-based engineer and multi-entrepreneur who, with his company Qosmosys, has designed a space vehicle aimed at developing the future lunar economy.
At the dawn of a new era in aerospace, Franck and François share a common vision: to democratize access to and exploration of space, which they believe belongs to the heritage of humanity, at a key moment in the evolution of the human species.
Franck Marchis, a native of Réunion and trained at Toulouse’s Paul Sabatier University, realized his childhood dream of becoming an astronomer. He is convinced that we will “discover life elsewhere, beyond Earth, in the next 5 to 10 years“. As co-founder of Unistellar, he designed the first connected telescope – in other words, the iPhone of astronomy. His company aims to democratize space exploration, enabling users to explore with the help of their phone, while connected to a global network of users, and to collectively participate in new scientific discoveries (by detecting new planets, for example).
Franck, who is also a researcher at the SETI Institute in Silicon Valley, took part in the incredible experiment last Fall which showed that asteroids could be diverted to avoid impact with the Earth.
At a time when we’re reaching saturation point on Earth in terms of population and use of resources, François Dubrulle wants to “facilitate access to space, by creating a bridge between Earth and space, to find and develop resources elsewhere“. Trained at Sup Aero Toulouse, he wants “to enable human beings to live on the Moon, by creating facilities there and developing a real lunar economy“. His company Qosmosys, which designs and operates space vehicles, combines low cost and technological efficiency to send equipment to the moon, with a first launch planned for 2027 with its industrial partner Airbus.
While they disagree on the existence of extraterrestrials, they are both certain that there is some form of life in space, and that the universe is not infinite.
One thing’s for sure: they’re not done amazing us as they take us into the cosmos!
