Jim Cantrell is an American entrepreneur, mechanical engineer, and road racer. He is CEO and co-founder of Vector Launch, Inc. After working at the French Space Agency CNES (Centre Nationale D'Etudes Spatiales) and the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, he worked as an independent consultant to aerospace companies for fifteen years and was on the founding teams of SpaceX and Moon Express. Jim received the NASA Innovation Award for Mars Balloon Technology in 1989. He is also the author of twenty technical papers. Jim also participates in road racing and has run in the 25 Hours of Thunderhill at Thunderhill Raceway and he's raced in the 24 Hours of Daytona Classic. In 2005, he founded Vintage Exotics Competition Engineering, which designs and restores race cars.