When he started in 1982, he had to ask a neighbor to answer the company phone (and ran a phone line through the wall for the purpose). Today, he runs a $4.5 billion company. 

That company developed a plan to orbit a fleet of LEO communication satellites to provide thin-route data services for industry, transportation, energy and government. This was in the Eighties, long before anybody even heard of Teledesic, let alone OneWeb. 

What they discovered was that there no cost-effective launch capability for such a fleet. So to make the business plan work, they developed one. Two decades before Sir Richard Branson proudly called Virgin Galactic the first air-launched orbital vehicle, Pegasus completed its inaugural mission from under the wing of an airplane and his company, Orbital Sciences, went public. There are now more than 1,000 satellites, launch vehicles and space systems with the Orbital name on them.

His name is David Thompson, co-founder and CEO of Orbital ATK. Just another amazing individual ushered into SSPI’s Satellite Hall of Fame this year, and still blazing a trail for many more to follow. 

http://www.sspi.org/cpages/hof-thompson