The National Space Society Mourns the Passing of CEO Anita Gale

Anita Gale

Veteran Aerospace Engineer Was a Member of the Organization for 33 Years

The National Space Society mourns the passing of its CEO and longtime Board member Anita Gale. She took the position of Chief Executive Officer of the decades-old organization in 2021 after serving multiple Board terms as well as holding other senior officer positions. During her tenure as CEO the organization was transformed in a number of important ways, including the opening of a new headquarters office at the Kennedy Space Center and garnering a $1 million grant from Blue Origin’s Club for the Future.

“It has been an honor working with Anita. Her dedication to the cause of space settlement was an inspiration to all of us. With her passing, a giant has left our Earth for the stars,” said Dale Skran, NSS COO.

Gale joined NSS when she was an aerospace engineer employed by Rockwell International working on the space shuttle program. She entered the aerospace industry at a time when women were uncommon in the technical workforce and faced those challenges with determination and dignity.

“I grew up in a suburb of Seattle,” Gale remembered. “In high school, there was a class called Engineering Concepts that had 35 kids and two of those were girls, so I was exposed early to this idea of going down paths that were nontraditional.” In college in the early 1970s, she was often the only woman in engineering classes. “I was the only person who didn’t see a girl in class, because I was the girl,” she often said.

When Gale entered the aerospace workforce, women had to take the lead on conduct. “Our male coworkers had been around women who were secretaries, but they hadn’t been around women who were peers, and the poor guys just literally didn’t know how to behave. We had to help them. Now, women are just part of it.”

Gale started working on the space shuttle program in 1974 with Rockwell International in Downey, California. She provided conceptual designs for cargo integration on future launch vehicles, contributed to R&D for Shuttle upgrades and future missions of both reusable and expendable launch vehicles, and developed process improvements. She held three U.S. patents on launch vehicle payload interface standardization and containerization, which were to become essential technologies for reducing future vehicle processing costs and schedules. During this time, she joined the L5 society, a predecessor organization to the National Space Society.

In 1984, Anita and her husband Dick Edwards co-founded the Space Settlement Design Competitions, an industry simulation activity that engages high school students in designing future space settlements. The competitions evolved into an international activity involving over 1000 students each year on six continents. She has been widely lauded by countless students, many of them women, as their key inspiration to move into technical fields.

Gales’s many awards and industry recognitions included the University of Washington’s Distinguished Alumni Award and the NSS Space Pioneer Award. She was an active member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and Society of Women Engineers (SWE). Gale was also a member of the AIAA Space Colonization Technical Committee, chaired technical conference sessions on space settlements, and wrote technical papers about space settlement requirements, designs, and the triggering events that will contribute to the goal of constructing space settlements in the future. She was a luminary and leader in the quest to expand humanity beyond Earth.

Hoyt Davidson, NSS Executive Vice President, noted, “We will miss Anita dearly as a friend, leader, and valued colleague—but perhaps the immeasurable loss will be for the thousands of students who will miss out on her inspiration, mentoring, and encouragement. How do you replace a kind and caring legend?”

Karlton Johnson, Chairman of the NSS Board of Governors and interim CEO, added, “Anita was a force of nature for positive change. Her precision, poise, and intellect made lasting improvements within NSS. She will be missed, but her legacy will endure for years to come.”

Gale was also an avid sailor, often competing in sailing contests, and taught many other people the skills she had learned. For many years she also took groups on annual rafting trips down the Grand Canyon.

Just weeks before her passing Gale was still driving thousands of miles every few months, overseeing the space settlement competitions she had founded, conducting NSS business, and visiting friends all over the country. One of her motivating goals was to continue to help young people, especially girls, to realize their talents in technical fields.

“Every culture has treated women differently than men,” Gale once said. “I think we’ll always know and see the difference between men and women and just acknowledge it less in the workplace. The differences between us are not really what’s important; what’s important, especially as engineers, is getting things accomplished.”

Share:

Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
LinkedIn
Picture of National Space Society

National Space Society

4 thoughts on “The National Space Society Mourns the Passing of CEO Anita Gale”

  1. Anita will be missed for so many of her positive accomplishments, but more than that for being a wonderful person and a mentor to so many. It is a great loss to us at the NSS and the ISSDC, but even more, a loss to the world and those who worked with her and called her a friend. We will keep her legacy going.

    Reply
  2. Anita was a good friend. I first met her 7 years ago with the SSDT program. She invited me to continue with them where I eventually became a Red Team Advisor, judge and CEO. Anita and I would be speaking/attending so many different events together: NSS, UN, Tau Bates, etc. This grew into a very close friendship over the years. She invited me to stay at her place and travel with her on several occasions when I finally took her up on the annual Grand Canyon trip this past year – I amazed with her energy this past September. She took my son under her wings and they worked together on different committees she asked him to be on. I will forever remember her for her extreme kindness to us. My son and I were with her when she passed away. This was a very hard moment for us. We wanted to spend some time with her and pass her our love and thanks for all she had done for us and to let her know that we would continue the work we had been doing with her. We will continue to keep her legacy alive.

    Reply
  3. Anita was a friend in Society of Women Engineers. She was responsible for me receiving SWE’s Engineer of the Year, for which I had many thanks.

    Elsa GarmireE

    Reply
  4. I am another of Anita’s friends. When she talked about that Engineering Concepts class in high school I was the other girl in the class. She inspired me to pursue engineering at the University of Washington, and although I did not succeed as she did we remained close friends for well over 50 years. She made sure I got to float through the Grand Canyon with her, and we celebrated the husbands we loved and lost by scattering their ashes together there. My oldest and dearest friend is sorely missed.

    Reply

Leave a Comment

Search
Categories
future 1

Don't Miss a Beat!

Be the first to know when new articles are posted!

Follow Us On Social Media

JOIN THE
GREATEST ADVENTURE

Give The Gift Of Space: Membership For Friends and Family

Book Review

Archives

ISDC 2025:
Together Beyond!

In Orlando at the Rosen Centre Hotel.
June 19 - 22, 2025

FEATURED BLOG

Image of Kalpana One space settlement courtesy Bryan Versteeg, spacehabs.com $32,000 in Cash Awards Given for Best Space-Related Business Plans — Deadline March 1, 2024

Category: Nonfiction Reviewed by: John J. Vester Title: Nuclear Rockets: To the Moon and Mars Author: Manfred “Dutch” von Ehrenfried Format: Paperback/Kindle Pages: 270 Publisher:

Partially Successful Flight Reached Space and Demonstrated New “Hot Staging” System The National Space Society congratulates SpaceX on the second test of its Starship/Super Heavy

Ad Astra, the NSS quarterly print, digital, and audio magazine, has won a 2023 MARCOM Gold Award. The awards are given yearly for “Excellence in

By Jennifer Muntz, NSS Member Coordinator On October 10th, an inspiring breakfast event took flight at the Center for Space Education at the Kennedy Space

By Grant Henriksen NSS Policy Committee Benefit sharing is a concept that refers to the distribution of benefits derived from the exploration and use of

People residing and working in space, space settlements, or on long-duration space flights will need to produce infrastructures and food to maintain healthy lifestyles. The

Image: Artist’s concept of the Blue Moon lander. Credit: Blue Origin. Second Human Landing System Contract Encourages Competition and Innovation The National Space Society congratulates

Your Doorway to New Worlds