Jane Poynter

World View Enterprises, doing business as World View, is a private American near-space exploration and technology company headquartered in Tucson, Arizona, founded with the goal of increasing access to and the utilization of the stratosphere for scientific, commercial, and economic purposes.

World View was founded and incorporated in 2012 by a team of aerospace and life support veterans, including Biosphere 2 crew-members Jane Poynter and Taber MacCallum, Dr. Alan Stern (the principal investigator of the New Horizons mission to Pluto, and former NASA astronaut Mark Kelly. The company designs, manufactures and operates stratospheric flight technology for a variety of customers and applications.

The Stratollite[1] is a remotely operated, navigable, un-crewed stratospheric flight vehicle designed and engineered to station-keep over customer-specified areas of interest for long periods of time (days, weeks, and months). The Stratollite uses proprietary altitude control technology to rise and lower in the stratosphere, harnessing the natural currents of varying stratospheric winds to provide point-to-point navigation and loitering. The Stratollite operates at altitudes up to 95,000 ft. (30km) with a payload capacity of 50kg and 250W of continuous power to payloads. The Stratollite is primarily used for applications including remote sensing, communications, and weather.[2]

Poynter was a founder of Paragon Space Development Corporation, which develops technologies for extreme environments (like outer space and under water). While inside Biosphere 2, she co-founded the firm with fellow biospherian, Taber MacCallum, whom she later married,[3] Grant Anderson, Paragon's President and CEO and several other aerospace engineers. In 2009 the National Association for Female Executives awarded Jane its Entrepreneur of the Year award.[4] Jane is named as co-inventor on a patented experiment [5] self-sustaining habitats flown on the International Space Station, the Russian Mir Space Station, and the U.S. Space Shuttle.

Poynter was a developer of the crew and life-support systems[6] for the Inspiration Mars free-return mission to Mars planned for launch in January 2018. The two person spaceflight mission was originally to be a private, nonprofit venture[7] of 501 days duration which will allow a small human-carrying spacecraft to use the smallest possible amount of fuel to get it to Mars and back to Earth.[8] However, this plan proved unworkable without significant funding and assistance from NASA.[9]

The life support system is critical. "If anything goes wrong, the spacecraft should make its own way back to Earth — but with no possibility of any short-cuts home."[10]

Poynter was one of eight people who agreed to live in a sealed artificial world for two years from September 1991 to September 1993. Just twelve days into the mission, she was injured in a rice-threshing machine, and had to leave the Biosphere for medical treatment.[11] She was out for less than seven hours. The project came under media criticism after it was revealed that some spare parts were placed in the airlock with her when she went back in.

Poynter reported that low morale and psychological problems plagued the two-year mission.[12] The eight crew members eventually split into two factions of four who hated each other.