Northwest Aerospace News October | November Issue No. 11 | Page 27

T
he story of Erik Lindbergh’s future
aerospace technologies links to a past with
deep exploration and drive through both his
grandfather, Charles Lindbergh, an aviation
pioneer, and Erik’s father, Jon Lindbergh,
aquanaut and commercial diver.
Much of what Erik is doing today is based
upon an abundant history of exploration
and exposure. Charles Lindbergh’s focus
was on prize money when he ventured to
be the first man to make a solo transatlantic
flight by airplane in 1927. Charles Lindber-
gh is credited as being one of the early fa-
thers of aviation, which led to mainstream
air travel in the modern world.
Erik’s father, Jon Lindbergh, attended and
graduated from Stanford University. He
spent time in the Navy and discovered new
oceanic geological features through under-
water cave diving.
Before Charles Lindbergh, the aviator,
Charles Lindbergh Senior served as a
congressman from Minnesota. Accomplish-
ment runs deep in this family, which makes
it no surprise that Erik has spent his career
innovating and partnering with inventive
visionaries to create a prize leading to
space exploration, through XPrize with his
friend Dr. Peter H. Diamandis.
Lindbergh is the first to admit though that
they have developed technologies that
will likely lead to a buy-out from a bigger
company at some point.
Lindbergh explains that much of his phil-
anthropic aviation and exploratory work
began with the XPrize. “The genesis of this
program goes back to 1996 when I was
asked to be involved with the 10 million
dollar XPrize Foundation,” said Lindbergh.
The foundation is “a 501(c)(3) nonprofit,
innovative competition modeled to ‘solve
the world’s grandest challenges,’” accord-
ing to http://www.xprize.org.
OCTOBER | NOVEMBER 2019 ISSUE NO. 11
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