Walter Anderson (businessman)
American telecommunications entrepreneur / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Walter C. Anderson (born 1953) is an American entrepreneur, investor, and advocate for commercial space travel. He began his career in telecommunications and founded several companies including Mid-Atlantic Telecom in 1984 and Esprit Telecom in 1992, which were acquired by Frontier Communications and Global TeleSystems Group, respectively. He co-founded the International Space University and provided financial support for the Space Frontier Foundation during its creation. Anderson also invested in a number of space ventures including Rotary Rocket, a company that attempted to develop a reusable, single-stage launch vehicle with the aid of helicopter rotors. He founded MirCorp, an unsuccessful venture to privatize the Mir space station, and Orbital Recovery Corporation, a company developing technology to capture and repair telecommunication satellites.
In the mid 2000s, Anderson pled guilty to charges of tax evasion and was sentenced to nine years in prison. After his release in 2012, he founded Avealto a company developing a fleet of high-altitude platforms.