Paragon Space Development Corporation is an American company headquartered in Tucson, Arizona. [1] Paragon is a provider of environmental controls for extreme and hazardous environments. They design, build, test and operate life-support systems and leading thermal-control products for astronauts, contaminated water divers, and other extreme environment explorers, as well as for uncrewed space and terrestrial applications. [2]
Paragon was conceived to combine the expertise of biology, chemistry and aerospace engineering to develop technical solutions to life support and thermal control problems related to human and biological spaceflight.
Paragon was founded by six principal partners including Grant Anderson, Taber MacCallum, Jane Poynter, Dave Bearden, Max Nelson, and Alicia (Cesa) Pederson.
Prior to co-founding Paragon, Anderson was employed at Lockheed Martin, Sunnyvale, California, MacCallum and Poynter were members of Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Arizona, David was at The Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, California, (where he is still employed), Max was at the RAND Corporation, and Cesa was a manager at Lockheed Martin. MacCallum served as CEO of Paragon from its inception until his move to serve as chief technology officer of World View Enterprises, Inc., a company incubated by Paragon. Jane, formerly president and chairman of the Board of Paragon and Former World View CEO, and Taber are now co-CEO's of Space Perspective. Taber, Max, David and Grant had all previously attended International Space University Summer Sessions, through which they became connected.