Andreas Dripke studied business and computer science and spent ten years as an analyst and editor-in-chief at International Data Corporation (IDC). At 23, he wrote his first technology book, later authoring over 30 accessible non-fiction works. His passion for space travel led him to meet astronauts like Alan Shepard and Valentina Tereshkova, and he engaged with leaders from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and "Star City". As CEO and now Executive Chairman of the Diplomatic Council, a think tank in consultative status with the UN, he has contributed to UN conferences and this book, focusing on AI, geopolitics, space, and humanity's future.
Prof. Dr. Heinrich Kreft, Ambassador (retired) is currently Senior Fellow at the Istanbul Policy Center, President of the Diplomatic Council (DC) and a well-respected lecturer for Space Diplomacy. For the last four years until August 2024 Professor Dr. Kreft M. A. , B. A. (USA), held the Chair for Diplomacy and was Program Director "International Relations and European Studies" at Andrássy University Budapest and Director of its Center for Diplomacy. Previously, he was Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (July 2016-August 2020), Special Ambassador for Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogue and for International Academic Relations, and Deputy Head of the Policy Planning Staff of the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin. Other assignments in his 40-year long diplomatic career have taken him to Washington, Tokyo, Madrid and La Paz. From 2006-2010 he was a foreign and Security Policy Advisor to the CDU/CSU Parliamentary Group in the Foreign Relations Committee of the German Bundestag. He has also been a visiting fellow at the Henry L. Stimson Center, the Heritage Foundation, the Brookings Institutions, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Transatlantic Academy of the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Washington, DC. Heinrich Kreft studied political science, modern history and sociology at Juniata College, Huntingdon, PA (USA), at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris and the Institut des Hautes Etudes de L'Amérique Latine of the Sorbonne Nouvelle as well as at the Westfälische Wilhelms Universität Münster. He has published extensively on international relations. Most recent publications on China, the broader Middle East, Hungary, Cencral Europe and on the Western Balkans as well as "the race to space".
