Marshall Savage

Marshall Thomas Savage is an advocate of space travel who wrote The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps and founded the First Millennial Foundation, which was designed to make plans for stellar exploration over the next 1,000 years.

Savage was born on 6 August 1955 in Grand Valley, Colorado.

His parents are John Savage Sr. and Joan Leonhardt and he is the third of four sons.

The Savage family continues to be very active in the development of natural gas, real estate, water, timber, and wind power in Colorado.

In 1963, John and Joan Savage moved their family of four sons to Graham Mesa in Rifle, Colorado.

During the 1968 to 1969 year, his parents took him and his siblings out of school for a trip to Europe.

Savage attended Rifle High School, likely from Fall 1969 to Spring 1973.

He took a gap year from Fall 1973 to Spring 1974.

At some point during the Spokane, Washington World's Fair, 4 May to 3 November 1974, Savage "and his buddies" drove up to the region.

Savage instead opted to follow his other interest, literature, and attend Swarthmore College, which he attended for one full year (two semesters) from Fall 1974 to Spring 1975.

In early 1975 Gerard K. O'Neill came to Swarthmore to deliver a speech on space colonies.

This re-ignited Savage's interest in space.

Savage attended a conference, likely the 7–9 May 1975 Space Manufacturing conference in Princeton put on by Dr. O'Neill.

He then took a break from school for three years, missing the 1975-6, 1976-7, and 1977-8 school years.

Savage, in April 1978, was working for the California Museum of Science and Industry.

While taking a break from his studies, on 20 April 1978, he was featured in the Yuma Daily Sun while working for the California Museum of Science and Industry's travelling team.

His team visited elementary schools, in this case San Pasqual School of Yuma, Arizona.

The exhibits gave students "firsthand experiences with recent events in the fields of mathematics, the human body, electricity, minerals, science, space exploration, and energy."

Savage took two further semesters at Swarthmore, in Fall 1978 and Fall 1979.

Perhaps inspired from his experience with the California Museum of Science and Industry, he attended the University of Southern California (USC), taking a variety of classes, including film studies and television production, ultimately completing his English degree there and graduating in 1981.

After graduating from USC, aged 26, he returned to Rifle to participate in managing his family's business interests.

In the mid-80s Savage also worked for a small company, Shale Energy Corporation of America (ECA) in Denver.

One project he worked on for about five years was a campaign to build a dam on the Colorado River.

He founded an entity called "West Anvil Water & Power Company".

He established it with family members to develop the Webster Hill reservoir and hydropower project on the Colorado River.

In 1982 this entity applied for a permit to build a dam on this river, submitting an environmental assessment and resource management plan for Glenwood Springs Resource Area, but the application was ultimately rejected by the relevant regulatory agencies.

It was after this time, circa 1984, that Savage began to write what would become The Millennial Project, in his spare time.

Circa 1987, with his younger brother Dan, he founded a pioneering audiobook store called Quality Times Audio Bookstore, in Denver, Colorado.

"As children we were carefully taught how to read," he said in an interview on 1 April 1987 with the Denver Post.

"But not many people have been taught listening skills. One thing audio books are very good at is reawakening that latent ability to understand and follow the spoken word."

More important than the difference between reading and listening, Savage said, is the difference between watching a story on television and listening to a storyteller.

He returned to Rifle in about 1991 to start an ambulance transfer business called Tri-County Ambulance.

Marshall Savage and his brother John Savage were volunteers on the Ambulance Transfer business, but ultimately they decided to buy an ambulance, and start charging people for it.

At its peak they had 2 brand-new ambulances.

He handed the day-to-day management of this business over to his bride, whom he had just married, in 1993.

He never forgot its beauty, as 23 years later he would move his young family there permanently to live nearby, in Idaho, in late 1997.

After high school, Savage's original ambition was to become an astronaut.

He was accepted for Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) at University of Colorado at Boulder (CU Boulder).

However, when it became clear that Spiro Agnew's plan for a post-Apollo space program was not going to happen, he declined to continue.

She managed the business until 1997 when they sold it and moved to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.