Sam Cleveland

"Sam" redirects here. For other uses, see Sam (disambiguation).

Sam Cleveland

Personal Information

Gender

Male

Date of death

17 July 1992

Place of death

Polaris Orbital Hotel,
Earth's orbit

Cause of death

Crashing elevator

Family

Tracy Stevens † (wife)

Nationality

United States

Professional Information

Occupation

Entrepreneur
Investor

Affiliations

Cleveland Capital Partners
Outpost franchise
Polaris Space Tours

Series Information

Actor

Jeff Hephner

Seasons

Two, Three

Episodes

4

First seen	Last seen
2x06	3x01

Sam Cleveland was an investor and entrepreneur, and the second husband of Tracy Stevens.

History[]

Season 2[]

Before Gordo Stevens left for Jamestown, he paid a visit to Sam's home to inform him that he was aiming to get Tracy back from Sam. Sam responded that Tracy was neither of theirs and belonged only to herself. Gordo had to admit Sam was accurate.

In September 1983, Sam Cleveland bought the Outpost from Karen Baldwin.^[1]

Between season 2 & 3[]

In the following years, Sam turned the Outpost into an international franchise, with branches in New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, and Tokyo.^[2]

During the emerging Space Boom in the mid 80s, he invested in space tourism and founded the world's first space tourism company, Polaris Space Tours, together with partner Karen Baldwin. In March 1986, they unveiled the first privately operated spaceplane, Polaris 1, and started to fly paying customers to outer space and back to Earth beginning early 1987.^[2] ^[3]

In the early 90s, their company built the first private space station in Earth's orbit to serve as an orbital hotel, Polaris.^[2]

Season 3[]

On July 17, 1992, Sam and Karen held the soft-opening of their orbital hotel, hosting the wedding of Danny and Amber Stevens. During that event, the space station was struck by debris from an exploded North Korean rocket, causing an uncommanded burn of a rotational thruster, which led to the hotel's rotation to increase and the gravitational force^W with it. While evacuating the hotel, Sam was killed when the elevator malfunctioned while he was transporting guests to the shuttles.^[4]