I’d like to welcome Brian Beckley to the LaserMotive team. Brian is a writer, and has taken on the task of writing blog posts about the team. Brian does journalism by day, and comedy by night. And laser power beaming by weekend, or something like that…

Writing blog posts is a task I always want to have done, which is different from wanting to do it. I start to write something, then get writer’s block. Or else I’m just too busy with everything else. So I’m very excited that Brian is not only willing, but interested in writing about Team LaserMotive! Look for his first post later this week!

We’ll kick off 2009 with a new “Meet the Team” entry (apologies for such a long delay in blogging). Joe Grez is one of the most recent additions to the LaserMotive team, and was brought in by Dave Bashford. Here is Joe’s background:

Joe Grez has a jumble of education. It includes a BS in physics, a minor in music and art, a few years of architecture studies, half of a yacht design associates degree, coursework in various engineering disciplines, industrial design (IDEO), and manufacturing process, plus a seriously healthy dose of project management coursework, some of which stuck. This varied background is perfect for something. But instead, he’s worked for 22 years in project and program management focusing on early-phase product development programs; solving consumer dilemmas through concept development and the creation of functionality in products. He’s been voted by his peers as the most desirable person to be marooned with because he can supposedly make anything work. He’s worked for startups in Photovoltaics, medical diagnostics, IR air countermeasures but for 10 years now he’s managed programs to create new Soncicare products for Optiva/ Philips. He has 18 PCT (WIPO patent) applications, three of which have turned into US patents. He also points out that an additional 14 of his applications have been abandoned or rejected before granting and he’s written over 150 disclosures. But he’s not cross about it. Joe joined LaserMotive just a few months ago to work with team members to manage the timeline, promote focus, ask stupid risk questions and generally improve the odds of biting off the right amount to meet timing goals. He says that with this team’s skill set and dedication, it’s not such a hard job if he can just figure out how e-mail works. He lives in the shadow of Mt. Si with his family, Linda and 4 year old Anna, not to mention the cows, elk, cougar, bears and bobcat. In his spare time, he’s starting a business called PropEle to develop and sell a very high efficiency low power marine drive system that enables best-of-class range with minimal battery power.

Joe has already helped bring great focus to test scheduling and some sub-system work. Despite his initial skepticism about our ability to get everything done in time, he is now convinced we’ll make it all work beautifully, and on time!

Today’s Interface column at the Seattle Times profiles LaserMotive co-founder Jordin Kare! We’re very excited to see laser power beaming gaining more and more public awareness.

If you’ve come here from the Seattle Times article and are interested in our press kit, please download the Laser Power Beaming fact sheet and the LaserMotive corporate backgrounder. If you want to know what’s been happening recently with LaserMotive, read further on this blog where we have articles about our vehicle endurance test and our treadmill upgrade, among others.

I never got to finish introducing the team members last year, and we’ve been adding new ones this year, so I don’t know if I’ll ever get everyone, but I’ll try. To kick off the latest round of “Meet the Team,” I’d like to introduce you to David Bashford. I was lucky enough to get introduced to Dave by a mutual friend who worked with Dave at Philips/Sonicare. It’s easiest to let that friend do the talking:

Dave has 30 years of experience as the computer/technology electro mechanical technician/jack of all trades, and has worked for companies as diverse as Coinstar and Philips/Sonicare. Dave brings several things to any team he’s on. First is his ability to organize parts, tools and information, something that is easy to overlook and underestimate until you see it in action. Second is his ability to ask the annoying questions just when they most need to be asked (“shouldn’t we move that mirror first?”). Third is his ability to take a rough paper napkin sketch, a badly thought out electrical schematic, and a ten minute discussion of overall concept and turn them into a working proof of concept for a sub system. Dave has the patience for long hours of tedious repetitive work and the practical thinking to turn an idea into moving parts. In a room full of “big thinkers” he’s able to engage in their flights of fancy, but can bring things back to earth when its time to turn a wrench.

Dave himself describes himself as a tinkerer:

I have ALWAYS been a tinkerer. I built my first ‘vacuum cleaner’ when I was 4 (cardboard is a good building material, right?). I built things from kits when I was old enough, short wave radios and such. I mean, what else are you going to do in the dead of winter in Iowa? When I was a teen I built my first car. A ‘67 Camaro. I learned lots, including you can’t out-run a radio… As a young adult I got involved in IBM Mainframe repair which led to a 15 year career in field service and consulting in the computer industry. From NASA Ames to Lockheed. Apple to Intel. You name it, I’ve probably worked on it (or sold it).

My R&D career began in ‘94 when I joined a small startup company, Coinstar (NASDAQ: CSTR). We designed and perfected the ‘Coins-To-Cash’ machines you now see in most grocery stores in the USA. Designing computers, building prototypes, testing new designs, embedded systems integration, electromagnetic coin recognition research and development, starting and operating the R&D labs… Now I’m at Philips Oral Healthcare helping the R&D group design the best toothbrush in the world! (And doing all those ‘other’ things too…).

I have been married for 27 years and have 4 wonderful children. My free time is spent playing with cars, boats, pets and the kids (and now a grand daughter) and spending time in outdoor pursuits. Oh yeah, and I still tinker in the workshop when I can.

Needless to say, Dave is a huge asset to the team. Not even including the fact that he carries an entire workshop around in the trunk of his little sports car, Dave gets things done and helps keep us on track.

After all the “Meet the Team” series of posts so far, I guess I should introduce myself at some point. And what better time than when we’re extremely busy and in danger of going more than a week without a new post?

I’m Tom Nugent, the “Project Manager” for LaserMotive, which seems to mean I’m Chief Cat Herder, Systems Engineering Sanity Checker, Gopher, and general Jack of Many Trades. I’m also a part-time contractor at Intellectual Ventures, a truly amazing company.

Before LaserMotive, I served as the Research Director at LiftPort for a couple of years, which is also how I met Jordin. My education is in Physics and Materials Science. I’ve worked with nanometer-sized material via atomic force microscopes up to macroscopic hunks of metal in heavy duty tension testing machines. As an undergrad, I interned at the Jet Propulsion Lab, working on an advanced fusion propulsion system. I spent a year in an intensive, non-degree program in Japanese language and then enjoyed a one-year intership in Japan, working in the space group at Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries. In grad school, I worked worked on liquid-fueled rocket engine development through the MIT Rocket Team. I’ve consulted for a micro-satellite firm, studied solar power satellites and alternative launch vehicles, and more. In short, I’m a space geek. Beyond the technical background, I’ve also run a number of volunteer groups and teams.

As I’ve mentioned before, this project is extremely stimulating (that kind, too) and fun. But no matter what the mind says, the body can only take so much sleep deprivation, so I’m looking forward to November. In the meantime, the next three weeks will be a flurry of activity!

Next in the “Meet the Team” series is arguably the most critical person on our team: chief engineer and team co-founder Jordin Kare. The Robert A. Heinlein Centennial schedule book had a great bio of him:

Jordin Kare really is a Rocket Scientist. He has degrees in physics and electrical engineering from MIT, and a Ph.D in Astrophysics from U.C. Berkeley. As a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, he led a national R&D program on ground-to-orbit laser launch, helped plan the Clementine lunar mapping mission, and designed the Mockingbird miniature launch vehicle. He left LLNL in 1996 to become a freelance satellite designer, consulting for aerospace companies and government agencies. He has received two NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts fellowships, holds four patents, and has invented two different interstellar propulsion systems. As of 2007, Dr. Kare is a full-time staff inventor and program manager for Intellectual Ventures and also chief engineer for LaserMotive…. He lives in Seattle … in what is probably the only 100-year-old house in the world with a Class IV Laser warning sign on the utility room door.

I met Jordin while I was at LiftPort, and approached him about doing more work involving laser power beaming. We decided that the Elevator:2010 Beam Power contest would be the best way to demonstrate to the world the great advances made in solid state lasers. He designed our overall system as we were recruiting people to join the team.

The breadth and depth of Jordin’s knowledge and background continually impresses me. No matter what facet of our system is under discussion for design, fabrication, etc., he’ll usually be familiar with best practices in that area. All of our team members are important, but without Jordin, LaserMotive would not exist and could not have progressed to where we are today.

As I said above, Jordin wanted to compete in the Beam Power competition because it could be a stepping stone to a wide variety of potential applications for laser power beaming. Immediately after this year’s event is over, though, he will probably luxuriate in not getting ten billion emails per day from me.

Next in our “Meet the Team” series of posts is Steve Beland.

During the day, Steve works on airplanes. In his precious free time (not very much these days, because of a certain deadline he has at work), he helps LaserMotive with systems engineering and control electronics.

Steve is yet another one of those people I happened to meet via LiftPort. While working on a graduate degree in Systems Engineering (doing coursework online while working his day job and raising a family), he wrote a few papers on complex system engineering topics and sometimes used a Space Elevator as an example to illustrate points made in the ideas promoted in the papers. In the pursuit of this graduate work that used the space elevator to illustrate his points, Steve contacted Liftport to share his work and seek input on his research. We spoke a number of times about the space elevator and his work, and once I got going with LaserMotive, I knew he’d be a great person to have involved.

Before coming to Washington state, Steve got his degree in Michigan Tech. It was a job offer from that Really Large Airplane Company that drew him to Washington State. He thought he’d try it for a couple years, and now more than twenty years and many models of airplane later (along with that graduate degree), he is on a team developing safety-critical control systems and coordinating their certification with the FAA. He enjoys the space elevator competition, as it is a chance to get away from some of the bureaucracy and to participate in a development cycle that’s much shorter than the products he normally works. I suspect he’s probably looking forward to November, when both of his major commitments are scheduled to be over their humps.

Next in our “Meet the Team” series of posts is David Shoemaker.

I’ve known David Shoemaker for a few years, because we were both involved in LiftPort, where he worked building space elevator climber concept prototypes. He did principal design, construction and programming for nearly 20 different models over 3 years, in addition to his day job at Microsoft. David agreed to join the LaserMotive team last fall, and as I mentioned before, he helped bring Carsten Erickson onto the team. David has been developing our vehicle control system and telemetry, and is working with Steve Beland on another part of our control system.

David was interested in computers from a very young age, and wound up teaching himself more than available school courses could offer. He sold his first piece of software as a junior in high school, to a local comic book shop. He opened his own computer/software store at age 20, and then parlayed that experience into a job as a programmer contracted to the Navy.

Back in 1994, David got into coin-op arcade game collecting, and he opened a service business doing repairs (down to the board level), restorations, and sales on the side. For better or worse, other projects have sidelined much of the coin-op work.

Following the Navy, David has worked at Microsoft in various departments. For the last six years, he’s been with the WinCE group doing embedded software development.

Once the competition is over, I imagine David will be happy to have a bit of free time to get back to working on his house. Until then, though, he’s rocking out on controls!

Next in our “Meet the Team” series of posts is Carsten Erickson.

Carsten is the owner of Coolearth Software, which provides Supply Chain Execution and warehouse management software to food and beverage manufactures across North America. Carsten co-founded the company 10 years ago and has been growing it one customer at a time since then. When he’s not flying across the country on business, Carsten and the rest of the Coolearth team are developing for LaserMotive a computer vision system that tracks our vehicle as it moves up the ribbon, as well as some other automated elements of our system.

We found Carsten thanks to David Shoemaker (who we’ll introduce in a later post) attending a Seattle Robotics Society meeting. David was presenting about the space elevator concept in general, and at the end of his talk he issued a call for people that might be interested in starting a team to compete in the NASA / Spaceward contest. Carsten and his family have been involved in racing of one type or another, Go-Kart, Hydro, Vintage Sports Car, for his entire life and thought it would be a fun and an important event to participate in. Little did Carsten know what he’d get into upon attending his very first SRS meeting!

Carsten says he sees the competition as a chance to push available technology a bit further, and potentially provide new power beaming applications both here on earth and in space. But like all of us, I think he’s also motivated by just cool the whole competition is!

I’d like to introduce the various team members at LaserMotive, so I’ll be doing a regular set of blog posts to briefly talk about people on the team. I’m going to start with the first person to join the team: Steve Burrows.

Steve is the co-owner of Twintec. He and his brother make a variety of specialty tubing connectors, used in things such as hydraulic systems. Any time we need something machined, we go bug Steve. Almost as critical is the fact that Twintec is letting us share their workshop, giving us room to work and test.

I met Steve via the LiftPort forums a few years ago, and knew of his interest in the space elevator and the fact that he co-owned a well-equipped machine shop. When Jordin and I first decided to form a team to pursue the Elevator:2010 Power Beaming competition, we contacted Steve to see if he would be interested. We’re grateful that he was interested, because Steve and his brother Chris have contributed so much to the team.

In addition to his machining experience, Steve used to work with printing presses. That kind of experience is directly applicable to climbing ribbons. Steve (and Chris) have helped design and fabricate not only the vehicle, but also many other mechanical structures for our optics, testing structure, etc.

That’s probably enough of an introduction for now. If you want to know different kinds of information about team members, let me know and I’ll try to craft future “Meet the Team” posts appropriately.