Dr. Phil Putman
Phil is director of the
Lifeboat Foundation EM Launch Competition!
Dr. Phil Putman has been aware of the possibility of a quick end to
civilization since reading
A Choice of Catastrophes while he was in the
fourth grade. After earning Bachelor's and Master's degrees in
Electrical Engineering from
Cornell University, he considered the
application of his educational background to averting the various
disasters described in the book. He concluded that lowering the cost of
access to space would mitigate most of the dangers, and, furthermore,
would be neat. This led him to perform research on the incorporation of
superconductors into electromagnetic launchers. He completed a
Ph.D. on this topic at the
University of Houston, and continued there
as an Assistant Professor employed by the Mechanical
Engineering Department and the
Texas Center for
Superconductivity. He is now
Senior Research Scientist at
Sierra Lobo.
He coauthored
Optimization of Energy Conversion in Monolithic
Superconducting
Magnets
and
Melt-textured YBCO Superconducting Tube for Magnetic Shielding
in
IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity,
Energy Conversion in Electromagnetic Launchers Containing Monolithic
YBa2Cu3O7 in
Advances in Cryogenic Engineering,
Transport Critical Current in Fe-Sheathed MgB2 Coils
in
Superconductor Science and Technology, and
Phase Formation and Melt Processing of Yb-123
in
Journal of Superconductivity.
In addition to performing traditional research and development, he
has competed in events such as the
Ford Hybrid Electric Vehicle
Challenge and the robot combat tournaments
Robot Wars and
BattleBots.
A
car that he and a team of other Cornell students built won the
inaugural
Ford HEV challenge. The first robot that he built won the
Lightweight Melee event at the first Robot Wars. His second robot was
the first to successfully walk during a Robot Wars
competition.
Phil has coauthored approximately 20 research papers on
materials processing, characterization, and electromechanical
applications, and has a pending patent application in the field of
electromagnetic launch. He enjoys serving as an advisor to interested
students, ranging from high school students working on science fair
projects to graduate student researchers.
See
one of Phil's EM glider launchers in action!
Read his white paper for
An Orbiting Magnetic Arrest System
for Rocket-Free Transportation to Earth Orbit.
Read his
presentation at the
2006 International Space Development Conference.