| Critical Test Looms for Phoenix Mars Lander from Engineering Materials
Murphy’s Law always applies when we attempt major leaps in space exploration, and the Phoenix Mars Mission is no exception. Soon after landin... | |
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Chief Engineer of the AeroVironment Design Development Center, Alec Brooks has spent much of his career working on planes that fly high and long. Most recently, he spearheaded the design of an aviation first—an unmanned aircraft that runs on liquid hydrogen fuel. Called Global Observer, this breakthrough hydrogen-powered aircraft first took to the skies in May. It can fly as high as 65,000 feet for more than a week at a time, all the while carrying payloads up to 1,000 lbs. Brooks led the design effort on the ultra-lightweight liquid hydrogen tank, which is the key enabler for persistent hydrogen-powered flight. He also participated in the preliminary design of another enabling technology found on this aircraft—a 95 percent efficient, 50-kW motor drive system developed for the Lockheed High Altitude Airship program.
When Ford Motor Co. announced plans late last year to produce 250,000 hybrid vehicles annually by 2010, it tabbed engineer Tom Watson as the technical point man in its efforts. Watson, hybrid propulsion systems manager for the world’s second biggest automaker, had already helped steer the nascent hybrid powertrain into the company’s highly-publicized Ford Escape, and he ultimately foresees hybrids playing a far bigger role, even beyond the company’s 2010 target. “I predict that within 10 years, every new vehicle on the market will offer some sort of hybrid-electric system,” he says. “From a mild hybrid, with a simple start-stop feature, to full hybrids capable of electric-only propulsion, hybrid vehicles on the road are going to dramatically increase.” Watson is a mechanical engineering graduate from the University of Illinois.
A 25 year man at Apple Computer before joining Cisco last year, Michael Dhuey is the hardware designer behind many famous products, including the Apple III, Lisa, and Macintosh. He designed the Mac II and Mac IIci. His most recent design, the wildly popular iPod, he created in stealth mode in half the time so Apple could bring it to market by Christmas 2001. By June 2005, a reported 22 million iPods had been sold worldwide. Dhuey began programming at 14 at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and by 16 was working as a programmer at Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance. He earned a B.S. in electrical and computer engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before joining Apple in 1980. Dhuey holds 13 U.S. patents and is a member of IEEE and ACM. Currently, he is helping Cisco’s design team with a new product. He’s also an avid runner.
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