Solar sail Operations Linking Academic Researchers (SOLAR)
Team Bios - Christian De Jong
Christian is a sophomore at the Georgia Institute of Technology, majoring in Aerospace Engineering and is currently in his first coop semester with Lockheed Martin Space Operations in Houston, Texas. He is a member of the EVA Test Team and has so far gained knowledge of CAD programs and there use in work site analysis for future station assembly missions. Christian previously flew aboard the KC-135 through the student program in April of 2002 testing the effects on surface tension & minimization of surface area for a number of liquid mediums. As a senior in high school he took part in an engineering internship with the Carderrock Naval Surface Warfare Center where he designed, built, and tested an inflatable fairing concept for drag reduction of towed apparatus. The project as a whole was successful and further research is pending. He in the same year was co -team leader and founder of the Walt Whitman High School Solar Car Team, known to some as "Blue Lightning". The team raised $16,000 in corporate funds allowing it to engineer a successful car, which Christian drove at the National Solar Bike Rayce in Topeka, Kansas. So far at Georgia Tech he has participated in the AIAA student design competition where he was member of team GOLIATH (In-Space Tether Launch System for Mars Infrastructure Applications), which produced a proposal outlining the design of an orbiting tether for payload transport to Mars. Outside work he enjoys white water kayaking on the Potomac near his hometown of Bethesda, Maryland. Christian hopes to one day earn a pilots license, scuba certification, and sky diving license. His favorite quote: "Many people are alive but few of them truly live".