Green Cheese Solutions

Team Name: Green Cheese Solutions

Excavator Name: BESSie

Team Leader: Ellen Crain

City, State: Hudson, Wisconsin

Team Background:
We are a husband and wife team working in our basement. Ellen is a Mechanical/Materials Engineer formerly employed by the Naval Surface Warfare Center working in research and development for Seawolf and NSSN class submarines. Ellen is homeschooling their 3 children. Steve is an Electrical Engineer who cut his teeth as a part of a university solar car team. From there he spent a decade as chief electrical engineer for an electric vehicle start-up. He currently works for McMillan Electric of Woodville, WI designing high efficiency, eco-friendly motors and controls. He holds three patents in the field of electronically commutated motors.

Why did your team decide to pursue the Regolith Excavation Challenge?
"Steve was reading the article from WIRED Magazine about last year's Challenge at the same time Ellen was reading The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Taleb. The 2007 Regolith Excavation Challenge appealed to Steve because of his experience with control systems and maximizing energy efficiency and the Black Swan book encourages leaping at unusual opportunities like this. The new rules for 2008 are a challenge for Ellen and Steve, but they're enjoying it and it's keeping them busy through the long Wisconsin winter."