Dr. Robert Hoyt

Dr. Hoyt is Chief Executive Officer of Tethers Unlimited, Inc., a space technology research and development firm located in the Seattle area. During his sixteen year career, Dr. Hoyt has worked on a variety of advanced space technologies, including plasma thruster propulsion, solar thermal propulsion, electrostatic antennas, space debris mitigation technologies, and, of course, space tethers. In 1991, while a graduate student, Rob Hoyt invented two technologies that may help revolutionize space travel as we know it. The first is a multiline tether structure with failsafe characteristics called the Hoytether, which may enable space tethers to survive the space debris environment for many years. The second is the ‘Momentum-Exchange/Electrodynamic-Reboost’ tether transportation system, which combines propellantless electrodynamic propulsion with momentum-exchange techniques to create a system that can boost many payloads from low Earth orbit to higher orbits without using propellant. Over the past several years he has also pioneered a concept for using high-voltage tether structures in space to clean up natural and man-made radiation belts. In 1994, he and the renowned physicist and science fiction author, Dr. Robert L. Forward, co-founded Tethers Unlimited to develop space tether technologies, and over the past dozen years he has led its growth to a profitable 18-person company specializing in tether technologies, nanosatellite systems, and scientific computing.