Brent Sherwood (Blue Origin), “ULTRA SPACE” (Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media)

The Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media (CCAM) presents space architect Brent Sherwood as part of our ULTRA SPACE initiative.

 

Brent Sherwood is the Senior Vice President, Advanced Development Programs for Blue Origin, a private space company building the foundation for millions of people to live and work in space to benefit Earth. He is accountable for the development of reusable systems in four program areas: Space Transportation, Space Mobility, Space Destination, and Lunar Permanence. He joined Blue Origin in July 2019 and reports to Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith.

 

Prior to Blue Origin, Brent was at JPL for fourteen years, where he was founding manager of the JPL Innovation Foundry and later, Program Manager for Solar System Mission Formulation. In those roles he respectively led the integration of JPL’s mission formulation and competitive proposal operations, and the strategic pursuit of Discovery missions, New Frontiers missions, unsolicited planetary missions, and future planetary flagship missions.

 

Prior to JPL, Brent was at the Boeing Company for seventeen years, where he led a succession of teams that developed human lunar and Mars exploration system concepts, Space Station Freedom module manufacturing methods, Sea Launch business development, entrepreneurial civil and commercial space initiatives, International Space Station business development, and exploration objectives ranging from the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter to Mars Sample Return.

 

A space architect, Brent has published over 60 papers on the exploration and development of space and edited Out of This World: The New Field of Space Architecture. He served as chair of the Space Architecture Technical Committee of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 2018-2020, and served on the board of the American Astronautical Society in 2018-2019. He is an Associate Fellow of the AIAA, a Corresponding Member of the International Academy of Astronautics, and the 2021 recipient of the American Society of Civil Engineers Columbia Medal.

 

Brent holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale, summa cum laude; a Master of Architecture degree from Yale; and a Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Maryland.

 

ULTRA SPACE is curated by CCAM Director Dana Karwas and presented in tandem with her Yale School of Architecture course The Mechanical Artifact, co-taught by Ariel Ekblaw, the founder and Director of the MIT Space Exploration Initiative.