Philipp Sültrop on rockets, endurance races and surviving cancer

Aug 27, 2018

Philipp is researching fuel use in rockets at the University of Canterbury looking in particular at rocket flight mechanics and control in collaboration with Rocket Lab.  In this interview we talk about his childhood in Germany, what he learned from his Father who got cancer and passed away and how it prepared him for his own battle and surviving cancer.  We then get pretty deep about what that experience of survival has meant for how he approaches the rest of his life and finds his purpose.  We also talk about extreme endurance races and one that Philipp was about to do in Africa that was more than 200 kilometres in a week. 

Philipp finished his Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering at the Technical University of Brunswick in Germany. He joined the UC rocketry group in December 2014 to start a PhD in the field of controlled rockets.

Email: [e-mail]

SummitLab: http://www.summitlab.co.nz

UC Rocketry page: https://www.ucrocketry.org/

Explanation of his research: https://vimeo.com/236847659

A short summary of a story from something sent by Philipp: 

"For me 'direction' is an important part of my coaching message. I often tell the story when I got beaten in an orienteering race by a twelve year old girl and a over 70 year old senior runner. At the time, I just had been running at the German Junior Track and Field Championships (so I considered myself a very good runner) but I was new to orienteering with map and compass in difficult terrain. In short: if you run in the wrong direction speed does not matter. An important lesson I learned in this particular race long before I would learn that Gandhi apparently had said something very similar. For me life is kind of an orienteering/rogaining race. We all want to maximize our 'points' in a given time and we often get lost. But if you apply the rules of navigating there is a way out of every challenge.

1) Where are you?

2) Where do you want to get (and why)?

3) How do you get there?"