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This Issue 09/15/2005

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• Girl-on-girl action

Two weeks before Samuel Reeves' senior year at Penn, he and his business partner Josh Koplin were strapped into a DC-10 airplane spiraling over Kabul with cigarette butts still in the armrests, back from the days when you could relax with a smoke during a particularly rough landing.

Before they left, Sam's mother threatened to lie down in front of the airplane. Josh's dad made them call experts from around the world to assure them that Afghanistan was a safe place to travel. Sam talked to Alexander "Griff" Griffiths, the Mechanical Studies Specialist from the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining, who was sending them to Afghanistan to do some research for their business. Griff, a former member of the British intelligence, scoffed at the idea that Afghanistan could be unsafe.

"You know," he said, in his clipped English accent, "You could get killed easier in West Philadelphia than you could in Kabul." Griff even referred Sam and Josh to a few guys who had been in and out of Kabul a couple of times to further reassure them. They warned them that "Afghanistan's not the problem. It's the landing that hurts."

Sam and Josh weren't really worried about the State Department Web site's warning that "the security situation remains critical for American citizens" in Afghanistan. They were more concerned, as they entered into Afghanistan airspace, about the contents of their stomachs -- planes flying into Afghanistan, they learned, do not simply coast in for an easy landing. There are evasive maneuvers -- spirals, loops and sudden drops -- to avoid surface-to-air missiles.

The captain has advised that all passengers buckle their seatbelts at this time. It's going to be a bumpy ride. But, of course, any entrepreneurial venture that could change the face of an industry should have a few bumps along the way.

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Samuel Reeves, 22, and Josh Koplin, 28, are the founding partners of Humanistic Robotics, a company "dedicated to solving social problems through innovative product designs." Their first project: a cheap, self-propelling landmine deminer that uses interlocking rollers and a remote control to detonate landmines through ground pressure. If their model is successful, Sam and Josh could revolutionize an industry still based on removing mines by hand. Their goal: to eradicate effectively the 100 million landmines sprinkled two-to-three inches beneath the ground, spread throughout 68 countries, according to the United Nations. Their combined age: less than 50.

It's not surprising, then, that the two guards assigned to protect Sam and Josh in Kabul seemed a little miffed to see that these two international demining experts-in-training looked more as though they belonged in college. (Which, in fact, they did -- Josh even had to write a letter to his professors explaining he'd be a week late for class because he'd be in Afghanistan).