Several Students work in research fields with Dr. Flandro.

Mainly in the areas of Rocket Combustion Instability and Orbital Mechanics.

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Current Students

Steve Stasko

Age: 30

Originally From: Philadelphia, PA

Previous Work: Earned a M.S. in Aerospace Engineering in Dec. 2001 with Dr. Flandro for work involving SSTO trajectory optimization.  Thesis Title: “A Trajectory Optimization and Rendezvous Study of a Manned Mars Ascent Vehicle”

Current Work: I am currently finishing up a Ph.D. on work involving in-space tether propulsion, specifically the use of a long non-rotating tethers used as a free flying orbiting space elevator coupled with a sub-orbital launch vehicle. Research topics related to this include elevator structural design and sizing, orbital stability of the elevator, launch vehicle-elevator relative motion and rendezvous, and the use of an orbiting space elevator in the context of a lunar transportation system.

Mark Olles

Age: 28

Originally From: Holley, NY

Current Work: Analytical Compressible Viscous Flows in Cylindrical Chambers.

Eric Jacob

Age: 24

Originally From: Oconomowoc, WI

Previous Work: I am finishing up my M.S. in Aerospace Engineering in a thesis entitled, "Forced Resonant Periodic Shock Waves and Mean Pressure Shift in a Closed Tube"

Current Work: Analytical Compressible Viscous Flows in Cylindrical Chambers.

Sean Fischbach

Age: 26

Originally From: Bloomington, IL

Previous Work: Earned an M.S. in Aerospace Engineering in May of 2005 with Dr. Flandro and

Dr. Majdalani. Thesis work involved the refinement of integral formulations of the combustion stability algorithm used in the Standard Stability Prediction code. Thesis titled: Industry Motivated Advancements of Current Combustion Instability Model: the Conversion of Volume Integrals to Surface Form.

Current Work: I am currently investigating tangential waves in liquid rocket combustion chambers. Specifically the work is focused on the second order “streaming” effects and their influence on the first order wave forms.