Robert Lafayette Ash is a Professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering and an Eminent Scholar. at

Old Dominion University Old Dominion University (ODU) is a Public university, public research university in Norfolk, Virginia, United States. Established in 1930 as the two-year Norfolk Division of the College of William & Mary, it began by educating people with fewer ...

Norfolk, Virginia Norfolk ( ) is an independent city (United States), independent city in the U.S. state of Virginia. It had a population of 238,005 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of cities in Virginia, third-most populous city ...

Early life and education

In 1968, Ash graduated from

Tulane University The Tulane University of Louisiana (commonly referred to as Tulane University) is a private research university in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Founded as the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834 by a cohort of medical doctors, it b ...

New Orleans New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...

with a PhD in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and in 1963, he graduated from

Kansas State University Kansas State University (KSU, Kansas State, or K-State) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university with its main campus in Manhattan, Kansas, United States. It was opened as the state's land-grant coll ...

with a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering. Ash's father-in-law was Lewis Webb Jr., who served as the first president of

. His research interests include

vortical In fluid dynamics, a vortex (: vortices or vortexes) is a region in a fluid in which the flow revolves around an axis line, which may be straight or curved. Vortices form in stirred fluids, and may be observed in smoke rings, whirlpools in the ...

flows, non-equilibrium phenomena, space systems, and

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", because of its orange-red appearance. Mars is a desert-like rocky planet with a tenuous carbon dioxide () atmosphere. At the average surface level the atmosph ...

resources.

Publications

His most cited papers are: *Bushnell, D. M., Hefner, J. N., and Ash, R. L. (1977). "Effect of Compliant Wall Motion on Turbulent Boundary Layers. presented at the I.U.T.A.M. Symposium on Structure of Turbulence and Drag Reduction, ''Physics of Fluids,'' 20 (10 part 11), (pp. S31-S58)." (cited 170 times according to

Google Scholar Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of Academic publishing, scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in Beta release, beta in November 2004, th ...

) *Khorrami, M. R., Malik, M. R., and Ash, R. L. (1989). "Application of Spectral Collocation Techniques to the Stability of Swirling Flows." ''Journal of Computational Physics,'' 81, (pp. 206–229).(cited 150 times, according to Google Scholar) *Ash, R. L., Dowler, W. L., and Varsi, G. (1978). "Feasibility of Rocket Propellant Production on Mars." ''Acta Astronautica,'' 5, (pp. 705–724). (cited 100 times, according to Google Scholar) Groundbreaking for the era published and notable yet, Dr. Ash's In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) paper, authored in 1978 as a visiting

(ODU) Senior Research Scientist at

JPL The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) in La Cañada Flintridge, California, Crescenta Valley, United States. Founded in 1936 by California Institute of Technology (Caltech) researche ...

, was the first instance of NASA research into ISRU production of liquid methane-based rocket propellants for a long-duration crewed missions to Mars' surface and return strategy. As initial detailed work of this type, it directly inspired "Mars Direct" and "Mars Semi-Direct" approaches in the following decades, although NASA shifted focus and fiscal resources to LEO and the ISS soon thereafter, versus continuing Moon-to-Mars exploration. As Mars exploration becomes more widely accepted, with the popular examples of

SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly referred to as SpaceX, is an America, American space technology company headquartered at the SpaceX Starbase, Starbase development site in Starbase, Texas. Since its founding in 2002, the compa ...

Inspiration Mars Inspiration Mars Foundation was an American nonprofit organization founded by Dennis Tito that in 2013 proposed to launch a crewed mission to flyby Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", bec ...

, and

Mars One Mars One was a small private Dutch organization that received money from investors by claiming it would use it to land the first humans on Mars and leave them there to establish a permanent human colony. From its announcement in 2012 to its ...

, the trailblazing work of Dr. Robert "Bob" Ash, and those that followed, like Dr.

Robert Zubrin Robert Zubrin (; born April 9, 1952) is an American aerospace engineer, author, and advocate for human exploration of Mars. He is also an advocate for U.S. space superiority, writing that "in the 21st century, victory on land, sea or in the air ...

(and others) beginning in the early 1990s, pioneered the difficult task of showing ISRU's benefits for long-duration, deep space and interplanetary surface exploration. Use of ISRU is now considered central to the feasibility of any mission to Mars or beyond, and remains an area of very active research.

References

Old Dominion University faculty Engineering academics American mechanical engineers American aerospace engineers Tulane University alumni Kansas State University alumni Living people Year of birth missing (living people) {{Mech-engineering-stub