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

Norfolk, Virginia Norfolk ( ) is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. Incorporated in 1705, it had a population of 238,005 at the 2020 census, making it the third-most populous city in Virginia after neighboring Virginia Be ...

Early life and education

In 1968, Ash graduated from Tulane University in New Orleans 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 land-grant research university with its main campus in Manhattan, Kansas, United States. It was opened as the state's land-grant college in 1863 and was the first public instit ...

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

flows, non-equilibrium phenomena, space systems, and Mars 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) *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 Old Dominion University (ODU) Senior Research Scientist at

JPL The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in the City of La Cañada Flintridge, California, United States. Founded in the 1930s by Caltech researchers, JPL is owned by NASA an ...

, 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. (SpaceX) is an American spacecraft manufacturer, launcher, and a satellite communications corporation headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the stated goal of ...

, Inspiration Mars, and Mars One, the trailblazing work of Dr. Robert "Bob" Ash, and those that followed, like Dr. Robert Zubrin (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