Christopher W
- Research Program Mentor
MS Master of Science candidate
Expertise
Aerospace engineering, finite element methods, Aerospace, Computational Simulations, Public Speaking
Project ideas
Mission to Mars
The year is 2028, and just next year the very first team of astronauts is boldly going into the unknown - the first manned mission to the surface of Mars. But how are they going to get there? How long will it take? When should they leave? You'll have to figure all of this out! In this project you will develop a basic model for how a vehicle can get from Earth to Mars (and hopefully back!), figuring out some orbital mechanics, physics, and rocket science along the way. What you focus on is up to you, as this project has many avenues to explore, lending itself rather nicely to a number of optimization problems (e.g. minimum flight duration or minimum fuel burn to name two).