There’s a new space race underway that could be a boon for adventurous travelers. Engineers like Burt Rutan—who is building a commercial spaceship fleet for British space tourism operator Virgin Galactic—are banking on passengers paying big bucks (from $100,000 to $250,000 per person) to travel into suborbital space, about 60 miles above Earth. Several proposals for commercial spaceports, the gateways for private space travel, are currently being reviewed by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Robert Panish ’06, an engineering graduate with an interest in space vehicle design, is banking on this trend continuing and is setting his sights not on NASA, but in the private sector and on the many private companies, like Rutan's, that are starting to build and launch vehicles into space. Recently named a 2005-06 Astronaut Scholarship Foundation Scholar, he’s that much closer to his goal.

As a recipient of one of the $10,000 scholarships, Panish was invited before graduation to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and with his father, attended the annual Astronaut Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony. He met with dozens of astronauts, he said, and attended VIP tours of the space center, and walked under the Space Shuttle Endeavor. He was also featured on the cover of the foundation’s May 2006 magazine, which focused on his research with Zee Durón ’81, Jude and Eileen Laspa Professor of Engineering. This research, Panish said, is perfect preparation for work in the space industry.

Panish worked with Durón as part of the Frank and Frances De Pietro Fellowship in Civil Engineering, created by Trustee Robert De Pietro ’69 and his brother, Dennis. For the last five years, the Fellowship program has given sophomores, juniors and seniors the opportunity to work with Durón on creating an early warning system for firefighters that will predict structure collapse.

“We got to work with firefighters in our research to monitor the structural integrity of burning buildings,” said Panish. “We also had the opportunity to present our work to FIRESCOPE, a group of fire officials commissioned by the governor of California to manage all fire emergencies in the state. I also enjoyed working with an amazing team of students: Nate Yoder ’06, Becky Kelcher ’07, Sheri Markwardt ’07 and Allison Hutchings ’07.

“To obtain a database of burning structures to analyze, we participated in a number of full structure burns with various fire departments as well as a number of small burns that we initiated at the Fire Department Training Facility in Pomona,” Panish said. “We also had to develop hardware to obtain useful data from the structures. We mounted accelerometers encased in fire-protected boxes onto the walls and transmitted the data to a data acquisition system.”

Panish focused on developing improved fire boxes and working on new integrity indicators. “In particular, my work involved developing an indicator based on vibration absorber theory to track trends in the response magnitude of the structure,” he said.

Panish believes that his work as a De Pietro Fellow will make for a smooth transition to space vehicle design. “My education at HMC has shown me that the specific application is not as important as the systems theory behind the application. For instance, monitoring the structural vibrations of a burning building requires the same techniques as monitoring the vibrations of a rocket during launch. The same sort of indicators can be used to monitor the integrity of the structure, with some adjustments.”

He will begin studies this fall in the Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering Department at MIT to work toward a master’s and subsequent Ph.D. “My interests involve space vehicle structures, vibrations and controls—all areas that I have worked on as part of my coursework, research or Clinic projects at HMC.”

Panish is aiming to eventually work in a small aerospace firm where his contributions “can make a big difference.”