Gary Arnold Flandro (born March 30, 1934, in Salt Lake City, Utah) is an American aerospace engineer, best known for the discovery of planetary alignment of outer planets that made possible the Voyager program. He is the professor for the Boling Chair of Excellence in Space Propulsion (Emeritus) at the University of Tennessee Space Institute, and the Vice President and Chief Engineer for Gloyer-Taylor Laboratories.
Biography
Gary Arnold Flandro was born on March 30, 1934 in Salt Lake City, Utah. He earned a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Utah in 1957, an MSc (1960) and PhD (1967) in Aeronautics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) supervised by Frank E. Marble and Fred E. Culick, with a thesis on the "Sergeant rocket combustion instability problem and the associated roll torque puzzle". Such alignment occurs every 175 years; Flandro calculated that the best option was to launch spacecraft in 1977. Gravity assist maneuvers were already known, but according to Flandro he was the first to notice the opportunity to visit the giant planets. Flandro himself was familiar with gravity assists through Krafft Ehricke's works and lectures. According to Flandro, many experts were sceptical and didn't believe that the mission he discovered was possible:
{|
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{| class="wikitable"
|+ Multiple-planet trajectories to the outer solar system calculated by Flandro<br>for the Grand Tour program
! Mission !! Launch years
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| Earth-Jupiter-Saturn-Escape || 1976, 1977, 1978
|-
| Earth-Jupiter-Uranus-Escape || 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981
|-
| Earth-Jupiter-Neptune-Escape || 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981
|-
| Earth-Jupiter-Pluto-Escape || 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979
|-
| Earth-Jupiter-Saturn-Uranus-Neptune || 1976, 1977, 1978
|}
<small>Optimum launch year.</small>
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|}
Further career
Flandro graduated in 1967, and became an associate professor at the University of Utah. He has worked at UTSI and possessed the Boling Chair of Excellence in Space Propulsion since 1991, until his retirement in 2009. According to Vigor Yang of the School of Aerospace Engineering of Georgia Institute of Technology, Flandro's research on combustion instability of solid rocket motors has “practically solved a challenging issue that had plagued the field for many years”. In 2018, he received the Caltech Distinguished Alumni Award.
He was named a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 2008. In 2008, he was also awarded the General Henry H. H. Arnold Award.
Personal life
Flandro is married and lives in Tullahoma. He has three sons; one of his sons, Tom, is working for Boeing as a composite structures engineer on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.