Franklin Robinson

"Blue Origin New Shepard Flights and the Flow Boiling in Microgap Coolers Payload"

ABSTRACT -- Blue Origin New Shepard is a fully reusable, vertical takeoff, vertical landing space vehicle that recently began flying science payloads. Each 11-minute flight exposes payloads to about three minutes of weightlessness, as well as shorter periods of high-g during ascent and descent. The vehicle proved ideal for the Goddard-developed Flow Boiling in Microgap Coolers (FBMC) payload, which incorporates an embedded, two-phase (liquid-to-vapor) microgap cooler that dissipates high-flux heat from a silicon test chip. During two flights aboard New Shepard earlier this year, the FBMC payload showed that such coolers were insensitive to gravity effects—a first of its kind demonstration that paves the way to flight use of this nascent cooling technology. In addition to highlighting the FBMC payload development and results, the discussion will include details on the flight environment of New Shepard, services provided by Blue Origin, and the NASA Flight Opportunities application process. The FBMC payload is led by Goddard engineer Franklin Robinson and was developed in collaboration with University of Maryland professor Dr. Avram Bar-Cohen.

SPEAKER -- Franklin Robinson is an engineer and technologist in the Thermal Engineering Branch at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). Since joining the Thermal Technology Development Facility (TTDF) at GSFC in 2011, Robinson has led multiple internal research and development efforts and served on the engineering staff for several others. He is the principal investigator for a multi-year effort focused on the development of an embedded cooling system for nascent electronic systems, which was demonstrated during two recent flights aboard Blue Origin New Shepard. For this work, he was awarded the NASA Exceptional Technology Achievement Medal. Robinson was the thermal and mechanical engineer for several earlier studies on two-phase heat transfer for aerospace applications, including one International Space Station experiment and two experiments flown aboard variable gravity aircraft. Beyond research and development, he has served as thermal engineer and subject matter expert on two-phase heat transport for flight projects—most recently for ICESat-2/ATLAS—and has served many projects in his role in the TTDF. He is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland.

Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov