Ross Burns standing next to the Mach 3 wind tunnel where he conducts his supersonic experiments.

While rockets are ideal for carrying men to the moon and beyond, they are not yet so efficient at carrying people across an ocean on earth. Ross Burns, a PhD candidate in Aerospace Engineering, is working on finding ways to change that.

"I study supersonic mixing, generally mixing air and fuel for combustion applications," Burns said. Essentially, studying this "hypermixing" involves looking at how fuel injected into the combustion chamber mixes with air traveling at supersonic speeds.

"You're looking for margins of efficiency," he said. "The only real means of hypersonic propulsion are rockets, and you need to carry an oxidizer with you instead of relying on ambient air."

Carrying a heavy oxidizer is impractical and inefficient for earth-bound vehicles traveling at supersonic speeds, but if researchers can find a way to mix the ambient air with the fuel, then faster speeds on earth may be more of a possibility. A successful solution means people could get anywhere in the world within an hour, Burns said.

"The goal is hypersonic air-breathing propulsion that runs between Mach numbers 15 and 20," Burns said. "That's the ultimate goal, but we're nowhere near that now." He said the highest known speed that has been achieved thus far is a military test vehicle that reached Mach 5.5 while air-breathing, but it only flew for 25 seconds.

Burns became interested in this research area while an undergraduate in mechanical engineering at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He said a class in jet and rocket propulsion lit the fire, and his interest took off from there. Following his graduation, set for 2013, Burns said he has little interest in academia and plans to enter the industry right away.

"It's really neat stuff to work with," he said of his work. "Ultimately I want to go into weapons research, so this is a good in in that respect as well."