VIDEO: Rocket Man: Brandon Terry ignites a new company

04/20/2016 |

Solid rocket fuels have remained largely unchanged since the 1950s. Brandon Terry, a postdoctoral researcher at Purdue’s School of Mechanical Engineering, wants to change that. He has started a company, Adranos Energetics, to market a new kind of solid rocket fuel that is more powerful, more efficient, and less damaging to the environment. With the help of two MBA graduates (Chris Stoker and Shane McGuire), Adranos has won several business plan competitions, all while Brandon continues his work at Purdue’s Zucrow Laboratories. Here he discusses the interesting transition between rocket science and entrepreneurship.

Note: This research was conducted with government support awarded by DoD, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship, 32 CFR 168a. The authors would also like to acknowledge funding provided by both the Purdue Forever fellowship and AFOSR MURI contract (#FA9550-13-1-0004) with Mitat Birkan as Program Manager.

Above: Chris Stoker, an Indiana University alumnus, and Brandon Terry, a Purdue postdoctoral research associate, are pictured burning samples of solid rocket fuel propellant in the Maurice J. Zucrow Laboratories at Purdue. Stoker and Terry co-founded Adranos Energetics, a company developing a cleaner, more efficient, rocket fuel propellant that uses micro-explosive tendencies to produce much higher combustion efficiency and decreased flow losses. (Purdue Research Foundation photo)