“We are in a renaissance of aerospace activity that has led to reusable rocket engines and more,” says Zachary Cordero. But to continue innovating, the field must overcome the constraints of current materials and manufacturing approaches.
“My research group is addressing these challenges by first gaining new fundamental insights into performance-limiting material failure mechanisms, then translating those insights into engineered solutions for frontier aerospace platforms,” says the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Associate Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
One example: “We’re working toward a new paradigm in aerospace propulsion, where reusable rockets approach aircraft-like operability and where turbine components can be manufactured flexibly and economically to meet the demands of next-generation aviation and power generation,” Cordero wrote in an abstract for a talk he gave at Materials Day 2025, Designing the Future of Extreme Materials, which was organized by the Materials Research Laboratory.
Toward Better Turbopumps
Turbopumps are essential to high-performance reusable rocket engines. The pumps pressurize propellants before they enter the main thrust chamber of an engine, where they’re combusted and generate thrust.
“A core challenge is that the system involves high-temperature, oxygen-rich gas at pressures some 30 times higher than what you would see in a jet engine,” Cordero says. Under those conditions, “the typical materials you’d want to use can ignite and burn, leading to a potentially catastrophic metal fire.”
Cordero’s group tackled the problem by first developing experiments to understand at a very fundamental level the materials science behind ignition in turbopumps. Then, “we translated that new understanding back into engineering design guidelines,” Cordero says. The team went on to integrate these models into computational frameworks available to others. “So now people can do rigorous engineering design of high-pressure oxygen systems and quantitatively assess risk.” That was not possible before this work.
Teaching Aeronautics
Cordero also teaches two classes: one for graduate students, and the other for juniors and seniors. The first is called Design with High-Temperature Materials. “We teach students, who are often not materials engineers, how to think about materials selection and mechanical design for high-temperature systems.”
The course addresses the trade-off between technology performance and durability. “Because of the extreme environments in high-temperature applications, materials will always fail, it’s just a question of when. Students in this course learn how to pick the best material for the overall system, simultaneously optimizing performance and extending life,” Cordero says.
In the second class, students design, manufacture, assemble and test a complete electric turbo pump. “It’s intense and it pushes students, but it’s also the lab course I wish I had taken as an undergrad. It gives hands-on experience with engineering design of rotating turbomachinery and advanced manufacturing.”
Cordero has known MIT from three different perspectives: as an undergraduate, as a graduate student, and now as a professor. He notes that the Institute is often portrayed as a group of silos, and emphatically disagrees. “There are many opportunities for collaboration, often between very disparate disciplines. I’ve found that these collaborations have just been magic, and I think it’s unique to MIT.”