MAINE AEROSPACE CONSULTING - Key Persons

David Rubenstein

Job Titles:
  • Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics
David Rubenstein has more than twenty-five years of industrial and research experience in aerospace guidance, navigation and control system design and dynamic modeling and simulation development. He has worked for a variety of major defense and aerospace contractors including Martin Marietta (now Lockheed Martin), Raytheon Space and Missile Systems Design Laboratory and Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, MA. Dr. Rubenstein received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis and the M.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University. After several years of industry experience, he returned to Penn State and received his Aerospace Engineering Ph.D. in 1995 in the area of spacecraft dynamics and control. His general areas of expertise include: During his years in industry, Dr. Rubenstein provided algorithms and models for a wide variety of aerospace systems including satellites, unmanned aerial (UAV) and unmanned underwater (UUV) vehicles, guided parachutes and parafoils, missiles, projectiles, and even a flying saucer. He designed the control system software for the reentry, return, and landing phases of (Kistler Aerospace) an unmanned reusable launch vehicle. Also, Dr. Rubenstein has built math models and developed simulations for the Wide Area Surveillance Projectile (WASP), a gun-launched vehicle that deploys wings after launch and subsequently flies autonomously, and for a ducted fan-based hovercraft UAV. Dr. Rubenstein is an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and a former member of the AIAA Aerodynamic Decelerator Technical Committee and the American Astronautical Society (AAS) Spaceflight Mechanics Technical Committee. He also currently serves on the Maine Technology Institute's Information Technology (IT) Review Board and a steering committee tasked with guiding the effort to develop an aerospace/defense business cluster in Maine.