Stream of Consciousness Web Crawl 12 August 2006

I'm currently reading Spacecraft Systems Design and Operations. I'm trying to find a website that has the book's information, as it is apparently not sold through Amazon. Strange, as the other textbooks that are cited in the SICSA slide shows are sold through Amazon. Please note that as of Saturday 12 August 2006, the SICSA website is down. Anyways, while googling the title of the book, found some interesting websites:

ASTE 520: Spacecraft System Design, offered through the Astronauts and Space Technology Division at the University of Southern California. Based on the syllabus(?) [PDF], this course looks like the lecture version of the book that I'm currently reading! The course looks necessary for degree programs in Astronautical Engineering and Aerospace Engineering.

What's the difference between Astronautical Engineering and Aerospace Engineering? According to the University of Southern California's Astronautics and Space Technology Division About page on their website, "Astronautics is the art or science of designing, building, and operating space vehicles (satellites, probes, and manned spaceships) for space exploration and applications."

The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics say that essentially Astronautics focuses on spacecraft, where as Aeronautics focuses on airplanes, helicopters, etc. A merger of the two would be Aerospace. Link.

Now that I know that there is such a thing as Astronautical Engineering, I can look up universities that offer such a program! Let's see the first ten that pop up on Google's return list:

Instanbul Technical University (don't know why they're the first one to pop up), Purdue, Capitol College, MIT, University of Washington, Ohio State, Universite of Southern California, Shanghai Jiaotong University (this is on the fourth page of Google's results...apparently Astronautical Engineering is not a popular name), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

OK, so most universities have Aerospace programs, not just a dedicated Astronautical program. I skipped over the websites that were from the Navy, etc. Not willing (yet) to join the military to get into spacecraft design. Weird that two universities, that were not in the USA, came back. Both had pages in English, so people in Turkey and China went out of their way to create English pages. Anyways, so dedicated Astronautical Engineering programs are not as common as general Aerospace Engineering programs. That said, the universities that I got back look top-notch: MIT, Purdue, etc.

Well, that just about ends it for today's web crawl! See you later!