Paper Session I-B - Interdisciplinary Space Systems Education at the Florida Tech Spaceport Graduate Center

In 1959 Brevard Engineering College offered the first master of science degree program in space technology. Today that school is Florida Institute of Technology (Florida Tech), which offers master\u27s degrees in Space Systems (MS/SPC) and Space Systems Management (MS/SSM) at its off-campus Spaceport facilities at NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Patrick Air Force Base (PAFB), and Titusville, Florida. Some sixty students, almost all full-time employees of KSC, PAFB, or their contractors, are taking one or two three-credit evening SPC courses each semester. Admission requires either a B.S. from an accredited engineering or physics curriculum with a 3.0 average, or achievement of satisfactory scores on the graduate record examination general and subject tests. Instead of a comprehensive examination, MS/SPC students take the capstone Space Applications Missions course, in which self-organized four-student teams compete to develop the best plan for a specific mission this semester a direct broadcast satellite system. Completion of 33 credits with a 3.0 average is required for graduation. The MS/SPC draws equally from electrical/computer engineering, mechanical/ aerospace engineering, and physics/space sciences. The MS/SSM adds five required management courses in place of five technical ones. Some students take the MS/SSM as a second master\u27s degree, toward which five courses may be applied from the MS/SPC. This program prepares its graduates to solve complex, previously unsolved problems, as members of a team, with the background needed to eventually lead the team