These courses, produced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, introduce the fundamental concepts and approaches of aerospace engineering, highlighted through lectures on aeronautics, astronautics, and design. MIT˘ď‹ď_s Aerospace and Aeronautics curriculum is divided into three parts: Aerospace information engineering, Aerospace systems engineering, and Aerospace vehicles engineering. Visitors to this site will find undergraduate and graduate courses to fit all three of these areas, from Exploring Sea, Space, & Earth: Fundamentals of Engineering Design to Bio-Inspired Structures

Fundamentals of human performance, physiology, and life support impacting engineering design and aerospace systems. Topics include: effects of gravity on the muscle, skeletal, cardiovascular, and neurovestibular systems; human/pilot modeling and human/machine design; flight experiment design; and life support engineering for extravehicular activity (EVA). Case studies of current research are presented. Assignments include a design project, quantitative homework sets, and quizzes emphasizing engineering and systems aspects.

Classical dynamics beyond Unified Engineering. Application of vector kinematics to analyze the translation and rotation of rigid bodies. Formulation and solution of the equations of motion using both Newtonian and Lagrangian methods. Analytical and numerical solutions to rigid body dynamics problems. Applications to aircraft flight dynamics and spacecraft attitude dynamics.

This course meets weekly, to discuss a combination of aerospace history and current events, in order to understand how they are responsible for the state of the aerospace industry. With invited subject matter experts participating in nearly every session, students have an opportunity to hone their insight through truly informed discussion. The aim of the course is to prepare junior and senior level students for their first industry experiences. Deliverables include a journal and class participation.

This course studies the relations of affect to cognition and behavior, feeling to thinking and acting, and values to beliefs and practices. These connections will be considered at the psychological level of organization and in terms of their neurobiological and sociocultural counterparts.

This course is an investigation of affective priming and creation of rigorously counterbalanced, fully computerized testing paradigm. Includes background readings, study design, counterbalancing, study execution, data analysis, presentation of poster, and final paper.

This course asks students to consider the ways in which social theorists, institutional reformers, and political revolutionaries in the 17th through 19th centuries seized upon insights developed in the natural sciences and mathematics to change themselves and the society in which they lived. Students study trials, art, literature and music to understand developments in Europe and its colonies in these two centuries. Covers works by Newton, Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau, Marx, and Darwin.

Introduces the various aspects of present and future Air Traffic Control systems. Descriptions of the present system: systems-analysis approach to problems of capacity and safety; surveillance, including NAS and ARTS; navigation subsystem technology; aircraft guidance and control; communications; collision avoidance systems; sequencing and spacing in terminal areas; future directions and development; critical discussion of past proposals and of probable future problem areas.

Subject addresses the architecting of air transportation systems. Focuses on the conceptual phase of product definition include technical, economic, market, environmental, regulatory, legal, manufacturing, and societal factors. Subject centers on a realistic system case study and includes a number of lectures from industry and government. Past examples included the Very Large Transport Aircraft, a Supersonic Business Jet and a Next Generation Cargo System. Subject identifies the critical system level issues and analyzes them in depth via student team projects and individual assignments. The overall goal of the semester is to produce a business plan and a system specifications document that can be used to assess candidate systems.

Brief review of applied aerodynamics and modern approaches in aircraft stability and control. Static stability and trim. Stability derivatives and characteristic longitudinal and lateral-directional motions. Physical effects of wing, fuselage, and tail on aircraft motion. Flight vehicle stabilization by classical and modern control techniques. Time and frequency domain analysis of control system performance. Human pilot models and pilot-in-the-loop control with applications. V/STOL stability, dynamics, and control during transition from hover to forward flight. Parameter sensitivity and handling quality analysis of aircraft through variable flight conditions. Brief discussion of motion at high angles-of-attack, roll coupling, and other nonlinear flight regimes.

16.885J offers an holistic view of the aircraft as a system, covering: basic systems engineering; cost and weight estimation; basic aircraft performance; safety and reliability; lifecycle topics; aircraft subsystems; risk analysis and management; and system realization. Small student teams retrospectively analyze an existing aircraft covering: key design drivers and decisions; aircraft attributes and subsystems; and operational experience. Oral and written versions of the case study are delivered. For the Fall 2005 term, the class focuses on a systems engineering analysis of the Space Shuttle. It offers study of both design and operations of the shuttle, with frequent lectures by outside experts. Students choose specific shuttle systems for detailed analysis and develop new subsystem designs using state of the art technology.

Overview of airline management decision processes, with a focus on economic issues and their relationship to operations planning models and decision support tools. Application of economic models of demand, pricing, costs, and supply to airline markets and networks. Examination of industry practice and emerging methods for fleet planning, route network design, scheduling, pricing and revenue management, with emphasis on the interactions between the components of airline management and profit objectives in competitive environments. Students participate in a competitive airline management simulation game as part of the subject requirements.

Explores a variety of models and optimization techniques for the solution of airline schedule planning problems. Schedule design, fleet assignment, aircraft maintenance routing, crew scheduling, robust planning, passenger mix, integrated schedule planning, and other topics. Solution techniques involving decomposition, e.g., Lagrangian relaxation, column generation and partitioning, and state-of-the-art applications of these techniques to airline problems. Explores a variety of models and optimization techniques for the solution of airline schedule planning and operations problems. Schedule design, fleet assignment, aircraft maintenance routing, crew scheduling, passenger mix, and other topics are covered. Recent models and algorithms addressing issues of model integration, robustness, and operations recovery are introduced. Modeling and solution techniques designed specifically for large-scale problems, and state-of-the-art applications of these techniques to airline problems are detailed.

This undergraduate level course follows Algebra I. Topics include group representations, rings, ideals, fields, polynomial rings, modules, factorization, integers in quadratic number fields, field extensions, and Galois theory.

" This course provides an introduction to the language of schemes, properties of morphisms, and sheaf cohomology. Together with 18.725 Algebraic Geometry, students gain an understanding of the basic notions and techniques of modern algebraic geometry."

This research-oriented course will focus on algebraic and computational techniques for optimization problems involving polynomial equations and inequalities with particular emphasis on the connections with semidefinite optimization. The course will develop in a parallel fashion several algebraic and numerical approaches to polynomial systems, with a view towards methods that simultaneously incorporate both elements. We will study both the complex and real cases, developing techniques of general applicability, and stressing convexity-based ideas, complexity results, and efficient implementations. Although we will use examples from several engineering areas, particular emphasis will be given to those arising from systems and control applications.

This course is offered to undergraduates and addresses several algorithmic challenges in computational biology. The principles of algorithmic design for biological datasets are studied and existing algorithms analyzed for application to real datasets. Topics covered include: biological sequence analysis, gene identification, regulatory motif discovery, genome assembly, genome duplication and rearrangements, evolutionary theory, clustering algorithms, and scale-free networks.

In-depth study of an active research topic in computer graphics. Topics change each term. Readings from the literature, student presentations, short assignments, and a programming project. Animation is a compelling and effective form of expression; it engages viewers and makes difficult concepts easier to grasp. Today's animation industry creates films, special effects, and games with stunning visual detail and quality. This graduate class will investigate the algorithms that make these animations possible: keyframing, inverse kinematics, physical simulation, optimization, optimal control, motion capture, and data-driven methods. Our study will also reveal the shortcomings of these sophisticated tools. The students will propose improvements and explore new methods for computer animation in semester-long research projects. The course should appeal to both students with general interest in computer graphics and students interested in new applications of machine learning, robotics, biomechanics, physics, applied mathematics and scientific computing.

This course will provide an overview of a new vision for Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) in which people are surrounded by intelligent and intuitive interfaces embedded in the everyday objects around them. It will focus on understanding enabling technologies and studying applications and experiments, and, to a lesser extent, it will address the socio-cultural impact. Students will read and discuss the most relevant articles in related areas: smart environments, smart networked objects, augmented and mixed realities, ubiquitous computing, pervasive computing, tangible computing, intelligent interfaces and wearable computing. Finally, they will be asked to come up with new ideas and start innovative projects in this area.

This course focuses on the Great Depression and World War II and how they led to a major reordering of American politics and society. We will examine how ordinary people experienced these crises and how those experiences changed their outlook on politics and the world around them.