We have a course this year called AER407 - Space Systems Design. Here’s the course description from the Engineering calendar:

The course covers the conceptual and preliminary design phases for a space system currently of interest in the Aerospace industry. A team of visiting engineers provide material on the various subsystems and share their experiences working on current space initiatives through workshops and subsystem reviews. The class is divided into project teams to design a space system in response to a Request for Proposal (RFP) formulated by the industrial team. Emphasis is placed on the tradeoffs which occur amongst subsystems designs. Previous designs have examined satellites including Radarsat, interplanetary probes such as a solar sailer to Mars, a Mars surface rover and dextrous space robotic systems.

Hubris. In truth, this course has very little to do with the design of a space system for flight. This year’s RFP calls for the design of a system capable of circumnavigating the lunar south pole (LSP) in search of potential ice-water resources. The thought is that there will be craters and other areas that lie in permanent shadow. On the moon, without sunlight, temperatures in these areas can drop to roughly -150°C, certainly nothing to scoff at. Certainly an interesting proposal, and it piqued my interest. To think of myself actually designing a space system!

Well, we very quickly found out that this design project is nothing of the sort. In fact, I propose a name-change for the course: AER407 - Functional Block Diagram Design. No, seriously. It would appear that this entire course consists of constructing Functional Flow Block Diagrams (FFBDs) for the various Engineering disciplines. While I understand the need to teach this process (something that is invaluable in the industry), I have to say it is by no means exciting or engaging.

Furthermore, we have one assignment per week. This may not sound like much, but collectively the six members in our team spend approximately 120 hours per week on these assignments. That’s 20 hours per week per person! On one course! Add to this the fact that we do not get feedback our previous week’s assignment until after we hand in the next and the fact that the assignments are designed to compound, building on each other from week to week. You get a situation that is more akin to a perpetual state of “trial by fire” than a learning process in Engineering design.