<p>Hey guys. I'm trying to decide whether or not to major in Aerospace engineering.
I love spacecrafts and I think space travel is extremely interesting, but things like planes really bore me.</p>
<p>I'm going to attend the University of Illinois in the fall, and I was wondering if anyone knew if the Aerospace program at U of I is more astronautical or aeronautical?</p>
<p>I would much rather learn about astronautical engineering and I'm wondering if I'll enjoy this major.</p>
<p>Any advice would be great.
Thanks in advance!</p>
<p>I’m not sure about university of Illinois specifically, but I think universities almost always have two separate concentrations within aerospace engineering. Usually there is an astronautical path you can take, or an aeronautical path. If spacecrafts interest I would think that you would like the astronautical program. Plus I think you could take a couple extra spacecraft classes as a technical elective or something if you want. I would go to their engineering website though and check out the curriculum to see what the courses are like though.</p>
<p>Here’s a link to their curriculum. It actually looks like they just have one path to take, so it looks like most of the courses in the curriculum are a combination of astro and aero. But theres 18 hours of technical electives so you would be able to take more space courses. </p>
<p>Aero at Illinois is similar to Mechanical in that you have to follow the one basic path laid out in the course schedule, but you have a decent amount of technical electives that you can use to specialize. You will get all of the basic aero and astro side of the degree, but what you do with the electives is up to you. I would think that means you would be taking stuff like “Orbital Mechanics II” instead of “Viscous Flow and Heat Transfer” when it comes time. Usually people don’t get into much specialization, in my experience, until grad school anyway.</p>