While the courses provide specialization and depth in individual areas, research and design pose unique challenges that require the student to venture far and wide in search of new solutions. The School offers the Master of Science and the Ph.D. degrees. The Master of Science degree requires either 33 semester hours of course work beyond the bachelor's degree, of which up to 3 semester hours may be a research project, or 24 semester hours of course work plus a thesis. Depending on the student's background, this program can be completed in three to four semesters. The Doctor of Philosophy degree requires 50 semester hours of course work beyond the bachelor's degree, admission to candidacy based on a qualifying examination and a dissertation proposal, and successful completion and defense of a doctoral thesis on original research.
Most students complete the Ph.D., degree in three to five years.
Courses are offered and research is conducted in the areas of aeroacoustics, aerodynamics, aeroelasticity, astrodynamics, combustion, computational fluid dynamics, composite materials, computer-aided design, design optimization, experimental diagnostics, flight controls, flight mechanics, gasdynamics, propulsion, rotorcraft technology, structural mechanics, and turbulence simulations. The research program at Georgia Tech ranks among the top five aerospace programs nationwide and enjoys a worldwide reputation. The major laboratory facilities in the School are the acoustics laboratory, aeroelastic rotor test chamber, composites laboratory, crashworthiness facility, flight dynamics laboratory, low-turbulence wind tunnel, chemical propulsion research laboratory, laboratory for pulse combustion processing, rotor static thrust facility, rotorcraft simulator, solid propellant combustion laboratory, system identification laboratory, turbulent combustion diagnostics laboratory, and John J. Harper 7 foot by 9 foot wind tunnel. In addition, the facilities of the Computer-aided Design Laboratory and the Symbolic Computation Laboratory of the College of Engineering are available for use by the aerospace faculty members and students. A variety of mainframe computers, dedicated minicomputers, workstations, and microcomputers are available, and several research projects are conducted on off-campus supercomputers using nationwide networks.