MECH&AE 161B
Introduction to Space Technology
Description: Lecture, four hours; discussion, two hours; outside study, six hours. Recommended preparation: courses 102, 161A. Spacecraft systems and dynamics, including spacecraft power, instruments, communications, structures, materials, thermal control, and attitude/orbit determination and control. Space mission design, launch vehicles/considerations, space propulsion. Letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2024 - This class was great! Davoyan is a great professor who gives engaging lectures and clearly cares about the material. He also cares about learning more than grades. His class was fun and the assignments were easy: homework assignments that you would get extra credit for completing, a take home midterm, and a take home final. We were given several days for the take home tests. Would take again!
Winter 2024 - This class was great! Davoyan is a great professor who gives engaging lectures and clearly cares about the material. He also cares about learning more than grades. His class was fun and the assignments were easy: homework assignments that you would get extra credit for completing, a take home midterm, and a take home final. We were given several days for the take home tests. Would take again!
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2022 - tl;dr: Fair exams/hw (albeit time consuming), good TAs/discussions. Terrible lectures. Out of all of the engineering, math, and science professors I have taken at UCLA, Wirz may quite literally be the worst professor I have had. He is clearly knowledgeable in the topics he teaches in class (He will mention his work history at JPL very often), however, it seems abundantly clear to me that he cares a lot more about his research than teaching. All lectures are recorded lecture videos from a previous section of the class + a live Q&A session that is usually around 30 minutes. Although this is alright, it is most definitely not an engaging learning environment. I am normally okay with lecture videos being prerecorded. However, the presentation of the course material is very lazy. Some of the lecture videos, which are quite old have issues (some don't have audio for substantial portions of the video and other technical issues). If we are being given old lectures that have been recorded, having this many issues is just lazy. Additionally, a lot of the topics required on the Homeworks are not covered in the lectures and are sometimes not even present in the reading material. At this point, I only really learn from going to the TA sessions and reading the text on my own. The lectures are useless and rambly most of the time. The exam was pretty fair. I have no complaints about the quality of the exams or homework. On another note, the TA's are usually very responsive on piazza (and very helpful in their own office hours).
Winter 2022 - tl;dr: Fair exams/hw (albeit time consuming), good TAs/discussions. Terrible lectures. Out of all of the engineering, math, and science professors I have taken at UCLA, Wirz may quite literally be the worst professor I have had. He is clearly knowledgeable in the topics he teaches in class (He will mention his work history at JPL very often), however, it seems abundantly clear to me that he cares a lot more about his research than teaching. All lectures are recorded lecture videos from a previous section of the class + a live Q&A session that is usually around 30 minutes. Although this is alright, it is most definitely not an engaging learning environment. I am normally okay with lecture videos being prerecorded. However, the presentation of the course material is very lazy. Some of the lecture videos, which are quite old have issues (some don't have audio for substantial portions of the video and other technical issues). If we are being given old lectures that have been recorded, having this many issues is just lazy. Additionally, a lot of the topics required on the Homeworks are not covered in the lectures and are sometimes not even present in the reading material. At this point, I only really learn from going to the TA sessions and reading the text on my own. The lectures are useless and rambly most of the time. The exam was pretty fair. I have no complaints about the quality of the exams or homework. On another note, the TA's are usually very responsive on piazza (and very helpful in their own office hours).
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