6/16/2025 Debra Levey Larson
Written by Debra Levey Larson
When Matt Hausman joined the aerospace faculty for the 2024-25 academic year, he brought real-world knowledge from his years at Boeing and SpaceX. Drawing on his unique industry perspective, Hausman shaped two new courses. Both will make Illinois graduates more prepared for jobs in launch vehicle design and the small satellite launch vehicle market.
Hausman is an assistant professor of practice in the Department of Aerospace Engineering in The Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
“In traditional space mission courses, students do conceptual work to design a satellite or rover that will launch from a Falcon9, an Atlas or a Delta, which they include as a purchased item in their budget. They don’t design it,” Hausman said. “In other courses, students study propulsion, structures and other components of launch vehicles, but we wanted to offer a course that comprehensively covers all the aspects of designing a space launch vehicle.”
At the AIAA SciTech conference in 2024, Hausman met Don Edberg of Cal Poly, Pomona who had developed a launch vehicle design course. When he began developing design courses, Edberg said he found plenty of textbooks that cover aircraft design, and Space Mission Analysis and Design in its third edition, which covers satellites, but none on designing launch vehicles, so Edberg wrote Design of Rockets and Space Launch Vehicles with Willie Costa, now in its second edition. Hausman then took Edberg’s AIAA short course online and uses the material for the basis of his course at Illinois.
“There are spacecraft design principles but also aerodynamic considerations in launch vehicle design that are not talked about in a typical space vehicle design setting. That’s the need we are filling with this course.”
Hausman’s technical background is in orbits. He worked at Boeing for five years on trajectories. During his years at SpaceX, Hausman was a mission manager, serving as the primary interface for customers wanting to launch a space satellite on the Falcon 9.
“In this new mission management role, I gained a broader perspective. I learned about how all of the subsystems interact. My work was very much payload-focused from a systems engineering standpoint, such as how the payload and launch vehicle interact—so the environment, thermal conditions, acoustic and coupled loads analysis and related aspects.
Hausman teaches the launch vehicle design course with that payload perspective in mind and what the customer wants to accomplish. One of the challenges that Hausman warns students about in the commercial space industry is the possible lack of information between the launch provider and the spacecraft contractor.
“The spacecraft provider has proprietary data, so they don’t share their entire spacecraft design with the launch vehicle team. There are a lot of times when we’ll get just the basic, finite element models—some basic nodes and basic structures. From there, you can do the coupled loads, analysis and thermal analysis. The key is finding that balance between providing enough data for sufficient analysis to ensure mission success, while still protecting everyone’s sensitive information.”
He said the actual design process for the course includes having the students figure out things like rocket engine types, how much propellant is needed, the general size and layout of the launch vehicle, a simplified launch trajectory and resulting loads, and structural requirements. The course helps them understand the basics and Hausman teaches them the extra knowledge they’ll need when they go into industry.
“We don't just build rockets to launch,” he said. “The entire purpose is to put something into orbit, so the design includes how to protect the spacecraft on its way to orbit, for example.”
Toward the end of the spring semester, Hausman had one of his former colleagues from SpaceX join the class via Zoom to give more insight into launch site operations. USAF retired Colonel Lee Rosen served as the commander of the 45th Launch Group at Cape Canaveral and was former vice president of mission and launch operations at SpaceX, overseeing work at both Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg. The students appreciated hearing about the early days of SpaceX, especially when landing and reuse was being developed, and all that goes into supporting launches beyond just the launch vehicle.
He developed a similar course and taught it for the first time this semester as a precursor for students who want to work with small satellites in the Laboratory for Advanced Space Systems at Illinois. The lab manager, Murphy Stratton, has been teaching AE 491, a class that supports LASSI-specific projects. She said students were coming to the class from a very broad range of skills and understanding.
Hausman said, some of the LASSI students were juniors who already had some courses or were currently enrolled in a course so they knew what was going on, but other aerospace and non-aero students had no experience with orbits, environment, how to create a link budget accounting for power gains and losses, etc.”
The new class Hausman teaches, AE 298: Introduction to Nanosatellite Design, is a spacecraft design course at a very top rudimentary level to provide students with the basic knowledge they need.
“The course introduces all the different subsystems of a spacecraft and how they relate to small satellites, including building and testing. It’s a scaled down spacecraft design course.”
Hausman said the goal for the new classes is to offer a broader set of classes for students who are interested in space flight.