Has anyone ever gotten a technical masters online?

You are the Matlab master from MIT if I recall.  Of course, Georgia Tech has been doing the distance learning for at least 12 years.  They have the kinks worked out. 

I was the online teaching assistant for a couple of classes that my major professor taught.  The distance people had a harder time of it than on campus students.  On campus students learn a lot from studying with other people.  You have to dig it all out for yourself when you are a distance student.  It is not impossible for a well-prepared motivated student.  With your background, I would suspect that you do not have any glaring educational weaknesses to overcome, particularly if you stayed with ME or AE.

The only other obstacle is having the time.  The course work at Georgia Tech is known not so much for its difficulty but its volume.  You will need to be sure that you can devote the time over the period of a semester to do the homework.  You cannot let it slide for a couple of weeks and then catch up at the end like you guys at MIT used to do .

TW

That's very helpful.  I hadn't seen Georgia Tech in my google searches.  Good to know.

I do anticipate the solitary nature being the hardest part for me.  I got a LOT of help from my friends at MIT.  One of the programs said that the professors have office hours for the distance learning students.  But I imagine that it's hard to give technical help over phone/internet. 

As for glaring educational weaknesses...that would be the fact that I haven't thought about engineering since turning in my thesis in June of 2003.  Seriously.  My engineering skills are buried under a LOT of dust.  I actually thought about maybe auditing some classes this fall just to remember a bit before trying to take a class.

I really wish I could convince the AF to send me back full time.  I'm a much better student when it's the only thing I'm doing.  But since that probably won't happen I will have to find another way!