I asked 914 engineers at SpaceX and Blue Origin the same question...
I want to pique my kids' interest in rockets, science, tech and manufacturing so we went to see a launch. Before we left I sent this message to 914 engineers:
"If there are any cool insights about what it takes to build a rocket that would blow a nine-year-old‘s mind I’d love to hear 'em!"
...and THIS was the response 🤯🤯
Glad I got to your note before the debut of New Glenn!
SO happy to hear you've got a future rocket scientist on your hands! I've put together some of the things I think are coolest about New Glenn:
- Super Tall!: New Glenn is as tall as a 32-story building. That's about 313 feet! Imagine how many school buses stacked on top of each other it would take to reach that height!
- Named After a Hero: The rocket is named after John Glenn, the first American astronaut to orbit Earth. He was a real-life space hero!
- Reusable Rocket: New Glenn is designed to be reused up to 25 times! This means it can be launched, brought back to Earth, and launched again, making space more accessible.
- Huge Control Fins: The rocket has large fins near its base. These help control its flight path, kind of like how the fins on a dart help it fly straight!
- Mighty Engines: The New Glenn rocket is powered by seven BE-4 engines. Together, they produce 3.85 million pounds of thrust. That's like trying to lift 12 fully loaded 747 jets!
- Gigantic Payload: New Glenn can carry up to 45 metric tons (about 99,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. That's almost as much as 7 adult elephants!
- High-Speed Travel: When it launches, the rocket can reach speeds up to 17,500 miles per hour. That's about 23 times the speed of sound!
- Cool Landings: The first stage of New Glenn, which gives the rocket its initial boost, is designed to land back on Earth so it can be used again. It can land on a ship in the ocean, which has a landing platform
- Big Fairing: The top part of the rocket, called the payload fairing, is enormous. It's 7 meters in diameter. You could fit a school bus inside it!
- Unique Logo: The logo on the rocket features a feather, symbolizing the company's feather logo and its commitment to light, efficient design.
- Orbital Missions: New Glenn will be capable of going to the Moon and even further into space! It's not just for satellite launches; it's a gateway to deep space exploration.
- Rocket Recycling: By reusing rockets, Blue Origin can make space travel cheaper and more sustainable, like how recycling helps the Earth.
- Space Tourism: Blue Origin not only works on New Glenn but also on rockets like New Shepard for space tourism. Maybe someday people like you and me can travel to space, too!
- Launch Pads: New Glenn will launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida, a very famous place where many historic space missions have started.
- Space Station Deliveries: The rocket could be used to send supplies to the International Space Station, helping astronauts live and work in space.
Future of Space Travel: Jeff Bezos, the creator of Amazon, also founded Blue Origin. He believes that one day millions of people will live and work in space, thanks to rockets like New Glenn!
🚀 I'm a recruiter, so I don't have much insight on the building of the rockets, but my 9 year old thinks it's pretty cool that her mom works with astronauts.
🚀 Fun Fact: Rockets Sweat! To keep the rocket cool during launch, the fuel tanks sweat. Ice forms on the outside as the super-cold fuel inside chills the metal.
This makes rockets look frosty before liftoff. Your boys will love watching the launch. They'll see engineering and science in action a real-life adventure that shows what's possible when people dream big. Tell them to keep looking up!
Testing is Everything Before New Glenn even gets near the launch pad, we test everything. We even shake the rocket on a giant table and blast it with sound to make sure it can survive the rumble of launch!
🚀 Rocket Fairing is a Spaceship's Helmet The top of the rocket, called the fairing, is like a helmet for the payload (like satellites or other spacecraft). On New Glenn, this helmet is one of the biggest ever built! it's 22 feet wide! Imagine something as tall as a two-story house, protecting delicate equipment as it rides through the atmosphere.
🚀 Reusability: Rockets Get to Ride Again!
One of the coolest things about New Glenn is that its first stage can fly back to Earth and land upright so we can use it again. It's like a giant pogo stick that jumps to space and comes back for another round. This makes space travel cheaper and greener.
🚀 Hi! I don't think I have any unique or new factoids about rocket or spaceship design and manufacturing, but the upcoming New Glenn test flight on Sunday is a going to be a huge must-see.
🚀 Simple . . . blood, sweat and tears!
🚀 The rocket world is just as new and fascinating for me. I recently transitioned from helicopters to the rocket world. Highly anticipating our New Glenn maiden launch!
🚀 Sir - saw the picture of you watching the launch with your kids. AWESOME. I have two boys myself. I can close my eyes and be a four-year-old in Ohio, staring up at airplanes full of wonder and awe. Thirty five years later and it's only enhanced! START EM YOUNG!
🚀 Those SpaceX guys just send it quite often. It's awesome.
🚀 Very Nice! I've only seen a single launch myself and won't soon forget it. I was watching on youtube with everyone else last night.
🚀 New Glenn's fairings have the signature of all employees on it!
🚀 Hope you and your boys get to enjoy the show. ...you can tell them it takes thousands of people all working together to make a rocket like that.
🚀 I can't really spill all the details but I'm in automation so I can tell you I build the robots and automated systems to fabricate our engines and assemble all sorts of stuff related to new Glenn.
🚀 Hey Tony, thanks for reaching out. Really cool about seeing the launch with your kids! I would say that rockets are the most challenging machines that humans make and as engineers, we love a challenge! They are way more complicated than they look.
That's what I got off the top of my head, but go make some memories rockets are super cool, and a lot of fun to build
🚀That sounds like an awesome experience for your boys! I saw the final shuttle launch from a distance in 2011 but haven't been able to see a SpaceX launch yet! Hopefully soon!
🚀How about friction stir welding that is used to fabricate the tanks? First used on shuttle. https://youtu.be/XM825iLaPvU?si=7Vl0jLGRpN3-1Pgr
🚀To build just a single GS1 we have over 100,000 parts and my team is responsible for making sure that all of them are here in the factory and ready.
Along with that, we're responsible for being the connection between engineers and the shop floor. One of my favorite experiences so far has been preparing for launch. We were tied in super tight with the engineers over at our Integration Facility (the building at the launch pad) and helping to develop repairs and find parts that we could use to make repairs and improvements in the moment.
I wish I could share more details, but a lot of what we do is super super secret and not for public use. The main thing I'd share with kids is that no matter what your job or education or anything is, everyone here is just as important. A lot of my team doesn't have engineering degrees or anything close to it, yet engineers and designers still rely on us to be the help for nearly every stage once production starts.
🚀Hey thanks for reaching out! These videos do a very good job explaining the project!
https://youtu.be/Hu8SlfmpKM4
https://youtu.be/rsuqSn7ifpU
🚀this is what i send people when they ask what we do in the rocket engine shop:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUAPHuUXR8k
this is basically what we do but on a much bigger scale to make the rocket engines
🚀I am sharing some blogs my brother and I wrote about rockets and space. There is some cool stuff in there to share with your 9-year-old son. https://spaceunited.com/blogx
absolutely! they are also at a good age to learn about our Soccer & Space Academy --a program we put together for summers where kids can get introduced to space concepts through sports: https://www.goalforlaunch.org/what-we-do
🚀Just enjoy the show! And there a lot of videos on YouTube really well made I'd recommend !
🚀...the book Ignition! By John D. Clark has some of the best anecdotes about engine and propellant development (and mishaps). It's really a great read and there's plenty of anecdotes for your boys in there! Here's a free pdf I found on google:
https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf
🚀Have you taken them to Kennedy Space? if you havent, you should get the Space coast launch app, it tells you when the launches are happening and you can watch from the app too.
🚀one of the go to cool vids i have is Tom Mueller explaining how a rocket engine works :) https://youtu.be/UqF8lKBlPqY?si=O1JN8bcbi9u2qrrO
also the classic of how much effort it takes to really land a rocket and showing failure is an option! https://youtu.be/bvim4rsNHkQ?si=t6Ku91H5Eqgk0Q3h
🚀Hi. I can't go in detail of how they are made, but blue origin has some really good YouTube vids. If you want to get him something cool, there are old nasa mission patches for sale on ebay.
🚀...honestly I couldn't do better than this guy https://youtube.com/@everydayastronaut?si=wyeqXEJL9lrg712h. He's got a couple factory tours with Elon and Jeff.
🚀Takes an incredible amount of time, iteration, and integration of lessons learned from our sub-orbital rocket, New Shepard. Thanks for the connection. I recommend checking out Club for the future. It's Blues child stem outreach program. So much great information and the kids can draw a post card and actually have it flown on New Shepard on a trip to space and then have it returned.
🚀Sure! This is a description you can share and I'll share a docking simulator game you can play. I'd recommend watching a video of a launch and have him make some paper rockets and try to fly them! There's some very cool LEGO sets you can try also
🚀I haven't done it yet but there is a program where they can draw pictures and we will send it to space. Would your son be interested? I can look more into it next week when I'm back in office.
🚀They are extremely cool to see and if you are going to see one that lands back at the Cape that is really awesome and loud from the sonic boom! I think we have done a few videos of our rocket production line in Hawthorne. Maybe check out how they make the engine itself, its kind of an old fashioned process with heat and rollers. Almost like blacksmithing.
🚀Starship owns just about every superlative in the rocket industry, some great content on everyday astronaut YouTube channel to learn more!
🚀I suggest you and your boys watch the two episodes of ""Everyday Astronaut"" on YouTube, where he tours the Blue facility with Jeff Bezos. You'll learn more in these videos than what I could tell you.. I only worked on handling and transporting the 1st stage GS1.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsuqSn7ifpU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu8SlfmpKM4
🚀That's awesome! There are New Shepherd Estes rocket kits out there, but they should make a New Glenn one too now that it's operational. My experience is less on the rocket side, but I'm still very impressed by them!
🚀Glad to hear your boys are interested in Aerospace. Blue has a great program to keep the future engineers engaged and excited about all things space! Look up Club Future at Blue https://www.clubforfuture.org/
🚀Jeff Bezos has a factory walk though video at the Blue Origin factory with checking out!
🚀Hi! I can't speak too much to New Glenn other than what's publicly available, definitely check out the tour Bezos did with Everydayastronaut. I would say my biased personal favorite thing about New Glenn is that it's going to take our MK1 and MK2 lander's to the moon with same crazy jumps in technology since Apollo.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/12/why-valves-are-a-spacecraft-engineers-worst-nightmare/
🚀Hello, let's see... from the very basic there is https://youtu.be/kFYwvhpmYAk?si=-8efEs54xuOlkyxd to the website F9 info, https://www.spacex.com/vehicles/falcon-9/ Should help you.
🚀Haha awesome! Everyday Astronaut has really good videos as does CSI Starbase But I think a Starship launch would blow their minds even further!
🚀Here's some cool links:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DbAAg4Dq_Q2k&ved=2ahUKEwif9L6T48eKAxU8SjABHW6sNscQwqsBegQIFRAE&usg=AOvVaw23cOuMCj49f2m9uWutYzVy
I hope that is informative! Let me know what yiu guys think.
🚀 I can recommend that they check out some videos on youtube - search blue origin factory or everyday astronaut jeff bezos interview. There is a lot of goodies on those videos! Also this and many other rockets like it will be a regular form of transport for your kids to go to space within the next 20 years. Thats Blues mission.
A fun fact: boeing 787 jet engines produces 55k lbs of thrust total while just ons raptor 3 engine produces 19.5 million, thats 354x in power. While they are close in size, the power difference is wildly different in magnitude.
🚀 Starship is 120meters tall fully stacked so bigger than a football field tilted up, F9 was sized to fit on the highways between LA and FL.
🚀 Hi there Tony! That's an excellent question. Here's a few of our public facts :)
-Our rocket is made horizontally, and then stood up for the first time as a full vehicle on the launch pad.
-We also have more than a mile of metal tubing inside, carrying fluids and pneumatics.
-And finally, our rocket tank's walls are thinner than the walls of a soda can would be if it was proportionally stretched to the size of our rocket."
🚀A fun fact to share, with the right scale in place, the side walls of Falcon 9 rocket compared to its length is 10x thinner than the side walls of a soda can compared to its length.
🚀My favorite is that, generally, rockets are designed to only have structural rigidity when the tanks are pressurized. A good example is a soda can. Before the can is opened, the can is actually pretty strong. You can even stand on it without issue, as long as it is pressurized. But once you open the can, the lack of pressure makes it weak. You can actually demonstrate this to them using a cam, if you want.
🚀Oooo there's lots of stuff! I'm not an expert on falcon 9 (I'm on the starship program) but there's some crazy cool reusabulity metrics out there for falcon 9 comparing the cost of launches to famous rockets in the past that I would definitely recommend checking out. One cool fact that most young people don't know is how the fuel and oxidizer are supercooled/cryogenic (and how they would take up too much volume as gasses to be practical). That will be awesome showing them a launch!
🚀Thank you so much for reaching out. I think this is wonderful, I'm so happy to hear your son is interested in rockets and you're sharing that passion with them!
I worked most of my career in rocket engine testing. Every engine that goes on the rocket is tested first to make sure it is safe. Like taking a car for a test drive! We test it in every way possible, sometimes even breaking them on purpose to know how they break.
A really cool thing about rocket engines is how hot, and how cold they get! We use liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen - if you imagined the air around us getting colder and colder...till it freezes! The rocket uses that as fuel. But, when you have the engine light, or what we call ""combust"", it turns super hot. Over 6000 degrees! It can melt anything. So, usually right next to each other, we have the really cold parts of the engine, run with the really hot parts of the engine and the temperature evens out to where it doesn't melt! It's almost like a magical dance to make rocket engines work. Like balancing like a gymnast. We always joke that each engine has it's own personality, since they're a little different and have their own issues. Thank you so much for following Blue and I hope you enjoy the launch!
🚀How Falcon Rockets Are Made Falcon rockets, like Falcon 9, are built by SpaceX to carry things like satellites and astronauts into space. They are powerful, reusable rockets, which means they can go to space and come back to be used again!
Here's how they're made:
1-Design First, engineers plan out the rocket on computers. They figure out how strong it needs to be, how much fuel it will use, and how to make it come back to Earth safely.
2 - Build The rocket is built from three main parts:
Fairing: The top part (the nose) protects things inside the rocket, like satellites or supplies.
Fuel Tank: This big part holds fuel, like a car's gas tank but much bigger.
Engines: The bottom of the rocket has 9 Merlin engines that burn fuel to make the rocket lift off.
3 - Test Before launching, SpaceX tests the rocket engines to make sure everything works perfectly. They want to make sure the rocket won't break or explode.
4 - Launch When everything is ready, they take the rocket to the launchpad, fill it with fuel, and launch it into space. Falcon 9 rockets are special because they can land back on Earth after flying.
This makes them cheaper to use because they don't have to build a new rocket every time!
🚀I have a fun one I think! Rockets are so loud, that they can break buildings or the rocket itself just from their noise, so we have to spray huge amounts of water on the rocket exhaust to keep it quieter!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_suppression_system
🚀That's awesome! My guess is that rocket was carrying 20-25 satellites in a stack. Here's a cool video of them deploying on another mission if you wanted to show your boys. https://youtu.be/_a1H-_rl2-o?si=myu4XqQUxOVP01oU They make all the satellites in Seattle and then ship them to the launch site. They try to launch these satellites at least once a week so these launches are pretty common
🚀Coolest thing is the landing. You won't likely see the landing in person, unless it's an RTLS mission, so have that pulled up on the webcast. Lands about 7 to 9 minutes after launch. SpaceX is currently the only company re-flying orbital class rockets, and some of our boosters have flown more than 20 times. 24 is the current record and will soon be 25.
🚀 First, it currently costs $16,000 per pound to send a payload into orbit. Thats a number rockets like New Glenn and Falcon 9 are trying to reduce drastically.
Second, New Glenn is technically weaker than your average coke can. If that coke can was the same size as New Glenn, the walls of the coke can would be between 3 and 10 thicker than the skin and tank walls on New Glenn.
But that coke can can show you how New Glenn survives launch. When its full of fuel (and other flight consumables) it feels like an unopened coke can, pretty much solid. But when its empty, it takes less effort to buckle than a coke can does. And the folks that handle New Glenn on a daily basis have figured out how to move that massive rocket without it being full or damaged regularly. It was kind of mind blowing when I found out the scale of the tank walls on this vehicle. I hope your kids enjoy the show!
🚀Thrust chamber assembly is pretty amazing. Standing at 12 foot tall it includes the venture portion and the thrust nozzle. There's a lot of blood, sweat and tears into everything but at the end of the day it all comes down to make, the plan, work the plan. Nothin special. One thing I thought was crazy as of late was that the launch pad where they tested it..
It flows 100,000 gallons of water a minute to ensure we don't melt the stand.
🚀 That's awesome! It should be a good test of patience, it might take a couple of tries before everything lines up perfectly. I've been lucky to see Falcon Heavy, SLS Artemis, Delta Heavy, Terran 1, all with their fair share of delays.
It's ok if the launch is delayed, there are thousands of systems that have to report good status before launch.
...We have 10s of thousands of work orders, and millions of operations that need to be performed to build New Glenn and it'd BE-4 engines.
Knowing which work orders need to be done first is hard.
...I'm sure by now you've heard about friction stir welding and circumferential welding.
We've built tools that automate the inspection of those welds. We have giant robot arms that can xray the welds to make sure they are strong.
Every single bolt and nut on the rocket has the be triple checked for tightness.
Your first reaction is to tighten, then check a box with paper and pencil. There's also torque tools that digitally measure the torque (rotating power) of the wrench. With these wrenches, we can automatically record that tightness to the work order.
If you watch the Everyday Astronaut video, you can see some of my work on the big TVs in the machine shop. Those TVs tell everybody what operations are scheduled to be executed in each work center!
🚀omg so much.... We use Fahrenheit to measure temperatures, but some things are so cold that we don't use fahrenheit and have to use Kelvin and Rankine to measure temperature relative to the point where all motion stops (absolute zero).
New Glenn is 330 feet tall and burn Liquid oxygen (LOx) and Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) Which are around -297 degrees F or 90 Kelvin.
The second stage actually burns Liquid Hydrogen (LH2) and Liquid oxygen. LH2 is actually only 18 Kelvin (-427 F).
So the reason you see that white cloud forming around the rocket, and frost on the rocket is because we've filled 90% of the rockets mass with liquids that are that cold. The first stage generates 3.85 million lbs of thrust to lift mostly fuel into orbit. New Glenn is capable of putting a fully loaded Semi Truck of mass (45 Tons) into Low Earth Orbit.
We'll use this to put humans on the moon, space hotels in orbit, and launch satellites that bring internet to the entire planet. :D
🚀Starship has a tank skin thickness of about 4 millimeters
🚀I'm glad you are taking your kids and your inner kid for a launch viewing. hopefully you get to feel the rumble in your chest. You probably know there's not to much I can share about building a rocket. But even adults love to know that the launch tower is as active as the rocket is.
🚀 I'm not sure i have any more insights than you may already have. I think just seeing a rocket launch live is about the best you can do for raw insight! One of the epiphanies I had while growing up was that one thing leads to another. To lift larger things to space, you need a bigger rocket. The bigger rocket needs more fuel and larger tanks, so you need more engines. The engines and tanks and fuel weigh more, so now you need more fuel, more tanks, and more engines...
It also blew my mind that of the entire Saturn V stack, the only thing that came back was the command module at the very top. That's why we're all working on reusability. My team develops all the subsystem control software for New Glenn. This includes things like thrust vector control, propellant tank pressurization, landing gear deployment, hydraulic pumps, etc. Anyhow, I hope you get to see us launch this year - it'll probably be the final few days of the year.
🚀 I have a 9yo too, some of the crazy parts of my job is work on things that are huge and super sensitive!
The rocket engines and the systems that make them work are so sensitive that they have to be very very clean when we assemble them. We can't have any hair or even dust in the pipes of the rocket could fail! So because of that we have a giant tent in our building that could fit an entire house in, we call it a clean room!
It's like the biggest fort you could imagine!
We have to wear a special suit to go in to make sure we don't bring in any Foreign Object Debris or as we call it FOD. So we have to work on super giant stuff and worry about the to year ones at the same time! It's super challenging but when we see our rocket on the Pad Al's it ready to take off it makes us feel very proud to we were able to make something so complicated!
Hope this captures your kids imagination!
🚀Yeah! Tell them about friction stir welding.
🚀Yeah.... while we reuse the fairings and stage1, we need a new stage 2 for every flight.... last year we finished a new stage 2 every 2.5 days.
🚀You bet! Basically if you look at any of the rocket factory videos or photos, everything you see other than the flight hardware it's self is tooling. Access platforms, lifting beams, robotic movers, and custom hand tools as well. It's a huge scope of work.
🚀My specialty is measurement science (aka Metrology) where we calibrate, compensate and verify high precision, high accuracy inspection, measurement and test equipment used to build and acceptance test different components of the rocket, so my understanding of how all of the components of our vehicles work is at a very high level, regarding how SpaceX builds rockets, we're a very ""vertically integrated"" company so we minimize outsourcing most components of the rocket to other companies and build / fabricate almost everything in house (raw materials come in, rocket comes out), our Falcon Launch vehicles consist of a first stage booster with 9 M1D (atmospheric Merlin engines) for Falcon 9 and 3 first stage boosters for with 27 M1D engines for Falcon Heavy, an interstage, a second stage with 1 MVac engine (Merlin vacuum) and a payload, Merlin engines use a reaction between RP1 (rocket grade kerosene) and LOx (liquid oxygen) to propel the rocket stages, the payload will consist of satellites enclosed by a fairing (egg shell looking enclosure on top of the rocket) or a Dragon 2 capsule that is used to ferry supplies (Crew Resupply Missions aka CRS missions) or astronauts to space, normally to the International Space Station (ISS), we reuse the first stage boosters, fairings and Dragon Capsules, but do not reuse the 2nd stage, which burns up in the atmosphere upon atmospheric reentry
🚀The first stage has 7 engines.
The second stage 2 engines.
It stands 320 feet tall.
It's going to be the biggest rocket since the Saturn V that will launch from Cape Canaveral. We are launching a satellite called Blue Ring that serves as a high computational data hub and refueling station.
🚀Ooh, the fun one to say on tours is that if you took a coke can, and scaled it up to the size of a falcon 9, falcon's skin would be even thinner.
🚀There were 134 flights last year so rough math comes out to the Hawthorne team building 1 second stage every other day, that's pretty cool
🚀Hm, blow a 9 year old's mind. The prop rates are pretty crazy. The public numbers are 2500kg / s, that's about 1 African elephant per second of fuel or 833 frogs worth
🚀Building a rocket takes thousands of smart engineers and technicians.
Here's something to share that might wow them:
Rockets like New Glenn are built using some of the lightest yet strongest materials on Earth, like carbon composites, aluminum alloys, among others.
Why?
Because every single gram counts!
Rockets have to be both strong enough to withstand extreme forces and light enough to escape Earth's gravity.
Also, one of the coolest things about rocket engines is how they work. Imagine this: they mix liquid oxygen (at temperatures colder than the South Pole!) with liquid methane or hydrogen. When those two combine and ignite, it creates a powerful explosion that shoots the rocket into space at speeds over 17,000 miles per hour. Oh, and tell them this fun fact: the flames from the engines can reach temperatures hotter than lava, but the rocket's engines are designed to cool themselves using the same fuel that powers them. It's like giving themselves an icy shower while creating fire!
🚀Hmmm..where do I start to share fascinating facts about rockets.
Here's one, did your children know that our 2nd stage engines are essentially powered by Liquid Hydrogen and Liquid Oxygen which together make water. Go figure!
Here's another non rocket related facts, did they know that Space Force Cadets are called guardians? And have the job to defend American assets, thus making them Guardians of our Galaxy?!
Rockets are complex assemblies. We build them like Legos as individual subassemblies albeit put together via welding. If your sons or you are into sci-fi. I would recommend watching ""For all mankind"" on Apple TV. I would say Season 2 is very close to our current path , with season 7 a generation or 2 away!
It's no longer Sci-Fi but just Sci with the fiction becoming a reality by the day.
🚀For a third grader, the scale of the rocket should be impressive. You could also talk to them about some basics:
- over 90% of the rocket's weight is fuel and oxygen (imagine if that was a car). There are two stages and a payload.
Stage 1 pushes the rocket out to Space and stage 2 takes over to make sure the payload can go to orbit.
Just like a rollercoaster loop. If you go forward fast enough, you don't drop back to Earth even when you are at the top of the loop and inverted.
🚀Sure! Without diving into anything specific, I would just mention the sheer scale. Tell them that for something so large, you need tools that can make something that can fit a lot of cars inside. Sometimes we get to use tools that make us feel like dwarves hammering away at a giant, and sometimes we get to manage tools that make us feel like giants
🚀I think some of the most interesting facts about the rocket can be made into fun/cool references.
For example, one BE4 engineer produces 550 thousand pounds of thrust! Imagine how many Pennie's would have to stack to recreate that pressure. Otherwise, I will have to think on what kind of things can be made meaningful to a nine-year-old.
🚀About 322 ft tall, she'll be a monster!
🚀For sure, our NG launch vehicle is massive. Boasts the world's largest 2 piece composite fairing set.
Our New Shepard launch vehicle could fit inside the New Glenn's payload fairings!
All of our components for the payload fairings and adapters are made in house, we have what's believed to be the largest fiber placement machine in the world, or atleast in this hemisphere of the world. Our First stage is fully reusable, powered by 7 of our BE-4 engines.
Target thrust is 550,000lbs each!
Our first stage is fueld with LOX and LNG, 2nd stage is LOX and LH2.
Our second stage is an engineering feat, optimized for weight and payload capacity. Powered by 2 BE-3U built in Kent and tested in West Texas.
Some fun facts, our material for the Tanks are proprietary and our method of assembly is by friction stir welding. We are the only ones in the world using this blend of aluminum and that have successfully figured out how to weld it together.
Fun Fact, our fuel capacity in our 2nd stage is great than the entire vehicle fuel load for an Atlas5. We are super excited for our maiden flight and very close. Next big milestone to look out for is Hot Fire! This will be the first time since Saturn 5 the Cape has seen a vehicle this powerful on the launch pad.
🚀The hardware gets all the credit but SpaceX is really a software company that happens to build rockets. Without great software we wouldn't be able to automate near daily launches. We get to ask real rocket scientists questions like:
what would happen if you put a raptor engine on a car, like you see with jet engines at the air shows.
- They usually make you do the math. The answer is both hilarious and terrifying!!
