- Hey it's me Destin, welcome back to
Smarter Every Day this is a really big day
because I live in a hometown where
there's a gigantic rocket plant
owned by United Launch Alliance.
They make a vehicle called the
Delta IV Heavy right over there.
It's about to throw the fastest
man made object in the history
of all the objects, into space to go
touch the sun.
Which is difficult, because it's harder
to go to the sun then it is to go
to Pluto.
You gotta be screamin', you gotta go fast.
It has to do with Delta Vs and stuff like that,
trust me it's hard.
But they can do it, because it's a really big rocket
and it's a really little probe
called the Parker Solar Probe.
I got an email inviting me to
the actual pad just before roll back.
And if you don't know what that is
it's a big deal.
Especially since the CEO of United Launch Alliance
is gonna be on that tower with us.
I'm excited and I'm gonna try to be very professional
when we do it.
But I'm stinkin' excited.
Let's go.
(fun funky music)
how you doing Sir.
- Good to meet ya.
- Ya you as well.
Thanks for inviting me to your shot here.
- Oh, we're happy to have you.
- That's pretty cool.
- I love your channel.
- Thank you very much.
- I am a subscriber.
- I like your hard hat there.
Is that actually a hard hat.
- It is a hard hat.
(laughter)
- That's pretty good.
So you're actually gonna let us go up
with you on roll back.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- It's a big-- that's a treat.
- It is, we're gonna ride a 10 million pound
building 30 stories high while it
heads to the other end of that pad.
- Really?
What's the speed of that thing?
It's gotta be pretty slow.
- Well it's you know, it's a blistering
third of a mile per hour.
- [Destin] You studied at Cal Poly right?
- I did yeah.
- [Destin] So aerospace engineering.
- Mechanical
- [Destin] Mechanical.
That's my undergrad too.
There we go.
Three segments, the way I understand
the two on the side, they're 100% the whole time.
- Yes.
- [Destin] But the one in the center core
you throttle that back.
- Right.
- [Destin] And that's just to conserve fuel
so you can have a better performance, right.
- We're gonna empty the ones on the outside first,
then we're gonna shed those and then
without that weight, with that weight gone,
we go to full throttle on the center core.
And in a very short amount of burn
we'll almost double the velocity.
- [Destin] Okay so you get through Max Q
with all three, all three cores.
Is that the correct terminology?
The cores.
- Yeah, we call 'em cores or common cores.
- [Destin] Okay.
- So you can think of kind of like
Kerbal Space here.
So we're just bolting three rockets together.
- [Destin] Once you ramp it back up
you have a better Propellant Mass Fraction
with what's left of---
- Exactly.
- [Destin] Right, okay, that makes perfect sense.
- So on all of our rockets we us Cryo
on the upper.
Delta has Cryo on the lower and of course
Atlas uses Kerosine.
- [Destin] It's my understanding
you have a kicker stage at the end there
that's solid right?
Now that's abnormal.
- That is, that's very unusual.
And that's because Parker Solar Probe
has to have so much energy and make
so much velocity to get to the sun.
Because of course as you know
you and I we're in orbit right now
around the sun, 67,000 miles an hour,
you got to take that energy out
to get any closer.
It's actually really hard to go in.
Much easier to go out.
Roll the rocket out here, so all three cores
came out in a giant truck, flipped it up
vertical into that building then we
finished it.
And then when we're ready the building
rolls away.
- Man, yeah, I'm able to comprehend
less and less about what you're saying
as we walk closer.
(laughter)
for you this is old hat.
But I mean, imagine studying this stuff
in school and like actually seeing it
for the first time.
It's pretty rad.
- I'll let you in on a secret.
- What's that?
- I'm coming up on my 400th launch
and it feels the same every time.
- [Destin] Does it really.
Ignition starts, you start thrust
- Then we release and then now the rocket
is under Thrust Vector Control
to keep it oriented in the right way.
- [Destin] Right, and I've gotta imagine
that TVC is way easier with a Heavy.
Because you have a larger moment arm
from the center.
- That's right, that's right.
- [Destin] Okay, awesome.
- Yeah, very good.
- We've got everybody in position
for the tower roll.
So when guys go up there very important
that you don't distract or talk
or disrupt the guys are gonna
be on a headset.
So they're gonna be focused on the job,
so just do that.
And the last thing, you guys are gonna
be up on level 6 for your briefing.
Be careful up there and stay safe.
- [Destin] Yes Sir, thank you very much.
- Alright, thank you.
- [Destin] So these clamps open up pneumatically
and then the whole thing pushes back.
- You got it.
- [Destin] And we're gonna be up there
when it happens.
- Yes we are, we're gonna ride it.
- [Destin] That's awesome, let's do it.
(steam hissing)
(clunking shoes hitting metal)
- [Destin] Wow.
(high pitched humming)
(equipment noise drowns out speaker)
- We're good.
- Good to see you.
(high pitched humming)
- We're gonna walk down here so we don't
distract these guys.
- [Destin] 'Cause they're in the middle
of an operation.
- Alright so here you are.
This is the top of one of those side cores.
- [Destin] Right.
- And you can see here, here's the center core
so the second stage is gonna be basically
inside there.
And then up she goes.
- Wow.
So, you're saying you have to point
with Cryo and you point the solid.
- And we're gonna point the solid
so when the Cryo burns out,
we're gonna light the solid.
- Because you don't have Thrust Vector Control
on the solid.
- This one does.
- Oh, how does that work.
- So it has a vectorable nozzle,
so it has it's own actuators that
can point the nozzle.
When that's burned out whatever about
44 or 45 minutes from lift off,
that's it, we separate the spacecraft
and it will arrive in its first Perihelion
out in November.
And then it will be seven years
of doing that loop.
So 24 passes on the sun and about
every third pass it's gonna get close enough
to Venus to affect it's trajectory
and pull it in closer and closer and closer.
- You really, you really live and breathe
this stuff don't you.
- That's what we do.
- No, you do.
- Oh yeah, sure.
I love rockets.
I've been doing rockets my whole life.
- Really, that's awesome.
What was your first rocket launch.
- First professional launch or
my first launch.
- First launch.
- Okay, I was---
- [Destin] That counts the same to me.
- Alright, I was nine years old.
And I'm old enough to have seen the moon landing.
So I was pretty stoked by that.
And so I'm out in the back of my grandmothers barn
and I find a case of 80 year old moldy dynamite.
And I figured there's only one thing to do with that
you know so I'm gonna build rockets out of it.
- [Destin] Wow.
- So I took the sticks you know,
I cut them open with my pen knife,
I made my own rockets, and I'm proud to tell you
that even at nine years old, some of my rockets
made it partly into the sky before
they detonated.
(laughter)
- [Destin] That's fantastic.
- And I got all 10 fingers.
- [Destin] Now that's the true measure
right there.
So I spoke of the scientists involved
and they told me about Andy here.
Do you know the backstory there.
- So Andy's pretty special to this mission
because it's so hard to get to the sun
and do a mission like this.
The original designs for this type of probe
are just impractical.
And this gentlemen Andy he came up
with the innovative approach,
the trajectory that we're gonna use,
that really made this mission possible.
Without him we would not be standing
here today talking about this.
- So we just started roll back right.
- Yes.
- [Destin] So I can see that we're physically moving
away from that.
It's very slow.
How many tons are moving right now?
- This building weighs 10 million pounds.
- [Destin] Okay, wow.
- We're gonna move it about 300 feet.
- Really.
Okay, and so is it gonna go at this velocity
the whole time.
- It's actually gonna speed up a little bit
in a few minutes.
- [Destin] Really.
- But it's not exactly blistering speed
as you can imagine.
It's a gentle trip.
It'll take us about 45 minutes
to make that 300 foot journey.
- [Destin] What kinds of things
are you looking at right now.
Like, you kind of just understand
this rocket at this point right.
- Yes, okay so of course we have
the big center core and the reason
you see the Orbital ATK emblem on there
is because Northrop Grumman was Orbital ATK
fabricated that extra third kick station
we don't normally use that Parker Solar Probe
needs for that extra umph of velocity.
You're seeing these big horizontal struts here
those are carrying the loads from
these side cores mechanically and
transmitting that into the center core.
- [Destin] Is there a dampener there as well.
- No, no, this is really a rigid
structural frame that we're looking at.
And that's actually the cleanest way
we can do that dynamically and be able
to steer and control the rocket.
And each of these cores at full power,
their throttlable but at full power
they have the same engine, same propellants
and they can put out the same level
of thrust.
Together about 2.2 million pounds
or something a little over 700,000 pounds each.
- I'm having an optical illusion right now.
I feel like the rocket's moving away
from us.
(laughter)
I really do.
(mellow guitar music)
- [Destin] Can you see that gap right there,
so they've got inches of clearance over there.
So I'm gonna level with you.
That's a really, really cool rocket okay.
And it's gonna touch the sun,
it's gonna be the fastest man made
object ever in the history of objects right.
But what's really, really cool to me is
Tory Bruno's wife is also a rocket scientist
and as they back away, she comes
to the launchpad with him, they're having a discussion
about how it works.
Like I went and eavesdropped in there
and they're talking about the different stages,
how they work, why they're using solids
over Cryos in certain---
like this is a very technical discussion.
And I really like that, like a lot.
It's kind of a moment.
- You caught us--
- I caught you having a rocket moment together.
It was pretty good.
(laughter)
so I feel very honored to be where I'm at
right now.
This is huge moment in the life
of many of these people.
I mean it's a huge moment period
but like for some people this is decades.
- Yes, yes well of course for us you know
we love our rocket and we put a lot of
blood, sweat and tears in it.
But the rocket is only hear for the payload.
And so when we're launching a mission like this
Parker Solar Probe this is someones life's work,
and the people who worked on that spacecraft
same kind of thing.
It's the pentacle of their career.
They've been at it for at least a dozen years
many of 'em, so that's a pretty big responsibility
and it weighs heavy on our guys.
(beep)
- Okay I gotta text from Felipe
about two weeks after launch.
That said the trajectory insertion
of the Delta Force Heavy was so good
that the Parker Solar Probes first
trajectory correction maneuver
dropped to 10 meters per second.
Which is astounding.
That means they get to save a bunch of fuel
and they just extended the life
of the mission because ULA hit the bullseye
and got the probe exactly where it
needed to be.
That's a big deal.
Because you only get one shot at that.
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I really like geeking out with rockets
and this was a really cool opportunity
to do that.
Thanks to you ULA for making it happen.
- [Destin] Tory, thank you.
- Oh, you bet.
- [Destin] I mean this is an opportunity
of a lifetime for me.
Thank you very much.
- It was my pleasure.
- [Destin] I really appreciate that.
So we'll get out of your hair and
let you go shoot your rocket.
If you want to see more of the interviews
I'll leave that over on the second channel.
And feel free to subscribe 'cause we got
some really cool stuff coming up
from this place right here.
I'm Destin, you're getting Smarter Every Day.
Have a good one, bye.
(bells ringing)
You have a cool job man.
- Yes I do.
- [Destin] You really do, I mean that is--