HOW ROCKETS ARE MADE (Rocket Factory Tour - United Launch Alliance) - Smarter Every Day 231

May 30, 2021

They totally agreed. -Yeah. One of the strategies to have a successful first flight on Vulcan is to fly it before you fly it. -With Atlas pieces? You understood it. So a lot of the Vulcan technologies could be flown on Atlas, and we'll slowly start incorporating them into Atlas over the next year, we'll be flying Vulcan payload fairings on Atlas, we'll be flying a lot of the same technology as you guys. I just saw, almost

every

thing except the BE-4 engine will have flown on Atlas at least once before we test it on Vulcan. -Understood. I noticed you have pictures of the sales team all over the walls.

Yeah, yeah, we're flying people, that's another game, you know, 135 in a row it is, we're very proud of that, but... when there's a person up there, when you can shake hands with the payload, you know, Talking to them and meeting their friends and family is something else. They have been to the

factory

many times to see their

rocket

, and it means a lot to my employees to meet them and know that we are flying people, so we are much more careful. and we have pictures of them

every

where to remind us that that's Sunny and that's Nicky. -Sunny is amazing, isn't she?

More Interesting Facts About,

how rockets are made rocket factory tour united launch alliance smarter every day 231...

Yes Yes. -She really is. Here is, more or less, the complete product. Stainless steel, you can see it, she just looks at that. -I didn't ask, I'm allowed to touch, right? You can touch it, yes. -Well. Well, is it machined after welding? -Before, yes, before. Before, okay. Then maybe make a beat. -Yes, I have you. -And in fact we brushed the entire surface. So as thin as it was, what you saw there, we actually brushed it out and thinned it out a little bit more; We want it a little thinner than you can buy it. -Really the good thing about Centaur is that, you know, a propellant... usually has a mass fraction of 80%.

And...most upper stages get 85 years. Centaur is around 90, making it literally the highest performing top tier ever. Okay, so we saw the dome, that is the cylindrical tank that the dome will be installed on. One at the top, one at the bottom and the one at the bottom is where the motor will be. -Is this the same thickness metal we are talking about? It is, yes, that giant thing you're looking at, 40 feet long, half the thickness of a dime. Do you see all the rings? That's all tools, so that we can support that shape, so that it doesn't collapse on its own.

And when we actually put the domes on it, we're going to have to grab it by either end and stretch it or pressurize it depending on where it is in the

factory

. -Oh, okay, it's the opposite of a massive buckling problem (?). You have circle tension and annular tension. Ring tension is the problem here. -Exactly. Okay, wait, am I saying that right? Axi... it's okay. So we have axial stress and annular stress, the annular stress is the problem here. -So if you want, you could think of it as a longitudinal buckling problem, because the weight of the structure itself would exceed the stiffness, and it would start with a hoop and it would buckle like that at the top and bend inward. -I have you, incredible.

But do we have the same idea of friction stir welding there? No, so this material is so thin that it cannot be friction stir welded. So this is all done with resistance arc welding, and on Centaur III, which is what we fly today on Atlas, this is a labor-intensive operation. 180,000 welds, all configured by hand, so it takes many hours and quite a bit of time to build this kind of upper-stage "Ferrari". -Yeah. Vulcan will be robotic and automated. -Really, that's amazing. Dome in the front, dome in the back, tank, the engine... well, there's no dome in the back, that's where the engine goes. - So there will actually be a cupola, so you have a sump to collect the propellant and suck it into the engine, so you don't waste as much propellant, and what you can't see inside is a bulkhead. to separate liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen from each other. -I understand.

So where are the engines? They're here? -Uhhhhh… let's see. Do we have an open RL10 in a box that we could show you? -Let's go up. Okay...oh! Yes, we're going to... so there's a final cut that's done in a clean room. -Alright. And that's the best place, so we'll look down, you'll see a bunch of them, they'll be engines, that'll be better. Well, this is the final meeting area of Centaur, this is a clean room, that's why we are up here, the people down there who are on break right now would be dressed in bunny suits.

So you're looking at the business end, those red covers are on the bottom of the RL10

rocket

motor nozzle. And you can see that you have a standard configured one with a single motor, -Right there, right there, but to the left of it you see a dual one. -Okay, that's strange. That Centaur will take astronauts into space. -Will that one do it? That one will do it. -That's incredible ဟုတ်တယ် -That's a big problem, so how...? I mean, that changes everything about how you operate the thing. Have you ever flown a twin-engine Centaur? We have done it, but it has been decades. -Actually?

And so this is reintroducing a sort of historical setting, but one that we haven't done recently. -So, this here, I'm looking, is it Mars 2020? ဟုတ်တယ် -So that's the centaur that Mars 2020 will take to Mars? Yes it is, yes it is. -So you do most of the heavy lifting or, I guess, the "far pushing" you could say, with Centaur. We do, yes, so the booster's job is to get you into space, usually depending on the payload, but you're usually not quite orbital at the end of the first stage, and then Centaur will take you into orbit and take you to your orbit. of parking. , and then once you're aligned correctly, you know the right type of plot, the perigee, then it's going to send you to the final burns to align you to wherever you're going, and in this case it's interplanetary missions, so we're going to Mars . -So, the brain that drives the Centaur, where is it?

Are you integrating CNG at this time? Are. So, in the back there is a flight control computer, and you know, an inertial measurement sensor and other sensors, speed sensors that are the guidance system; They're always connected to the upper stage, obviously, because if you connected them to the thruster and it separated, you would have lost your brain. So they're always up here. Okay, final assembly. -It is and I'm not... so yeah, this is the big show, right? This is the big show, we call it the "big rocket hall," because as you can see, there are

rockets

down there and they keep going up to that big roll-up door, they're in final assembly. , and when they reach that door, they roll out, climb down to the Rocketship, and head to the

launch

pad. -So, this man here is doing the final assembly of a rocket?

He is absolutely doing that, he is. -That's incredible, and having a person up to the task is quite impressive. Yes. -That's amazing, so what are we looking at? These are Deltas on this side of the hallway, and Atlas on this side, and way down we'll take it back up there, but Vulcan will start at the other end of the Delta line and slowly descend, eventually replacing Delta entirely. -So Delta and Atlas are being eliminated, correct? Yes Yes. So do you know the number of missions you have left for each one? Yeah! -Okay, can you talk about that? နံပါတ် -Okay.

So the last question I asked Tory was very interesting, and before I show you that, I want to tell you that you should follow this guy on Twitter. He has a legitimate, engineering-technical answer to everything you ask him. He's very involved with the space community, it's legitimately fun to watch Tory Bruno interact on Twitter. So there's that. Now, if you like space, you'll know that I didn't ask two things in this video. I didn't talk much about engines and I didn't ask about Tory Bruno's competitors either. I did; That ended on the second channel. He gave me very good answers, if you want to hear what Tory Bruno thinks about those two things, go to the second channel, link in the video description, also a link to Tory Bruno's Twitter.

Okay, back to the last question I asked Tory on this

tour

. I've noticed that there aren't many things on this plant that go to low Earth orbit. -That's right. And, uh, is that intentional? Yes, our specialty is more difficult and higher energy orbits, like Mars 2020, an interplanetary mission. -Correct, and that is... Literally right there, yes, but here we don't call it Mars 2020. -What do you call it? We call it Mars 2020...20, -Why would you do that? Because it is our twentieth trip to Mars. -Actually? That's amazing Mhm -That's awesome! So your job is to get him there, ဟုတ်တယ်။ And then what happens to the payload at that point?

Then it will re-enter and go down to the surface of Mars, as you mentioned, it's a rover. We actually put it on the road, so Centaur won't go with it to Mars, we're going to put that energy, like an escape velocity here on Earth, greater than "1c3" as we say. in the technical world, and then that will take you the rest of the way, establish your own orbit and land. -That's impressive, that's what I like about Tory, he knows what he's doing. Thank you very much for this

tour

! -Oh yes, you're welcome. This was absolutely incredible, I have lived near this plant my entire life;

Well, I guess it hasn't been here all my life. But since I've been here, I've lived near this plant and I've always wanted to go in, so thank you so much for extending your flight and giving us this tour, it was amazing. I'm glad you came. Thank you so much! -You bet super dumb, thanks for watching this video. It's a long video, but it's very special. I mean, I've always loved

rockets

, I always have, I always will, and this is like rockets and manufacturing: the Venn diagram right there, that sweet spot, this is what it is to me, it's wonderful.

So thank you for watching this video. If you think this type of video earned your subscription, one way to let me know is to subscribe. You can click the subscribe button and a small notification bell will appear; If you click on it, it will notify you when it goes up and that will encourage me to do more things like this. Many thanks to ULA and Tory Bruno, they entrusted me with their rocket factory, so thank you very much! Also, you can support on Patreon, if you're into that sort of thing. I have something coming up in the short term, which the Patrons have