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Delta IV Heavy Pad Tour, (with CEO Tory Bruno) - Smarter Every Day 199 - YouTube
Channel: SmarterEveryDay
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- Hey it's me Destin, welcome back to
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Smarter Every Day this is a really big day
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because I live in a hometown where
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there's a gigantic rocket plant
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owned by United Launch Alliance.
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They make a vehicle called the
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Delta IV Heavy right over there.
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It's about to throw the fastest
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man made object in the history
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of all the objects, into space to go
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touch the sun.
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Which is difficult, because it's harder
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to go to the sun then it is to go
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to Pluto.
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You gotta be screamin', you gotta go fast.
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It has to do with Delta
Vs and stuff like that,
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trust me it's hard.
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But they can do it, because
it's a really big rocket
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and it's a really little probe
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called the Parker Solar Probe.
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I got an email inviting me to
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the actual pad just before roll back.
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And if you don't know what that is
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it's a big deal.
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Especially since the CEO
of United Launch Alliance
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is gonna be on that tower with us.
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I'm excited and I'm gonna
try to be very professional
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when we do it.
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But I'm stinkin' excited.
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Let's go.
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(fun funky music)
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how you doing Sir.
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- Good to meet ya.
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- Ya you as well.
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Thanks for inviting me to your shot here.
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- Oh, we're happy to have you.
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- That's pretty cool.
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- I love your channel.
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- Thank you very much.
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- I am a subscriber.
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- I like your hard hat there.
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Is that actually a hard hat.
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- It is a hard hat.
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(laughter)
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- That's pretty good.
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So you're actually gonna let us go up
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with you on roll back.
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- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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- It's a big-- that's a treat.
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- It is, we're gonna
ride a 10 million pound
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building 30 stories high while it
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heads to the other end of that pad.
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- Really?
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What's the speed of that thing?
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It's gotta be pretty slow.
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- Well it's you know, it's a blistering
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third of a mile per hour.
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- [Destin] You studied at Cal Poly right?
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- I did yeah.
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- [Destin] So aerospace engineering.
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- Mechanical
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- [Destin] Mechanical.
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That's my undergrad too.
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There we go.
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Three segments, the way I understand
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the two on the side,
they're 100% the whole time.
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- Yes.
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- [Destin] But the one in the center core
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you throttle that back.
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- Right.
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- [Destin] And that's
just to conserve fuel
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so you can have a better
performance, right.
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- We're gonna empty the
ones on the outside first,
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then we're gonna shed those and then
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without that weight,
with that weight gone,
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we go to full throttle on the center core.
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And in a very short amount of burn
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we'll almost double the velocity.
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- [Destin] Okay so you get through Max Q
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with all three, all three cores.
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Is that the correct terminology?
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The cores.
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- Yeah, we call 'em cores or common cores.
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- [Destin] Okay.
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- So you can think of kind of like
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Kerbal Space here.
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So we're just bolting
three rockets together.
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- [Destin] Once you ramp it back up
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you have a better Propellant Mass Fraction
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with what's left of---
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- Exactly.
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- [Destin] Right, okay,
that makes perfect sense.
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- So on all of our rockets we us Cryo
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on the upper.
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Delta has Cryo on the lower and of course
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Atlas uses Kerosine.
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- [Destin] It's my understanding
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you have a kicker stage at the end there
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that's solid right?
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Now that's abnormal.
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- That is, that's very unusual.
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And that's because Parker Solar Probe
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has to have so much energy and make
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so much velocity to get to the sun.
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Because of course as you know
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you and I we're in orbit right now
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around the sun, 67,000 miles an hour,
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you got to take that energy out
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to get any closer.
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It's actually really hard to go in.
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Much easier to go out.
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Roll the rocket out
here, so all three cores
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came out in a giant truck, flipped it up
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vertical into that building then we
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finished it.
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And then when we're ready the building
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rolls away.
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- Man, yeah, I'm able to comprehend
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less and less about what you're saying
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as we walk closer.
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(laughter)
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for you this is old hat.
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But I mean, imagine studying this stuff
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in school and like actually seeing it
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for the first time.
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It's pretty rad.
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- I'll let you in on a secret.
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- What's that?
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- I'm coming up on my 400th launch
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and it feels the same every time.
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- [Destin] Does it really.
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Ignition starts, you start thrust
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- Then we release and then now the rocket
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is under Thrust Vector Control
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to keep it oriented in the right way.
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- [Destin] Right, and I've gotta imagine
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that TVC is way easier with a Heavy.
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Because you have a larger moment arm
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from the center.
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- That's right, that's right.
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- [Destin] Okay, awesome.
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- Yeah, very good.
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- We've got everybody in position
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for the tower roll.
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So when guys go up there very important
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that you don't distract or talk
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or disrupt the guys are gonna
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be on a headset.
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So they're gonna be focused on the job,
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so just do that.
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And the last thing, you guys are gonna
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be up on level 6 for your briefing.
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Be careful up there and stay safe.
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- [Destin] Yes Sir, thank you very much.
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- Alright, thank you.
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- [Destin] So these clamps
open up pneumatically
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and then the whole thing pushes back.
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- You got it.
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- [Destin] And we're gonna be up there
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when it happens.
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- Yes we are, we're gonna ride it.
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- [Destin] That's awesome, let's do it.
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(steam hissing)
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(clunking shoes hitting metal)
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- [Destin] Wow.
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(high pitched humming)
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(equipment noise drowns out speaker)
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- We're good.
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- Good to see you.
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(high pitched humming)
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- We're gonna walk down here so we don't
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distract these guys.
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- [Destin] 'Cause they're in the middle
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of an operation.
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- Alright so here you are.
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This is the top of one
of those side cores.
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- [Destin] Right.
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- And you can see here,
here's the center core
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so the second stage is gonna be basically
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inside there.
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And then up she goes.
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- Wow.
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So, you're saying you have to point
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with Cryo and you point the solid.
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- And we're gonna point the solid
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so when the Cryo burns out,
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we're gonna light the solid.
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- Because you don't have
Thrust Vector Control
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on the solid.
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- This one does.
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- Oh, how does that work.
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- So it has a vectorable nozzle,
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so it has it's own actuators that
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can point the nozzle.
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When that's burned out whatever about
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44 or 45 minutes from lift off,
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that's it, we separate the spacecraft
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and it will arrive in its first Perihelion
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out in November.
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And then it will be seven years
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of doing that loop.
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So 24 passes on the sun and about
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every third pass it's
gonna get close enough
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to Venus to affect it's trajectory
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and pull it in closer
and closer and closer.
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- You really, you really live and breathe
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this stuff don't you.
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- That's what we do.
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- No, you do.
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- Oh yeah, sure.
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I love rockets.
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I've been doing rockets my whole life.
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- Really, that's awesome.
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What was your first rocket launch.
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- First professional launch or
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my first launch.
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- First launch.
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- Okay, I was---
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- [Destin] That counts the same to me.
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- Alright, I was nine years old.
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And I'm old enough to have
seen the moon landing.
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So I was pretty stoked by that.
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And so I'm out in the back
of my grandmothers barn
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and I find a case of 80
year old moldy dynamite.
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And I figured there's only
one thing to do with that
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you know so I'm gonna
build rockets out of it.
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- [Destin] Wow.
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- So I took the sticks you know,
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I cut them open with my pen knife,
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I made my own rockets,
and I'm proud to tell you
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that even at nine years
old, some of my rockets
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made it partly into the sky before
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they detonated.
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(laughter)
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- [Destin] That's fantastic.
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- And I got all 10 fingers.
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- [Destin] Now that's the true measure
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right there.
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So I spoke of the scientists involved
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and they told me about Andy here.
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Do you know the backstory there.
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- So Andy's pretty special to this mission
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because it's so hard to get to the sun
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and do a mission like this.
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The original designs
for this type of probe
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are just impractical.
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And this gentlemen Andy he came up
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with the innovative approach,
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the trajectory that we're gonna use,
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that really made this mission possible.
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Without him we would not be standing
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here today talking about this.
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- So we just started roll back right.
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- Yes.
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- [Destin] So I can see
that we're physically moving
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away from that.
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It's very slow.
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How many tons are moving right now?
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- This building weighs 10 million pounds.
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- [Destin] Okay, wow.
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- We're gonna move it about 300 feet.
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- Really.
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Okay, and so is it gonna
go at this velocity
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the whole time.
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- It's actually gonna
speed up a little bit
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in a few minutes.
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- [Destin] Really.
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- But it's not exactly blistering speed
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as you can imagine.
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It's a gentle trip.
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It'll take us about 45 minutes
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to make that 300 foot journey.
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- [Destin] What kinds of things
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are you looking at right now.
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Like, you kind of just understand
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this rocket at this point right.
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- Yes, okay so of course we have
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the big center core and the reason
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you see the Orbital ATK emblem on there
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is because Northrop
Grumman was Orbital ATK
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fabricated that extra third kick station
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we don't normally use
that Parker Solar Probe
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needs for that extra umph of velocity.
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You're seeing these big
horizontal struts here
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those are carrying the loads from
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these side cores mechanically and
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transmitting that into the center core.
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- [Destin] Is there a
dampener there as well.
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- No, no, this is really a rigid
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structural frame that we're looking at.
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And that's actually the cleanest way
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we can do that dynamically and be able
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to steer and control the rocket.
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And each of these cores at full power,
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their throttlable but at full power
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they have the same
engine, same propellants
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and they can put out the same level
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of thrust.
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Together about 2.2 million pounds
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or something a little
over 700,000 pounds each.
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- I'm having an optical
illusion right now.
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I feel like the rocket's moving away
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from us.
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(laughter)
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I really do.
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(mellow guitar music)
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- [Destin] Can you see
that gap right there,
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so they've got inches
of clearance over there.
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So I'm gonna level with you.
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That's a really, really cool rocket okay.
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And it's gonna touch the sun,
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it's gonna be the fastest man made
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object ever in the
history of objects right.
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But what's really, really cool to me is
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Tory Bruno's wife is
also a rocket scientist
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and as they back away, she comes
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to the launchpad with him,
they're having a discussion
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about how it works.
[599]
Like I went and eavesdropped in there
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and they're talking about
the different stages,
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how they work, why they're using solids
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over Cryos in certain---
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like this is a very technical discussion.
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And I really like that, like a lot.
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It's kind of a moment.
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- You caught us--
[613]
- I caught you having a
rocket moment together.
[615]
It was pretty good.
[616]
(laughter)
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so I feel very honored to be where I'm at
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right now.
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This is huge moment in the life
[623]
of many of these people.
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I mean it's a huge moment period
[627]
but like for some people this is decades.
[630]
- Yes, yes well of course for us you know
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we love our rocket and we put a lot of
[634]
blood, sweat and tears in it.
[636]
But the rocket is only
hear for the payload.
[639]
And so when we're launching
a mission like this
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Parker Solar Probe this
is someones life's work,
[645]
and the people who
worked on that spacecraft
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same kind of thing.
[648]
It's the pentacle of their career.
[650]
They've been at it for
at least a dozen years
[652]
many of 'em, so that's a
pretty big responsibility
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and it weighs heavy on our guys.
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(beep)
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- Okay I gotta text from Felipe
[660]
about two weeks after launch.
[661]
That said the trajectory insertion
[662]
of the Delta Force Heavy was so good
[664]
that the Parker Solar Probes first
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trajectory correction maneuver
[667]
dropped to 10 meters per second.
[669]
Which is astounding.
[670]
That means they get to
save a bunch of fuel
[672]
and they just extended the life
[674]
of the mission because
ULA hit the bullseye
[676]
and got the probe exactly where it
[678]
needed to be.
[679]
That's a big deal.
[680]
Because you only get one shot at that.
[681]
And the other thing you
only get one shot at
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is your privacy online.
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[799]
It's a smart thing to do.
[801]
I really like geeking out with rockets
[803]
and this was a really cool opportunity
[806]
to do that.
[807]
Thanks to you ULA for making it happen.
[808]
- [Destin] Tory, thank you.
[809]
- Oh, you bet.
[810]
- [Destin] I mean this is an opportunity
[811]
of a lifetime for me.
[812]
Thank you very much.
[813]
- It was my pleasure.
[814]
- [Destin] I really appreciate that.
[815]
So we'll get out of your hair and
[815]
let you go shoot your rocket.
[816]
If you want to see more of the interviews
[818]
I'll leave that over
on the second channel.
[819]
And feel free to subscribe 'cause we got
[821]
some really cool stuff coming up
[822]
from this place right here.
[824]
I'm Destin, you're
getting Smarter Every Day.
[826]
Have a good one, bye.
[827]
(bells ringing)
[829]
You have a cool job man.
[831]
- Yes I do.
[832]
- [Destin] You really do, I mean that is--
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