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Hey it's me Destin, welcome back to Smarter Every Day

I love rockets

If you've been around this channel, you know that about me

and today is like the best day ever

because we're going to learn how to build rockets.

Just down the road from Huntsville, Alabama

there's a city named Decatur.

And in that city, there is a rocket factory owned by

a company called United Launch Alliance,

and that factory has been cranking out incredibly reliable

rockets for years.

Because these orbital rockets have some of the

same technologies in them as ballistic missiles,

the knowledge about how to build them is protected.

In the United States we have a set of regulations called ITAR

International Traffic in Arms Regulations

Because of ITAR, nobody's going to let you walk

into a rocket plant with a camera and film things.

They can't risk that stuff getting out and breaking the law.

So there has to be an incredible amount of trust

between the parties that want to film things, and the people that own the plant.

Thankfully, I was given the opportunity to build that trust

with ULA, when I went and watched the launch of

the Parker Solar Probe, and I met the CEO of ULA on the launchpad.

If you haven't heard of this guy, Tory Bruno,

then you're in for a treat.

He's a legitimate rocket scientist who know his stuff inside and out.

It was at this launch that Tory and I built trust with each other.

Like, this guy is the real deal.

The tour we're about to go on has never been done on the internet,

Tory literally takes us right up to the line of what he can show us,

and all along the way he's answering my technical questions,

and he's letting me explore the factory.

So here we go, let's take the first ever online tour of

the United Launch Alliance rocket factory in

Decatur, Alabama, with the CEO of ULA.

Tory Bruno.

Okay, we've got Tory, mic'd up now, -Hi!

and you're gonna show me the rockets that are - Yes, yeah

fabricated at this facility? What do we have?

Okay, so we've got an Atlas V on the side,

this is kind of our workhorse, and it's in the

five meter payload fairing configuration.

So that's what we're talking about here,

it also has its SRB's on the side, which is sort of its

maximum lift version.

When it's got all five of those, we call it the beast.

- And this is the Delta IV Heavy, and this is what

you--thank you again, for letting me -Yeah, of course

participate, or at least see the Parker Solar Probe

Yeah, that was fun huh

-And that's fabricated here in Decatur?

Yes, yeah so three core rocket, you know literally

literally three rockets kind of bolted together,

and it is our largest rocket; it's physically the largest rocket

in the world right now,

and it is what we used for Parker Solar Probe.

-And this is what I want to talk about, -Yeaaaaah

this is Vulcan, and this rocket has never flown.

Never flown, not yet.

And you're going to see, the first flight vehicle hardware

in the factory being fabricated when we go in there today.

-Today -Yeah

Okay! -So this is our brand new rocket,

you can think of it as kind of a derivative of those

two in a way, so it'll be large

5.4 meter diameter, so a little bit bigger than Delta,

it can take six SRB's, it's a huge cavernous payload volume for

the spacecraft, and this rocket has 30% more lift capability

than this big three-core monster.

-So when you say six SRB's...

Six of them, yeah. -And that's just to get out of the Earth's gravity well

Yes, right, exactly.

-Can we go see the stuff?

Yeah, let's go see it.

Okay, we're at a rocket factory, let's do it.

-We're gonna peel off to the right here Okay

Okay I'm seeing the grid here

Yeah, so this is a barrel section from the booster over your head,

actually from an Atlas.

And I'm going to walk you down to the end of the factory where

this first gets made; it's the first thing we do

Raw stock comes in the back door,

gets machined, puts this curve in it,

and then we'll walk you all the way through to a completed version.

-That's awesome

Okay, so there's something unique about the north Alabama area here,

correct me if I'm wrong, but there's a little triangle:

there's a nuclear power station,

there's a steel mill,

-Yes

and there's also a rocket factory like in a triangle.

-That's true And then you got a river running between them

-Yup

and so you can bring in steel, you can make a rocket

using the power from the nuclear plant, -Yes

is that why you're here?

That's part of why we're here, but it's

also because of the talent that we have here with

University of Alabama and the other Alabama universities

and the technician programs they have here;

you just get an awesome workforce.

And with the river, which is only a mile from here

down Red Hat Road, we have the dock for our rocket

ship, so we can transport our rockets out to the launchpad.

This is the rocketship Tory's talking about;

ya see? Says so right on the side: "Rocketship.

Rocketship navigates its way through several rivers

up to the Mississippi River, down to the Gulf of Mexico,

and then it heads to whatever pad the rockets will launch from.

You should come back sometime and do the ship.

Yeah, I should ride on the ship. Is that a thing? -Yeah

Can you do that? -Yes that is a thing

Okay we're getting on a golf cart, and

we have to cut cameras because we're going to pass

uh, not "secret stuff", but things we can't film.

Right? -Right

Okay, cutting the camera off

Ok we're on the golf cart, and I've obtained permission

to film straight up so you can't see "that"

which is pretty neat.

Ok so,

I can't talk about that right now, can I

No, we can't show it to you, but I can tell you what it is

That's a Delta payload fairing

so one of the smaller versions of the Delta's payload fairing

and then you're passing by a heat shield here that would

protect the RS-68 engine,

from its own plume during flight.

Ok... this is almost emotional.

I mean, you know what it's like to sit in class and study

this stuff, -Oh yeah, sure

and then...

cause you went to Cal Poly right?

Right.

Yeah, so this is me looking at all the stuff I've learned about

and finally getting to see it.

It's on thing to see it on the pad, but uh

it's almost like a holy experience.

Yeah well, you're inside where it's actually happening,

where it all gets put together.

Okay I'm starting to get the smell of the machine shop,

the manufacturing, the cooling oil, -Yep

smell. -You got it

It's my understanding you're about to show me how to

build a rocket from scratch.

Yes I am.

Okay, excellent, so we're going to the door, right?

Yes we are

Okay this is what I wanted to see, here at ULA:

This is the door.

I can't even get--it's a wide angle lens--so that's the door

where the material comes in, right? -Right

That's where the raw aluminum plate and other materials come in,

and then this is the receiving area,

and as they move that way turn into a rocket.

So we're about to build a rocket by going

that way in the plant.

Exactly.

-Okay, I'm game let's do this.

Alright let's do it.

And this is an active manufacturing facility,

so you're just going to have to deal with the audio,

there's a lot of tools running.

Yeah, sorry about that, but, ya know, building rockets.

It's good

Oh wow, that is...

that is really--can I go touch that?

Yeah yeah, absolutely.

This is a very, very expensive, piece--is that aluminum or stainless?

-That's aluminum Aluminum

Yeah

-And is that fabricated here locally?

-That's imported? No, yeah we buy that from a supplier

and then it's shipped here, comes in through the big door,

if you will--and then we machine it down,

we're going to remove, more than two thirds of the material

while retaining about ninety percent of the strength

-in certain dimensions, right?

And I will show you that, yeah

-Okay, got it

So this is our raw material, and uh, we're going to go

make a rocket.

Okay.

And so, all this is aluminum? That is a-- -All this is aluminum

That's a unique dimension, you normally don't see

plates of aluminum that wide and that long.

No, so this is actually made especially for us in these dimensions,

so that we can turn them into the barrel; the propellant

tanks of the rocket itself.

-Okay, so, so you're tooling up an entire foundry of some type

or a mill, a rolling mill. -A rolling mill.

Okay, gotcha

So I'm going to show you a couple of different things

before we get to the machine,

so starting here with the raw stock of 7000-series aluminum

it'll eventually become a round rocket barrel,

this is just after machining, and I wanted to point this out to you,

because, this is our old style of grid that we machine in

called an isogrid, and you're familiar with what an isogrid is--

-Isogrid, yes

Right? So we have isentropic properties when we do the stress analysis,

and you can see the triangular patterns in there.

That's not actually the ideal pattern for a rocket barrel,

but it is what the analytical tools--the finite element analysis tools available to us

when we designed the Atlas and Delta in the nineties,

were available to us, and that's why we have that pattern.

Vulcan will be better, because the tools are better and you'll see the difference

when we walk down the line.

-I have never thought about that

So literally because in the nineties the FEA analysis could

solve a triangle easily, -Yes

that's why the isogrid is a triangle.

-Exactly I would've never thought that

so, so basically if I understand correctly,

you--can I touch this?

Yeah, touch if you want.

I'm going to ask you that every time -Yeah, that's alright

So basically because you can compute the force coming

in one member, -Yep

to a node and the forces coming out the other member

that's how you arrived at isogrid.

Exactly.

-Okay, fantastic

Yeah it's sort of an interesting thing,

in the real world, how the engineering tools that are available,

dictate the kind of designs that we use.

Got it. What's your safety factor on flying here?

Oh, so it depends on what part of the rocket we're talking about,

anything that would be pressurized when people are around,

it has a higher safety factor

than what is not, but the factors we work with in

flight are anywhere from 1.1, to never really higher than 1.25.

Got it, yes. I mean it's very different than like,

designing a railroad car where your factor of safety might be