Adam Savage Admires The History of Rocket Engines

[Music] thank you hey everybody Adam Savage one of my favorite places in the world the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum specifically I'm at the udvar-hazi center and I'm walking down a row filled with rocket engines this is oft repeated sort of Canard in a building like this that it is a testament and it's true it's a testament to human Ingenuity and hundreds of thousands of person hours of Ingenuity and problem solving but when I'm looking at an aisle like this which is a rocket engine after rocket engine I realized that like each one of these things obsessed a whole group of people for the better part of a decade like a thousand people went to work every day for years and years trying to solve problems with this rocket and they execute it and they use it and they learn what they need from it they move on to the next one probably four thousand people go to work every day obsessed with this thing I don't know what the numbers are but you get my point each one of these things is a project that took over a period of the lifespan of each of the engineers and scientists and contractors putting that thing together that's what I think when I walk through an aisle like this every one of these things is a brick is a step on the ladder to space no that's a nice metaphor yeah each one of these things is a step of the ladder to space there's one I want to show you here this is a falcon missile but the kind of missile it is isn't as important as the fact that you can see there's hundreds and hundreds of pieces of string glued to it and those are put on it for a really specific reason so that they can put it in a wind tunnel or launch it and film it and learn by how these strings move what the air currents on the side of it there might be vortices that occur because of some of the way the fins are shaped that they can only learn about by having something attached to the side of the actual rocket and I love this as a solution for visualizing the air currents around it because it feels like a mythbuster solution it feels kind of ludicrous like if your kids said I think we should glue a bunch of string to this rocket to see its air currents you might be like that's a great idea it is a great idea like that is how you visualize that kind of thing every time I come here things like this physicalize the incredible process of getting to space in a way that nothing else could these museums are so important for doing that they allow us to like wrap our arms around this stuff in order to understand it and at a really physical and personal level yeah I just wanted to see that I've been here four or five times in the last few years and every time I take pictures of this case and I was doing the same this time and then I realized looking at it that what it shows here which is all these sort of basic pieces of astronaut equipment from Gemini and from Mercury and then from Apollo is that I actually have in my collection replicas of every single thing in this case uh I have a replica of an a7l this is an a7lb suit worn by James Irwin for Apollo 15. uh I have an a7l the predecessor to this suit has slightly different connectors but I've got the lunar extra vehicular visor assembly the Leva here I've got one of those and I'll tell you something that took me way too long to figure out on my own which is the bubble helmet and the gold visor helmet are not two separate helmets I know they look like two separate helmets but the gold visor one bolts over this one yeah I can't even describe how how long it took me to figure that out and how like out when I finally did but this is the Brilliance is the Apollo suits were a modular system and you could just take this and bolt it onto here and you had this there was no new solution for figuring how to seal that to the suit it just went on top of that I've got two pairs of Apollo gloves these are all replicas that I have but it there's something to me that's very satisfying that I could put this case I could put a case together that looked almost identical to this and in fact maybe I will I was taking pictures of the Mercury boots specifically because I love these Mercury boots and I'm going to try and replicate them I'm reworking my Mercury suit right now and I looking at these I finally feel like I think I'm going to take on the cobbling of my Mercury boots I'm going to make them from scratch I'm going to find I I didn't intend to talk about this in this video but once I like caught these out of the corner of my eye realized it's totally on my mind I'm gonna make my own Mercury boots for this next suit Excursion even the Mercury gloves I replicated those wrist collars last year on a tested video we'll include a link in the description but yeah every last thing here I have got one of except for well let's see my my Gemini era helmet does not look like either of these two helmets so it's the only one that I'm not quite spot on yeah I just thought you'd want to know I could make this whole case I never get tired of visiting the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum I always find something new to lock onto and the tail on display of human Ingenuity is always inspiring if you'd like to get a better sense of what it's like to stand in front of a space shuttle or visit the space suit conservation lab we also filmed this in virtual reality as part of the tested VR series you can watch this right now either through the tested VR app or on metaquest TV links and instructions are in the description below thanks you guys for watching

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 161,466

Keywords: tested, adam savage smithsonian, adam savage, smithsonian museum, national air and space museum, smithsonian air and space museum, adam savage visits national air and space museum restoration hangar, adam savage national air and space museum, smithsonian museum air and space, adam savage tested, adam savage air and space, rockets, aviation, spacesuits, helmets

Id: cNOHiUJauwc

Length: 6min 11sec (371 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 23 2022