Amateur Rocketeers Reach For The Stars - KQED QUEST

a KQED HD production in their own personal race for space amateur rocketeers are punching holes in the sky as they launch homemade rockets into the atmosphere today's civilian rocket builders are pushing the envelope of what can be accomplished in model rocketry from the simplest kits you can buy it your local hobby shop - 30 foot long 1,000 pound fully loaded homemade rockets that can go supersonic and reach the edge of space rocket ears are advancing our understanding of Science Engineering and Technology all while having a total blast an engineer and venture capitalists who serves on the boards of companies like Tesla Motors and SpaceX Steve Jurvetson is one of Silicon Valley's most successful business leaders he's also one of the thousands of amateur rocket builders who are completely hooked by day I'm a venture capitalist investing in start-up companies that are trying to change the world but what I really love on weekends is launching rockets bye-bye rocket I hope you fly well half a century ago at the beginning of the space race model rocketry took off as kids dreamed going to the moon Apollo was inspirational for people like Wow look what we can do if you apply yourself in engineering and it's interesting the first model rocketry efforts came out around that time and there's since been 500 million hobby rocket launches in America 500 million one of the main draws of the hobby is that kids of all ages can start small and work their way up so this would be a typical example of an STS rocket and the whole thing's very very light and takes a small motor and goes up maybe 200 feet the rocket motors come in a variety of sizes each increases in this case a doubling of power so this is about the size of the biggest sd's rocket motor you can get it's called an e motor G motor bigger still now this is the biggest motor you can buy over the Internet no matter who you are to advance to larger rockets and bigger motors rocket builders need to get certified for clearance by a sanctioned rocket club then you get at the high-power rocketry this is about the largest motor you can buy and fly in California but you can go farther in Nevada this would be an N motor Nancy sighs so it's huge right only if I can get it off I put it maybe an off to the distance here there it is well this a few times in the desert this summer it is spectacular with advancements in materials in technology today's civilian rocket builders can reach levels of altitude and sophistication that only a NASA scientist could have imagined that generation ago new bleeding edge designs contain complex flight computers GPS telemetry high-definition cameras and more but no amount of Technology and rocketry has broken Murphy's Law what can go wrong will in rocketry as in entrepreneurship if you haven't littered the playing field with some failures somebody's not pushing handle it's not realistic to assume you won't fail what I failed most often is not deploying my parachute and so you lose everything the whole rocket just drills into the ground for obvious safety reasons you can't just go to your neighborhood park and fire off a high-powered rocket rocket clubs like loon are based in Livermore California organize sanctioned events in expansive places like Moffett Field in Sunnyvale or here at a fallowed farm in California's Central Valley about 15 years ago where I saw sign hanging in a hobby shop in Fresno and said they were having high power rocket launches as soon as I drove up some big giant rocket was taking off and my first thought was that can't possibly be legal then I got involved in it it's a lot of fun the technology's come a long way actually these bigger motors now use propellant call it a morning for chlorate which is the same solid propellant that they use in the space shuttle rooster so you can you can go a lot higher on a relatively small motor this is a high power rocket motor this is an M 13 15 this will take a rocket like this which weighs 50 pounds and probably put it up about 6,000 feet hopefully it all comes back in one piece two or three hundred dollars for okay so you want to get that back and we're just gonna stand this up now here and we're gonna put the parachute in put both sheets in put the nose cone on and we'll be ready to go in five five to ten minutes the size and motor is the limit of what can be flown in California to get bigger you have to go to the middle of nowhere Black Rock Desert Nevada ladies got like a welcome air ready the Black Rock Desert I'm here to conduct the safety briefing my name is wedge Oldham I'll be serving as a flight director on this operation we want all the people that showed up with all the limbs and fingers that they came with to go home with those same amount of limbs and fingers the supersonic rockets fired here needs special FAA and military clearances the sky needs to be open when you put a vehicle through the stratosphere to encourage civilian space exploration video game developer John Carmack created the hundred thousand foot altitude challenge a ten thousand dollar prize goes to the first team to launch a rocket 100 thousand feet high and retrieve it in tap one team led by record-breaking rocket builder Derek deville was able to develop and build a contender in a matter of months their 14-foot rocket named quake uses a cue class motor carrying nearly 150 pounds of solid rocket propellant on its maiden flight in September 2011 it hit a top speed of 2,200 miles per hour that's 3 times the speed of sound and reached an estimated altitude of 121 thousand feet nearly twenty three miles hot also launching from the playa is the next generation of hotshot rocket scientists a team of eight high school students arrives with one goal in mind through an accelerated education program they've designed built and are ready to launch a 30-foot rocket carrying a real-world scientific payload the concept of civilian exploration and the role that rocketry plays in that represents a huge opportunity we basically tested the ignition system Thomas Atchison heads rocket Mavericks a non-profit educational organization based at Moffett Field the group is establishing a space program to inspire students to pursue science technology engineering and math how do you provide through one activity and the investment in one activity abroad opportunity to get exposed to as many of the stem areas as you possibly can particularly in the areas of Technology only with with rocketry and space exploration you really reach a much broader cross-section of all the stem areas and so that's kind of why we think it's it's the key way to really teach STEM education so you're going to have to add a propellant through the mentorship of the rocket Mavericks team these students from the California Academy of Math & Science in Carson California designed and built a complex two-stage clustered rocket and it's solid fuel propulsion system there are three motors in the first stage or booster and another motor in the second stage which will blast the rocket to full altitude success is contingent on all the systems working perfectly there's a lot riding on this what makes this program special and really kind of unique is that this program puts the pressure of a real mission with time and constraints on a team of kids to learn those skills to work together to accomplish something that they couldn't accomplish by themselves Rocket Mavericks recently opened a new Space Center in Antioch California and is hoping to use rocketry to inspire scientific discovery in Bay Area High School's and beyond back in the desert the students hope to accomplish more than just launching a rocket their mission is to deliver a sensitive scientific payload to about 100,000 feet what we were trying to do is answer a fundamental question which is how far off the surface of the earth does life exists we really don't know you really can only look up to about 65 70,000 feet in the atmosphere the atmosphere goes to almost 320 thousand feet so for the vast majority of our atmosphere it's unreachable and unaccessible so we put this program together to do something we call bioprospecting to try to determine off the planet's surface how far life exists is this like the real deal is it gonna happen the same the students rocket hits speeds of mach 2.8 and soared to over 100,000 feet to successfully complete its mission that it's not that they all become rocket scientists that's really not what it's about it's more about the complex systems the systems engineering using those skills and working with people to accomplish greater things I think that really drives me for what the students do then necessarily being a rocket scientist though you know a couple of them actually put something on the moon well maybe I'll feel pretty good about that Edwin Hubble once said man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure science these rocket explorers further their own understanding of the world and in doing so take the human spirit onward and upward you

Channel: KQED

Views: 727,178

Rating: 4.8188915 out of 5

Keywords: science, rocket, space

Id: nurJm0XkU7I

Length: 11min 29sec (689 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 25 2012