It's not Rocket Science
Yes, as a matter of fact, it is.
posted by dag at 11/16/2005 04:43:00 PM
November 16, 2005
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9 Comments:
One of yours?
Nope, that one was definitely the lowest bidder.
HAHA! So it's not supposed to be loop-de-looping? I thought that was a feature.
I've seen a fairly good documentary on the space race. Early attempts often looked just like this, and always had plenty of cameras aimed at the rockets to document it. This resulted in great footage for the documentary.
Here's a nice timeline, with many failures listed.
World, that link is a great space race reference! Just wait till the next one gets fully underway.
k, the loopdy thing is bad. Well, unless it's a foreign rocket..
I was amazed by it - for some reason I thought it took a good decade or two, when it was really just a few years of full-speed rocketry.
Wait, that's not right. It was a few decades, but look at how much was done in the first few years alone. Summary of the first two years:
launch launch launch launch test test crash launch crash crash crash launch crash crash crash crash
I'd love to see a counterpart cross reference of the R&D/S&T aspect of it all as well in a single place such as that link.
The launches (even the failed ones) represent the ideas that came to fruition. For every one idea that gets to the prototype stage, there are 100 that never made it beyond the drawing board.
There are bit and pieces of them all around, but most of that stuff unfortunately gets filed in the round bin dooming later generations of designers to repeat the same mistakes and re-learn the lessons already painstakenly learned.
Nevertheless, I'd love to design those things. When I was nearing the end of engineering school I talked to a Lockheed recruiter. It turns out they don't want you if you'd rather not build the war type of missiles. It makes sense, but is somewhat sad. Now I find myself designing HVAC systems. Certainly interesting work, but it's not, um, rocket science. Ah, the path not taken...
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