The Curious Case of the Upside Down Rocket
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- Опубликовано: 13 июн 2023
- In the video today, we're looking at one of the most momentous rockets in all of history, which was decidedly backwards in its design.
Author: Gilles Messier
Host: Daven Hiskey
Producer: Samuel Avila
Goddard lived long enough to inspect a captured V2 rocket. He was astounded by the progress the Germans made.
Cool! Citation?
A bit of trivia. The V-2 rocket was fueled by the equivalent of Bacardi 151 rum. 75% ethanol, remainder water to cool the combustion chamber, plus oxygen.
I imagine that later in the war, there may have been a problem with fuel diversion...
My favorite anecdote about Robert Goddard was that the Times publicly apologized in that editorial you noted, on the eve of the Apollo 11 landing.
When I was in my early teens I remember reading about using graphite vanes to direct the thrust of a rocket. There were no diagrams and I had no idea what they might look like until today, because I think that's what I saw below the nozzle of an early rocket. I waited 62 years for this!
As a kid growing up in the 60's, I read about Goddard in books like Time Life's book entitled 'Space'. I never knew he labored in obscurity, with no reward during his lifetime for his genius.
Me also.
Goddard was also a pioneer in the development of the Bazooka.
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, not Tchaikovsky.
Super video HH. It must have been so discouraging to labor on in secrecy and solitude trying to avoid the "harpies." Goddard deserves greater recognition than he has. An excellent biography is "Rocket Man: Robert H Goddard and the Birth of the Space Age" by David A. Clary (2003). Just a small correction: Worcester is pronounced "Wuss tah" by the locals. Again, an excellent job!
In the UK they say wusstah or wusster but I think in the US they pronounce their's as he spoke. Outside of the UK those countries that have adopted British town and city names tend to change the pronunciation. In Australia for example Exmouth is said as it looks unlike in England where it is said as Exmuth. 💜
@@bunyipdragon9499 In this case roberthess3939 is correct, the local pronunciation is "wusster". I found this out first hand when I visited the city in 1979 for some corporate training.
@@sincerelyyours7538 yes I say wusster - I spelt it both ways to help with pronunciation. I'm english and I've been raised on my beloved wusster (wusta) for over 50yrs. I was very happy to find it in Oz when I moved here and have had many laughs getting people to say it correctly 💜
Goddard was a personal hero of mine when I was a kid. In high school and college I was designing and launching VHA rockets (probably illegally) from a horse pasture in Oregon. We used one end of the barn as our block house. One of my early designs shot up about 50 feet and created an explosion so loud that our nearest neighbors who lived over a hill about a 1/4 mile away called to ask if we were blasting stumps. (Which was actually a thing back then. But when you were, you were supposed to notify the county and your neighbors of the time and date of the blasting.)
In the US you can do this unregulated. I think the US is the only place. There is a rocket society that encourages education and safe practice to keep it this way so that it doesn't have the problems of HAM
@@bloviatingbeluga8553 I just learned something, thanks. I had read somewhere LONG ago that VHA altitudes were off limits without FAA authorization, but you are correct, no regulations! I just read where a rocket hobby group sent one up 72 miles which is technically "space". Far out!
Great video. You just need to check pronunciation guides for people/place names (Worcester = Wooster like rooster or Woister like oyster, depending on where in MA you're from; Tsiolkovsky ≠ Tchaikovsky; Peenemünde = Peen-eh-moond-eh, at least in English).
@davidg5898 - As an American I am frequently embarrassed by most Americans' complete disregard for the pronunciation of foreign place names. Moreover, many Americans demonstrate a depth of English language incompetence what would evoke deep shame in most 6th grade English teachers.
Pictures are all over the place.
Really interesting - thanks! I'm glad that Goddard was finally given due recognition, even having a major NASA facility named after him.
But I still don't understand how, even into the 20th century, so many people failed to understand how rockets can work in a vacuum. A simple thought experiment should quickly resolve this for any doubter. Imagine standing on the moon, where there is no air, and firing a rifle. Few people would assert that there would be no felt recoil just because there's no air for the bullet to "push against". Obviously you'd feel the rifle "kick", just as hard as it would on the earth, because the bullet is being pushed down the barrel as it accelerates, producing "thrust". Then just help the doubter understand that a rocket engine is really not much different, but instead of pushing on a solid lead pellet, it's pushing on a continual stream of particles, namely the high-velocity exhaust gasses. In a real sense, a gun is a form of rocket engine. (Not surprising that the New York Times could get this wrong, though!)
In the Nickelodeon animated series Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius, the titular character has a robotic dog named Goddard.
I mean it always made some sense to me as a kid, C of G was below thrust, and would heat the fuel vaporizing it so it wouldn't need a pump as much, plus it would pull the fuel tanks, vs push them so wouldn't crush a cylindrical tank - section.... lol but that's science what might seem logical at first can be wrong.
I baffled a bunch of onlookers with a sugar engine rocket. I stretched the rules and made rocket a little under a meter. The rocket took off rather anemically. But kept going up. It looked fake. I knew it would burn as it flew up because it was made from cardboard. So, I placed different fins at different locations as the bottom burned off. It went crazy in the air. The rocket came down in flames, but it was a successful flight. It actually got really high.
If I have learned anything over the course of my life, and thru the vast amount of history that I've read, never waste your time reading the New York Times. It seems to always find itself on the wrong side of facts at an impressive rate.
Excellent presentation!
So inspiring!
Goddards work, and the comments in the new york times is a good example why censorship of ideas that conflict with mainstream science is so dangerous.
Censorship kills, oppose all censorship
Goddard's work didn't conflict with mainstream science though.
The comments in the NYT were just made by idiots.
The twisty history of rocketry is amazing.
wonderful
He did a PhD in one year!?
The problem is never that someone should disagree with the hypothesis of a theoretical physicist's unproven (scale) models. It's that those letters of dissent assume a position of omnipotence build upon a foundation of arrogance with bricks made of condescension and a mortar of sarcasm. It seems that it is always the case that those accepting only the conventional wisdom of the contemporary era ascend to the apex of a hill while kicking wildly at anyone attempting to surpass it's summit.
Roswell, New Mexico so that's why the aliens landed in Roswell in 1947 they were looking for Dr. Goddard!
Mark Twain : The man with an idea is a fool, until the idea succeeds. One of the first books my parents gifted me had a chapter about
Robert Goddard. That book still remains in my modest library.
Me hearing another dude: “where Simon?! What did you do with Simon????” (Narrator did wonderful.)
Warchester....Wooostar ITS PROUNOUCED WOOOSTAR!
(5:47) Jeez. It sounds like the Twitter experience of his day! 😉😜
Worcester- Woos-ter
Was always weird to me when I worked there 😂
Woo-stah if in Massachusetts
I pronounce it more Wuu-sta
Yeah, because spelling has absolutely no bearing on pronunciation. 🙄 This is why white people struggle with names like Ocklawaha, Kissimmee, and Okeechobee. Clumsy, fat tongued fools.
WAR CHESTER SHER
Yeah, it's Woo-ster, but apart from that, a great video!
When I worked there; everyone kinda said it like Royce, but with a W. Woycster
In the greater Boston area of MA we pronounce it more like wuss-tuh
@Rich Fahey My fiance is from Amherst, so she still pronounces her r's, so she drilled Woo-ster into my head. Same as Leominster, her birthplace. I may not be the sharpest bulb in the drawer, but I've learned that much.
@@sbcee2220 Originally from Brockton area... we say woos-tah.
But, we also pronounced Woburn as woo-ben, so what do we know.
You need to take photos of yourself in the same positions as Simon, so your thumbnail will be complete
Your beard looks great. Must be using that beard blaze oil.
Good video! However the claim about the inverted rocket configuration being unstable is not exactly correct. The bottom tankage does act as a fin providing some corrective torque if the rocket attempts to yaw or pitch during flight. This might or might not be enough to stabilize the rocket, but it can be. The bigger problem is when the thrust terminates, the center of mass moves up a little because the fuel is spent, but the center of pressure moves up a lot because the engine at the nose now becomes a drag point on a leaver arm making the whole thing unstable.
Cool
Seriously for 60 years I always wondered why it looked so dang weird, the Goddard rocket.
What does your thumbnail have to so with the video?
Father of the V2/Saturn 5. Bravo. 👏 👏
Great video, thanks!
Minor nit: It’s Tsiolkovsky, not Tchaikovsky.
Fun experiment: Drop a 50kg bag of feathers and a 50kg cannon ball off the top of a building at the exact same time. Which will hit the ground first?
Answer below:
You might have thought they'd hit the ground at the same time and if so you're wrong. The ball will strike first as the bag of feathers has a higher drag coefficient, the skin and form drag of the bag vs. the ball, thus making the bag fall more slowly. The two would only land simultaneously if in a vacuum.
43 years later, man walks on the moon 🌕
The ONLY rocket built "upside down?" No, von Braun and his Verein für Raumschiffahrt (VfR), with Johannes Winkler, Willy Ley and Hermann Oberth, among other German rocket enthusiasts, built several, one of which which they called Mirak and another called Repulsor. Apparently they, too, were drawn in by the pendulum idea.
Interestingly enough, the pendulum idea of the rocket motor at the top actually isn´t without merit! A powerful rocket to travel to, say another star, means the spaceship must be built sturdy to not be crushed by the forces. This means more mass, which means more propellant, which means more mass etc. If the spaceship can hang behind on a wire (think Podracers or Avatar), you can get rid of all that support mass and reach way higher speeds!
❤
Charles Lindbergh was not the first person to fly the Atlantic. He wasn't even the second. He was closer to the twentieth.
Alcock and Brown made the trip in 1919. The main reason people thought of Lindbergh was because he was a shameless self promoter
Yes, that is true, but Lindbergh was the first person to fly across the Atlantic solo on a non-stop flight.
True. But his real accomplishment was flying continent to continent. The previous flight had been from Islands to other islands, such as Newfoundland to Ireland in the case of Alcock and Brown. Lindbergh was notable because he won a prize of $25,000, (in 1927 dollars. Quite a pile of change then), and he hit his peak popularity just as media (radio) was becoming a national and international campfire. Perhaps America's first pop icon. He also succeeded just a few weeks after the French sponsored attempt by Nungesser and Coli had flown off into oblivion, heightening the emotional stakes of Lindbergh's success.
If the rocket is counteracting gravity then, as far as the rocket is concerned, there is no gravity for a pendulum to work. The propellant tanks provided an air resistance and acted like fins, less efficiently of course, and depended on where the CG is and thrust is, I think the aerodynamics of the Goddard rocket are more complicated than it looks.
I need a deep dive into "operation paperclip"!
Interesting video, but the name of the great Russian space pioneer is Tsi-ol-kov-sky, with four syllables. Константи́н Эдуа́рдович Циолко́вский - Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky.
For the record the Wright Bros were not the first to make a heavier than air flight, that happened in France ten years before the Kitty Hawk flight. What made the Kitty Hawk flight unique was it attempted to control directional flight with a form of wing warping by changing the shape of the fabric covered wings. It proved very unstable and was abandoned for the conventional flap and aileron setup use in modern aircraft.
They were the first, crashes don't count.
They were the first to meet all the requirements of a successful heavier than air flight, this has been gone over a million times including why other claims are disqualified from being able to lay claim to it.
@@dukecraig2402 actually in your mind only. Thats the thing about flight, it was all built on the success and failures of those who went before. The Wright flyer was a desaster and the brothers admitted. It didn't fly as intended And thats why nobody else used the wing warping system to control direction. Learn your history.
@@jimdavison4077
Learn your history, I know about their method of wing warping, and although ailerons were a better way of controlling roll the fact is it worked well enough at the time that they made the first successful heavier than air flight, and it isn't just "in my mind" it's in the mind of every professor in every history department in the world.
Here's what you need to learn, what the Wright's managed to solve what no one else did before them was the problem of adverse yaw, that's what gave them the ability to control their craft so they made the first successful heavier than air flight.
Try learning REAL history instead of some nonsense RUclips malarkey.
@@dukecraig2402 sorry but no, its not what every history professor or teacher says either. Its what they say in the uS but US history is mostly made up BS anyway. Think about it they still try to pass of the tyrant king story in schools in the US when if you knew anything about British history or the monarch you would know the king signed away all right to rule forever in return for the recognition of his claim to the thrown. That was in the first decade of the 1700s. Half a century later the lying framers were fooling people with that tyrant king story. Same deal about taxes as they went up after independence. The forst heavier than air powered flight happened in France in 1890 using of all things a steam engine.
@@dukecraig2402 never got it out of you tube, its actually in several encyclopedias if you got your nose out of US state approved textbooks. The US was acrually not first at many things when you remove ideas already established in immigrants minds. Sorry to burst your bubble.
Imagine that, the New York times was as wrong then as it is now. Some things never change.
Ha! I was thinking the same thing.
Tsiolkowsky, not Tchaikovsky.
Phuc yea
A rocket on the moon... And Roswell...
12:14 That's a memo modern flat earthers have not received.
There is a high school in Roswell NM named after him.
Was Worcester pronounced Warchester back then?
"woo-ss-ter" MA
Worcester is actually pronounced like wooster. I grew up in Worcester, NY.
Well since it's Mass, it'd be "Woos-tah." ;)
😀
In defense of the NY Times, et al, Newton's 3rd Law was a rather recent develoment in physics having only been established 200 years previously.
Stop calling people by their last names. Call them by their first names. Vrooooom. Up, up, & away be go. Let 'er rip, Bobby.
Goddard was one of my childhood icons.
The V2 is 90% Goddard, 5%, German, 4%Wrong, 1%VonBraun being extremely generous. Propaganda not engineering =All mouth, no trousers
He ate some gluten.
"Worcester" is not pronounced "war-chester."
It's pronounced "wuss-ter," with the "u" sounding as in "push."
It's fascinating to realize that while Einstein was working on General relativity, Heisenberg and co. were inventing quantum physics, there were at the same time people calling themselves "physicists" - and working on some real projects it seems - that couldn't get the basic stuff right. Things that nowadays fail you on an exam in Physics 101 or even in high school. Ah, those were the days!
In school I learnt that Pluto was a planet. I would now fail that exam question.
Knowledge moves forward. Science isn't necessarily about being right, it's having a basis for your belief and being open to changing that belief if new evidence comes along.
"Worcester" is pronounced "Woostah"
Because Massachusetts.
"Despite it's istoric status" my god... keep saying historic that way and we may actually have someone to justify "an historic"
Worcester is pronounced wooster, like booster with a w.You could have checked, there's this thing called the internet.
Worcester is pronounced Wister
Meanwhile in africa
You obviously do not undersatnd the basics of physics.
How does a bottle rocket work ?
So........
It’s pronounced wus-ter