How rockets are Made. Rocket factory tour. United Launch Alliance.
Five... Four.... Three... Two... One... 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 rocket ship 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 aluminium 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 iso grid, and you're
familiar with what an iso grid is-- -Iso grid, 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. -ExactlyI 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 iso grid. 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 7 or 8. Oh no, yeah. And a factor of safety is, if you can
compute the stress that the thing will break at, you design it to 1.1 times
that Right, 10% more load carrying capability, and really a factor of safety is
really a factor of ignorance. You have a factor of safety because you're not
truly sure what might happen to it in the field, so you give yourself just a
little bit more.
And you talked about rail, big tractors are another one; we
have big factors of safety like 7 times, 12 times, when we do rockets, we like
to keep it closer to like just 10%, maybe 20%, cause we can't afford the
weight. Got it, because every every 1000th of an inch that you put in this
webbing here, over the course of a huge part like this, you're talking tons on
the whole rocket. Yes -Okay Exactly, and this is a booster plate, and so every
seven pounds of that costs me a pound of spacecraft. -So how long does it take
to machine that? You have the tools here to machine this isogrid. Yeah this is
about a two day operation altogether. Is this curled like a potato chip in this
direction, or in this direction? In the long direction. -In the long direction
And you're going to see that operation as we walk to the other end. -Nice
That's what the twenty-five-ton brake presses are for.
Yeah, cause if you're curling along the long direction, you
require a tremendous amount of force, and you have to have alignment to keep it
straight during the bend. Exactly-Okay Is that a pressure vessel? I mean would
that hold pressure or would there be a liner on the inside? It is a pressure
vessel, but actually on the booster because it's liquid propellant, most of the
pressure is at the bottom just coming from hydraulic head. We only have a few
PSI of gas on top to keep the propellant down against the outlet feeding it
into the engine. Got it. This is not something I expected to see. These guys
are--they appear to be putting--are they washing? What are they doing? They
are. So the first thing that happens to those big plates, is we plane them--we
make them flat--and so these guys are going over an operation that's just been
done, they're cleaning it up, they're looking for any imperfections, and what
you're going to see in the factory that I think is really cool; you know we're
building rockets we're at the pinnacle of technology, and you're going to see
high tech robotic operations, but mixed in you're going to also see
craftsmanship, with people who are very skilled, and have great attention to
detail like these guys.
They're going to go
over every inch of that thing and make sure that the automated machine that
planed it, didn't leave any features we don't want. So if like a piece of the
tool broke or something like that-Exactly Shattered, whatever.
Yeah so, are these
your fly-cutters here?
Yeah, basically end mills, some of them are side mills, but
yes. Gotcha, am I allowed to look at this fly cutter? Yeah yeah, go ahead,
sure. -Wow Isn't that cool? I love machining It's a secret passion of mine Yeah
me too So you went to Alabama, right? -I did So do you guys do a lotta sorta
machine shop time in your engineering degree? -Not a whole lot, but we do take
a class or two, for my undergrad I did that. But my dad had an old lathe and
mill in the garage when I was growing up.
-CoolYeah that's cool stuff The other thing I'll share with
you, you can see all that flow down there, we actually recover all these chips
so even though we're going to take the majority of the material away by
machining it off--subtractive manufacturing--we capture all of it, we send it right
back to the supplier and it comes back to us in a plate a month later. -That's
awesome That, is that coolant? That's coolant but it's mostly water.
Mostly water, so it's
capturing the chips. That's a tremendous amount of water flow! Yeah, well,
chips are heavy. [Both chuckle] It's hard to get a scale for that. It's hard to
get a scale for that, but that is a lot of fluid. Oh, there's a whole river of
coolant there. -Oh yeah, you can see it Are you looking for places where the
tooling broke? No we're looking for chips or, debris that might be on it, we
only have about a 5000th of a thickness, -Right So, a small chip would be
outside of the tolerance zones. -Right Thank you very much, my name's Destin.
-Jeff Nice to meet you Jeff. Nice to meet you That's cool, the human story is
what's really cool to me, that's amazing. -Me too Here's one that, uh, I think
this guy's actually running. So you can see way down there where the cutting
head is, These are actually the plates for Vulcan flight two, -Really the second
Vulcan that'll go. So you know what we outta do is we outta, like, steal you a
chip down there, so you'll have a chip from the Vulcan rocket when it goes to
space. -Can I,
can I stick on in my
pocket?
Yeah. -Ok, I'm gonna--It's a little sharp, be careful. -I'll
be careful, I'll take a little one Nothing to see here It's okay, you be
careful. A chip from Vulcan, here's your chip. Guard it with your life.
-Alright we're in trouble but don't tell anybody We're in trouble but don't
tell anybody, Tory Bruno said it was okay if I stuck a chip in my pocket. So,
these machine are CNC, correct? Yes. Okay and, are these specially made
machines, or because usually you, you don't plane a surface that-They were,
yeah wide.-No, generally when you're in this kind of factory you're going to
see tooling that comes from big tooling manufacturers, but it has been designed
especially for this application. so all of this is custom stuff. -Really -So
for example, the head here it probably normal, but the ways on the machine, this
is incredibly long for a mill.
Yes, exactly, very very long, and very large. -GotchaVery,
ya know, big width. That lets us do more than one plate at a time. -So if one
of these machines go down, what does that do to you? That would be a big
impact, but fortunately we have more than one, so we would always still have
the other machines running. And so what would happen is we'd get it fixed and
then we would catch up on an off-shift. -Because I've kept up with your launch
record, and you always meet schedule,
is it because you have redundancy
built in to this part of the process?
That is part of it. So yes, this factory was actually built
with the idea in mind of building as many as forty rockets a year, and so we
have so much capacity, it's easy for us to kind of make up for little
challenges like that along the way, cause nowadays you fly maybe twelve or
fifteen times a year tops. -Right, okay. So you're not at capacity. No, not
even close.
-But you want to be, this is a commercial for that. Yes we
do, yeah we do. Okay so that moment right there where Tory Bruno is joking
about the capacity of his rocket plant; it reminds me of a very specific moment
in an audio book I love called Seven eves. Now the beautiful thing about
Smarter Every Day being sponsored by Audible, is I can use moments like that to
go to Nashville and introduce you to someone I've been wanting to meet for a
really long time.
Okay so we're going to drive a couple hours away, and we're
going to meet a lady named Mary Robinette Kowal. She was the narrator for Seven
eves by Neil Stephenson, and she did an amazing job, listen to the first line
of the book: "The moon blew up without warning, and for no apparent
reason." Let's go talk to Mary Robinette about this book. What a cool
place to meet someone for the first time. I'm Destin, you doing alright? Yeah
I'm doing great, nice to meet you!-Good to meet you, you doing ok? Okay, this
is Mary Robinette Kowal-Hi! who is an amazing narrator of audio books. -Thanks You
are! I've spent, like, well over twelve hours with you, mostly in a tractor but
that's another story, but, the book that I want to tell people about is called
"Seven eves" by Neil Stephenson. And this looks like it was a
challenging book to narrate. It was more than a little bit challenging, it's,
uh, technically completely accurate, it's got this huge international cast, so
basically something hits the moon--they never figure out what it is shatters
it, and that causes them to have to get off the planet real darn fast, because
pieces of the moon are going to start raining down, and causing destruction for
five thousand years. Mass destruction-Mass destruction! This is why I wanted to
do it on this video, because Tory Bruno is talking about building more rockets,
but you've also written a book yourself, Calcu-- You've written many books, but
there's one in particular that's similar to Seven eves,
"The Calculating
Stars", yeah I slam an asteroid into Washington, D.C. in 1952 which kicks
off the space program, fast! Also building a lot of rockets, a lot fast.-A lot
of rockets There you go, so go get one of these two books, she's kind of
downplaying that a little bit you've won the Hugo Award, the Locus Award, and
the Nebula. That is correct. For that book, that's a big deal to win all
three.-It's three Go get her books, [URL] Which one would you recommend? Seven eves.
Seven eves? I'm going to recommend your book even though I haven't read it, I'm
guessing its' going to be amazing It's called? "The Calculating
Stars"-The Calculating Stars Okay, that's it, let's go back and build more
rockets with Tory Bruno. Here we go: Yeah so if anybody needs their own
personal rocket, Tory's your guy. Oh yeah, just let me know. So you remember we
were looking at iso grids down there and we were looking at those Delta panels,
so if you look at this panel that's being machined, you can see that they're
rectangles.
So this is an ortho grid, which is not symmetric, but we're able to do that now, because the
engineering analysis tools are better. And so Vulcan switches to ortho grid,
takes about half the amount of time to manufacture, and these panels will
actually be stronger. so as I look along the orothogrid here, so you're gonna
break it along the long side so this is gonna be a really long skinny potato
chip looking thing.-Exactly So what happens when you're breaking along that
line? Because you have a section in the middle of the webbing That's gonna have
the most stress Yes But along the longitudinal webbing you're gonna have, it's
gonna be difficult there. So actually the way the break process works is we'll
bring it in flat, and as we break it, we're moving just a small amount of
material each time and we roll the part in and out, so the amount of strain and
work hardening that we get is actually very uniform across that width -Okay.
Got it. But the issue that you brought up is one of the reasons why that's done
by people. It's a hand operation. So there's no CNC on the curving of the brake
press, it's all craftsmanship.-Really? That's amazing. So, so these are Vulcan?
Yes, these are Vulcan panels these panels are going to space. -Wow, it's got a
lubricant on it, it feels like. From the machining; from the machining
process.-Got it.
-And so, the orthogrid, just looking at it, the webbing
looks thinner, so it looks like it's much more light-weight. It is, yes. Are
you allowed to tell me a percentage? I can't give you the number yet,-Okay ask
me next year.-Okay, I'll do that But it is absolutely lighter weight and
stronger than the old isogrid design. And it takes half as long to make. -Why
does it take less time to make? You can see how much simpler that pattern is,
So the CNC machine has more straight runs in a simpler pattern, and it just...
it's that much faster to machine. So those are fancy space saw horses? Yes they
are, yeah. [Both chuckle] So these are the panels that have been machined,
they've been cleaned up a little bit. And they're getting ready to go into
these 25-ton brake presses, bump presses in order to potato chip them, up into
a curve. -Okay, those presses right there? Those presses right there. -Okay, so
I'm noticing that there's no hydraulic pressure in the center of the press,
There's just a really... it's a strong back.-Right It's a strong back.
-What is the technical term for it? Strong back.-Is it really?
Yeah!-Okay, awesome So, so, can I look at this and then look at that?
Absolutely.-Okay am I allowed to walk over there? Yeah. So you can see that
these guys actually have a little bit of curvature along their length; we're
going to actually take that out. That helps up form the curvature along this
axis, more evenly. So it's sort of an intermediate manufacturing step, if you
will. -Is it done on purpose, or is it a function of stress relief? It is done
on purpose.-Oh okay, gotcha. Of course this is, again, isogrid.-Isogrid, got
it. So this is Atlas V? Right.-Okay So at some point you have internal stresses
in the material.-Yes Do you have an oven here to anneal? No, we let them do
what's called "artificial aging of aluminum," so 7000 series will do
that, so we're going to put a certain amount of work hardening in here, and we
like that--we actually like the properties that gives us and then what
the--sort of--room temperature artificial aging does, is even that out for us.
So we're entering the space of--I notice you're saying hello
to everyone; people know you, don't they? Yeah, oh yeah.-That's cool So, we're
entering the area where we've got this tooling here, that's holding this stuff.
These are the guys--oh they're actually doing something now. Yeah, so that's a,
you know that's a skirt and they've just manufactured it, just put the curve
into it, we can walk over there; we'll let them finish what they're doing we
can talk to them if you like.-Okay. Yeah that'd be great This is a finished
part here? That's Vulcan.-Yes. Vulcan flight hardware right here, It takes five
of these to make a complete barrel, for a methane tank, and then another five
on top of that will be the liquid Oxygen tank. And we're going to show you
friction stir welding which is how these are joined. -Gotcha. Alright, so here
is our two 25-ton bump presses. So this big beam in the center is very very
stiff, that's why it's so tall, because the hydraulics are on the edges.
And what the technicians are going to do--our craftsmen--are
going to take one of these big, flat panels on these roller carts, and they
literally have patterns that are pre-formed, that we've made, and they're going
to roll them in and out, and have that knife edge come down and hit it, and
slowly, potato chip it up, while they're matching it to the physical pattern,
until they have it just right, and so we saw all this high-tech computer
computer controlled machining down there, now this is pure craftsmanship where
they're going to do it by eye and by pattern, and achieve very tight tolerances
in doing so. –
Do you have any plans to computer
control this in the future?
No, this is a process that you will always get better
results doing it by hand. That's amazing! So, oh I didn't even think about
having to hold the material as it comes out. -Exactly, yeah. Let's walk down
and you'll see one, they're working on that one right there. -Okay That's a
skirt, which is why it's short. Hey guys! So, so one question I have Tory is,
as they lift the part, obviously it's being supported by the top, it's going to
deflect.-Yes So how do they know if they--oh it's pressing now.-Yeah, so you
can watch. -And you'll see. See now, they're lifting it a little bit. Bumping
it again. So now they're making another adjustment, and they're going to bump
it again. This is all done by eye and by hand. You could do this with a, sort
of a remote controlled operation, but you could not get the same lightweight
tanks out of that, you'd have to work with much thicker pieces of metal, and
you wouldn't have as high a performing rocket.
So I notice, she's looking with her eyes,
she's operating--is she operating the press with her foot? -Yes She's operating
the overhead crane,-Yes and also that---She has what's called a "walk
along" or a "creeper," just like you would have, say, on your
truck, to tighten a fence or to get yourself out of a ditch, she's doing all
three things at once, while watching the curvature she's creating in this part.
She is fully engaged. Oh yes. That's amazing. Don't look at us, don't let us
distract you-- should we go away? We're distracting them.-Yes yeah Let's go
let's go let's go Yeah we don't want to have the uh, "Destin and Tory
Discrepancy Report" on that. [Both Laugh] And here's finished product. And
this is all for Atlas, as you can tell by seeing the isogrid, and then we're
going to walk down the aisle and we're going to show you how these get joined
together into a tube. --the welding? Oh! I almost forgot Yeah we want to go to
chem processing, right? -Oh yeah, is this where stuff is anodized?Yeah Let's go
it, yeah yeah yeah. Okay, so now we're in one of the world's largest plating
facilities, or chemical processing facilities, where we're going to etch the
panels down, so that we have a very consistent high quality known surface, and
then we'll anodize them, which is plating to create a very thick oxide layer,
to give the aluminum corrosion resistance and a little bit of hardness. -Oh
that is a very specific tool there. Yes it is. -To hold that part. Yup You know
all this, Destin, but this is sort of, classic, bare aluminum and it
automatically forms its own Oxide layer right away, which is why it's sort of
white in color, but we don't get very good corrosion resistance naturally,
especially from a 7000-series aluminum, because it's not very thick. And it
tends to be porous, and so that's why we anodize it. -That's bad for fatigue,
right? Yes, yes, very bad. So we can get a phenomenon called stress corrosion
cracking for example If we allow corrosion to be present in these kinds of
materials. So is this the chemical milling process before you anodize? No that
will all happen inside the booths we're gonna take you to. This is really for
cleaning because we're gonna - you know there's a lot of machining activity,
there's a lot of chemicals that are going to be involved. And so we like to
have a known condition when it goes in and out of the tanks. And this
particular dome is in here to be inspected. Look at that! Yeah. So what am I
looking at? So you're looking at us rinsing and washing a ring, before it comes
further down to this booth which is actually an inspection booth. Gotcha! So
this is pre-anodization. Yes So just to connect the parts, we made the part
down there. Pulled it up on this crane, pulled it over here, Brought it over
there and inspected it one more time We're going to take it down there and
clean it. We're going to inspect it, and then we're going to go around where
you can't see right now and anodize it. and we're going to drop it off the
other side? and then when it's all done, it'll come down the other side.
Gotcha. So this is like the rainbow arc of anodization! Yes it is! Yeah. Ok,
cool. So Shannon, what's your role here? So, I work on the commercial crew
hardware,-Okay I'm in the production engineering group, so I work with the
design team and the technicians, to interpret the drawings, and make sure
they're building it correctly. Give them all the procedures and processes they
need. -What kind of engineer are you? So I'm in the production engineering
group, so manufacturing engineering. How's it going? That's the thing about
working at ULA, you never know when the CEO is going to walk in on you while
you're cleaning the floor. [Both laugh] So you said Sulfuric Acid to do the
etching? Yes, and that's part of the plating, so anodization always uses,
typically one of three acids, you use Sulfuric, you use Chromic acid, or other
organic acids, so that's part of it, because that releases the Oxygen in the
bath, some of it bubbles off, but the rest of it ends up attaching to the
material, creating that corrosion resistant layer. -So this is a vat that you
would dip the part into? Yes, in fact here we are. Here's our Sulfuric Acid
anodization, so there's a part in there right now that's going to sit there for
a prescribed amount of time, it's heated, and then we're passing current
through it because ultimately this is actually a plating process. See, here's
our DI (deionized) tap water rise, that we were talking about. Yeah. So you
literally put the part in there and you give it a shower. Give it a shower!
-That's awesome! Holy cow, that's intimidating. -Yeah -That's
intimidating...Keep your hands out of there. [Both laugh] We'll plate, we'll
rinse, we'll plate again, we'll clean, then it goes out where you were before,
for inspection. Here's what they look like when they come out, so you can see
that sort of characteristic green/bronze color of an anodized aluminum surface.
And as they naturally age it'll become more and more bronze, so when you see an
Atlas rocket on the pad, and you look at the booster, it has that very
distinctive bronze color, this is why, because of what we just looked at here.
Maybe we'll just let you peek over the edge, would you like to? -Yeah that'd be
great. So at this point we've finished plating, cleaning, and inspecting, and
here are the panels, lowered down from where we took that last shot. -And now
what? Now they're going to get friction stir welded together into barrels,
forming the body of the rocket, and the propellant tanks. -So one question I
have about this next step, is when you weld something, usually you tack it
together all around the perimeter before you do the final welding, because the
heat will draw it up -RightSo how do you account for that here? So we fixture
it, we hold it in place mechanically, because the interesting thing and the
reason you want to do a friction stir welding is because you don't melt any
material. In conventional welding, you bring the parts together, and then as
you say, you tack them to hold them, and then you fill in that gap with filler
material that you've melted. It fuses to the parent material melting it a
little bit too, and then you get a heat-affected zone, and that entire weld
joint has different mechanical properties than the original material. But when
you friction stir weld, you never melt anything. You bring the parts tightly
together, and you bring a head that spins, and literally stirs the material
together as it moves. That gives you a stronger joint, which means you can thin
down the entire part, and get a much lighter weight higher performance
structure. -So what is the head made out of, that can withstand the higher
temperatures? So the heads are always made out of tool steel, high strength
materials that can stand that over and over and over we're welding aluminum so
we just need that difference. -So the melting point of aluminum is so much
lower than the head -Yesof the tool part... and it never quite melts. It gets
warm, it gets a little soft, because of the heat generated through the friction,
but we never actually erase all of its mechanical properties, like you do with
a classic, conventional fusion weld, you literally melt the material. And I'm
not allowed to film this, and I'm not allowed to film that... -Nope What if I
peek over there, can I peek...?-You can peek Peek over there, but it was
blocked out so people couldn't see that. So now, those big plates that you saw
machined and you saw bent, and you saw anodized, have to get friction stir
welded together into a barrel to form an Atlas booster, or in the case of what
you see over there right now is the Vulcan first flight liquid oxygen tank.
-That's it, okay so that is the first vertical assembly of Vulcan. -Right, and
so that tank will go to space, and it will lift the Astrobotic Peregrine Lander
back to the moon, which is our first mission on Vulcan. -Really?-Yeah. I didn't
know you had a lunar mission.-Yeah yeah, that's our
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