How rockets are Made. Rocket factory tour. United Launch Alliance.

 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