Rocket Scientists Answer Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED
It's not rocket science! Well, actually, it is! Rocket scientists Tiera and Myron Fletcher answer the internet's burning questions about rocket science, rocket ships and space travel. What's harder, rocket science or brain surgery? Will humanity ever leave the solar system? What's so special about Elon Musk's new rocket? Why are rocket engines so loud? Will we eventually have warp drive? Tiera and Myron answer all these questions and much more!
Director/Producer: Lisandro Perez-Rey
Director of Photography: Kevin Harrington
Editor: Joshua Pullar
Talent: Tiera & Myron Fletcher
Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi
Associate Producer: Paul Gulyas
Production Manager: Eric Martinez
Production Coordinator: Fernando Davila
Camera Operator: Ingrid Thronson
Audio: Tim Wolfe
Post Production Supervisor: Alexa Deutsch
Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant
Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen
Assistant Editor: Paul Tael
Still haven’t subscribed to WIRED on KZhead? ►► wrd.cm/15fP7B7
Listen to the Get WIRED podcast ►► link.chtbl.com/wired-ytc-desc
Want more WIRED? Get the magazine ►► subscribe.wired.com/subscribe...
Follow WIRED:
Instagram ►► / wired
Twitter ►► / wired
Facebook ►► / wired
Get more incredible stories on science and tech with our daily newsletter: wrd.cm/DailyYT
Also, check out the free WIRED channel on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Android TV.
ABOUT WIRED
WIRED is where tomorrow is realized. Through thought-provoking stories and videos, WIRED explores the future of business, innovation, and culture.
These two are great. A video like this could really launch their careers. I'll see myself out.
😂😂😂 I love you for this
Here to give you best comment award at this early stage.
This joke was out of this world.
Ha Love it!!!
What do you mean? Anyone could do it, it's not like it's rocket scie... wait.
Man, I love watching experts explain their fields. And these guys are very good.
its fun to watch people that love their job and want to share their knowledge
#encore
Appreciate the love!
@@rocketwiththefletchersoffi8497 Oh, please, keep doing not just what is clearly great science, but educating as well. You're entirely too engaging to watch, and I love it.
@@ericthompson3982 thank you!
Imagine saying you’re literally a rocket scientist!! This was really cool they explained things in a way I still understood ❤
kzhead.info/sun/nMZqYNl9ip6veo0/bejne.html
they don't usually tell you they're rocket scientists. They'll usually say something like "I'm a level 6 systems engineer on the Atlas project" or whatever, and when the dumb look comes across your face, they'll say "I'm a rocket scientist." Source: I know some rocket scientists and have a lot of dumb looks on my face, lol.
That wired energy hits different
Thanks!
@@thewordshifter yeah. I'm a Systems Engineer and I never say I'm a rocket scientist ; I say I'm a systems engineer and some people go "what?" and only then I describe what I do. I wouldn't say that's being dumb - it's just not a common job..
The best episodes of this series are when the people answering the question are so clearly excited to talk about what they do and share it with people and this is another great example of that. Love it.
That’s my cousin!!! Mr. Myron Fletcher. So proud of you and Mrs. Fletcher, continue to be great❤️!!!
These two are fantastic. More of them please!
Thank you!!!
@@rocketwiththefletchersoffi8497 I subscribed in case y'all start doing your own content. That was really neat, thank you.
YES!!!
They both seem so sweet, kind, and BRILLIANT but still humble and down to earth. Please bring these two back. I’ve never been interested in rocket science but I absolutely need to see more of these two. With teachers like that, it’s hard to not be engaged Also unrelated but they’re a gorgeous couple 😍 like truly one of the most beautiful couples I’ve seen, inside and out.
Thank you!!!
Being a mathematician now I see that it's the physics that make it cool.
watch stand up maths
welcome to engineering :)
Awesome!
"It's like causing a pencil to land on its eraser" coolest analogy here
Ha!
It's a fabulous analogy. Very descriptive.
Lmao love how 40% of commenters are now chemists, mathematicians, physicists, and neuroscientists
For real
Exactly!
Ha!
Lol no I’ve just taken basic college physics classes so I know how thrust and propulsion works, which this “rocket scientist” apparently doesn’t
@@314shorts refering to all the "as an astrophysicist" comments that were present at the time of my comment being posted.
Interesting, plus, these two worked well together on the answers. I'd like to see more of them.
Thank you!
These two were wonderful to listen to! I'd love it for them to return, if they want to and if it's possible. This was sooo interesting and they did a great job explaining really complex ideas in a way that any layman could understand. Thank you for this episode, I truly loved every second of it!
Thank you!
I vibe with this guy. He's got a lot of things to say, is very excited to say it, and isn't always quite sure how to slow himself down because of how excited he is about this thing he loves.
This was a great video! They made rocket science accessible, not a lot of academics/scientists have the hability to explain things in simple terms and these two were excellent.
Thank you!
But concernedly often wrong
Check out Everyday Astronaut
@@Mikado8they very strongly simplified things. I'm a aerospace engineer myself, and explaining these questions in 5-10 seconds is basically impossible. I think they did a decent job, but I'd rather have seen another 10s per question and using more visualizations.
I just can't say how long I have been waiting for a video talking about rocket science. Thanks wired.
Awesome sauce!
I had no idea the rocket was test fired before flight, I assumed only its parts got somehow tested separately. Thank you very much for this awesome video!
The rocket engine was test fired, as you said the rest of the parts do actually get tested separately, then when it is put together, some rockets actually do get tested again on the launchpad, with the engines throttled all the way down, and the launch tower not letting go of the rocket, which is called a static fire.
@Gomul we actually test the entire rocket before we launch it. Full throttle and full mission duration. Check the link above.
@@rocketwiththefletchersoffi8497 that's interesting, but how's so? I forgot to mention the WDR but when you do a static fire, how does the launch tower manage to hold the rocket down while the engines are at full throttle? The SRBs were tested separately as well as the tanks and other parts
Another fun one that lifted my spirits, thanks Tiera and Myron!🚀❤
Thank you!
This was so interesting! These two did such a great job explaining everything.
Thank you!
The first answer confuses me. As far as I know, rockets don't push against the ground. Exhaust gases are pushed out of the engines nozzle by the pressure inside the combustion chamber and, in turn, push back on the rocket in the opposite direction. Am I missing something?
Nope, what you said is right
💯 I expected WIRED to put out a correction or something...
I literally stopped the video and talked about this with my wife. I'm an aeronautical engineer and last I checked the rocket doesn't need something to push off, just the mass being ejected to produce the thrust.
@@tyler_russell what did you think of the other answers? Such as him saying we can go the speed of light thanks to fusion technology
That first answer was so wrong I stopped watching the video. This guy cannot be a rocket scientist. Of course, that depends on what qualifies as a rocket scientist. But equal and opposite reaction is so basic to physics and rockets... If he had the same knowledge of neurosurgery, I wouldn't want him anywhere near my skull. 🤣
great vid, love how clear and understanding their answers were
Myron and Tiera are awesome!! Great video!
One of the best ever in this series!
loved learning new info with this video, both of them seem to be such cool people too!
Thank you
Very professional and informative. Thanks to the two people able to answer our questions.
They should have their own channel, they're great!
We do!
@@rocketwiththefletchersoffi8497 Omg YESSS! I’m so hype about this. Y’all were amazing.
@@zknight4481 thank you!
I loved this video!!! great way to explain things and just well rounded answers love it!
Anyone happy to see 2 black rocket scientist
i love these two
Awesome video. Love the amount of information.
Thank you!
they broke all of this down really well, one of the easiest to understand tech support vids ive watched!
I love this series
They make this look easy, good job.
Thank you!
I have NO IDEA what they’re talking about but I LOVE how passionate they are about their subject!
Yooo this video is amazing! Thank you for sharing this with us. This is the best media representation of how we should be taught concepts. Great job. Can picture it all 🙌🏽👏🏽
Yes!!! They literally made rocket science comprehensive to the layman
this is so cool 💕
Like these two seem so down to earth no pun intended ❤
Ha!
Wow. I loved this, very interesting!
Did he say “push against the ground”?
Unfortunately.
yeah, i think a better answer (fit more with the question) should be that the rockets needs to get out of the atmosphere, the most efficient way to do that is to point straight up at first so the rocket experience less friction with the air.
Laymans terms people, laymans terms
@@ggez8117 see my answer. rockets points straight up at launch pad because it needs to get out of the atmosphere. not to "push against the ground"
One of the best videos of the series. Love the two of them. Very nice and good answers. Congrats!
fun to watch! 👍
There are so many errors it's sad. - Rockets don't push off the ground, they dont need a ground to couteract. The action/reaction is between the rocket and it's own propellant expelled backwards. - fins don't provide downforce, they provide passive pitch and yaw stability because the center of pressure is behind the center of mass. - the limitations of the human bodies in fast rockets isn't pressure nor energy but acceleration. - It's not the increase of ''gravity'' that harms humans in rockets, but acceleration again. - The body can wisthand any speed, it's the acceleration that kills, again. - rocket's first stage don't always throw payloads into deeps space, mostly just into space - Most space ships don't fire reverse thrusters to slow down, they just spin around 180° and fire their main thrusters. I know they can do better.
They must be diversity hires
Yeah, I don’t know another engineer who would confuse pressure with acceleration dimensionally
Also, it definitely doesn’t take a masters in aero to know they’ve got some big errors in here 😂. Might just be camera fright or something tho
They maybe have stage fright or maybe this show is pushing a more diverse or progressive demographic that isn't as competent? I hate to be that guy but in our society it's not impossible
I'll trust the rocket scientists, thanks tho!
Amazingly explained, very interesting
Thank you!
Wow, these people have a very cool job and they explain it really well!
Thank you!
god i just love every form of science and these are such smart people
I’m confused, did they forget the part of physics which states anything with mass cannot go the speed of light? Or is there something new we’ve discovered which negates this…
what are you talking about ? when did they say this ?
@@trainerred5366 he said nuclear fusion could get a rocket to light speed
@@trainerred5366 6:50 to 7:40 when he's talking about "warp drive"
Technically he's not wrong about this, although for now, 'warp drive' is just hypothetical, obviously. The theory behind 'warp drive' also known as an Alcubierre drive is that you are moving space around an object as opposed to moving an object through space. In that regard it would technically be possible to travel at or beyond the speed of light without violating the laws of physics.
i love this duo
Amazing explanations!!!
Very interesting! I love it!
as a KSP player I understand every word perfectly and could have even answered most of these questions myself. Such a powerful game.
I am a Principle Design Assurance Engineer with a M.S in Design Quality Technology. I wouldn't mind doing this for how we create Medical Devices used in Medical Procedures. That process is tedious as we deal with the FDA.
Fellow “rocket scientist” wishing you would talk more about how many different kinds of jobs are considered “rocket scientist” and the difference between scientist and engineers. Just because so many people don’t know what engineers do day to day. I absolutely love that you listed off some of the classes that we had to take.
Hopefully Wired will have them back for more Q&A.
@@lindareed8265 omg that would be great! What a lovely video
While this is a nice video to get people interested in rockets, there are a few inaccuracies that just ticks the aerospace engineer in me For instance, rockets don't really "push off" of the ground.. it's an action reaction pair between the rocket and the exhaust coming out that causes it to lift.. real reason they go vertical is to minimize overall drag experienced so as to use up their limited fuel efficiently About the ballistic missiles.. the difference isn't payload, it's trajectory... Ballistic missiles don't need to travel as fast as rockets cause they don't need to go into orbit, (instead they take a parabolic path), and so they require less fuel and are a lil smaller in size
And the fins on a rocket dont provide down force, they provide roll stability.. If the rocket starts spinning, these fins try to provide force in the opposite direction of the spin and so keeps it stable (a lot more engineering goes into sizing and shaping of these fins, cause if the opposing force doesnt match quite right, your rocket would spin out of control)
@@sharanrai5411 🤓🤓🤓
@@Dios7518 huh, correcting something should be frowned upon?
Ballistic missiles do reach orbital velocities tho, its all about the delta V, and as ballistic missiles are concerned, they do reach orbital velocities, they just don't stay in orbit for long periods of time, as well, they're a bomb, and their trajectory wasn't accounted for that, but a ballistic missiles could be very easily turned into a payload capable rocket, and it HAS been done before, with the minotaur missile and the titan family of rockets.
@@sharanrai5411 Well actually finns provide mostly passive pitch and yaw stability and very little roll stability.
We saw a Falcon 9 launch at Kennedy Space Center. The car alarms of some the cars parked in the parking lot started going off just after the rocket launched. Thankfully, mine didn't. The launch was an amazing sight.
My engineering teachers say when a doctor makes a mistake, one person dies... When an engineer makes one, ...
Dr. Robert Liston: "Hold my scalpel"
Dr. Walter Jackson Freeman II: "Hold my ice pick"
dr robotnik has killed millions
disaster happens
Fascinating.
Fantastic video! Such a shame they don't get longer to fully explain things
Exactly! This needed to be much longer!
Maybe a 30mins show n tell not just questions
Maybe we should have a follow on huh?
You can tell the guy really loves his job
Very proud of you guys
WIRED. Thank-you. I wouldn't be learning about stuff like this if it weren't for these videos.
1:40 i think bigger diffrence is that sls throws aways 99% percent of itself after orbit and starship is fully reusable
amazing
Awesome guests as always! Now I gotta go see what the brain surgeon said 😆
Fantastic answers! It makes me wish I stuck with science and math more back in school!
It's not to late!
Loved learning about this! Please bring them back!
Let's make that happen! Ha!
@@rocketwiththefletchersoffi8497 how did you mess up the first question so badly
i love this channel, i gained sm knowledge off this channel
Great presentation!
You guys awesome
These two are amazing! Are they siblings, a married couple, or just two people with the same last name? Love them, please give us more!
They are in fact a married couple. Medium has an article on them.
@@kurteisner67 that article was proven false
@@JonahNelson7 Interesting, how so? At any rate, they also said so themselves repeatedly independent of that.
We are indeed a married couple. Ha.
@@JonahNelson7 lol how embarrassing, spreading misinformation and proven wrong by them personally 😂
please do a pilot answering questions about flying
"rocket support"... f..ing awesome!
This is literally.... Quite literally.... Rocket science!
I like how the "how do you build a rocket?" question was answered
Am I missing something!? That guy is an expert and I'm not but I'm pretty sure a rocket standing straight on the launch pad has nothing to do with needing to push off the ground. The only thing I can figure is he was trying to dumb it down for us and accidentally said something inaccurate.
First, a rocket starts vertical for stability and simplicity. Second, the rocket needs to fight Earth's gravity (by getting higher) as quickly as possible (to a point). Fairly soon in the launch a rocket needs to start picking up horizontal velocity in order to reach enough velocity to orbit Earth. How do we decide how much and when concerning horizontal and vertical velocity? Math. Then after the math is done it's pretty important you leave the navigation to the computers. Humans aren't precise enough and the rockets would just run out of fuel before reaching orbit.
Exactly what I thought
Looks like they enjoy their job. Congratulations to both.
As a Chemist, I'm here for the representation! The kids need to see this! I love it 😊😊
They definitely need to see there are more ways to make it other than sports or music.
We will definitely not travel at light speed. We can only ever hope to travel very close to the speed of light, but not actually at the speed of light since the craft has mass and would therefore require infinite energy to get there, which is of course impossible due to the good old E=MC2
Exactly what I was wondering. I think he meant near light speed because, as you said, travelling at light speed requires infinite energy which is impossible. No rocket engine could ever do that.
Maybe not travel through space at the speed of light, but space could be manipulated so that an object travels x distance (in relative space) in t time where x/t is greater than 3*10^8. Also, science isn’t unchanging, we could discover a new area of science which completely blows up our current understanding, like general relativity did 100 years ago.
As a neurosurgeon I gotta say it’s brain surgery! In certain areas of the brain you have to operate in the sub-millimeter space and you only have one try. You can never do experimental setups, and you cannot pause during surgery, sometimes even longer than a day. Then you have to counsel patients who are deadly afraid and explain the surgery to them realistically without being too technical. Then there is sooo much we don’t know about the brain. And brains are different every time. You never do the same surgery twice. But rocket science seems fun! I like to play Kerbal space program to relax!
yeah, by a long shot. These guys seemed... idk, non-erudite? They obviously aren't stupid, but it's like they lack some bits of basic understandings of the world outside their field.
@@MisterIncog they literally said they fuckin do rocket science so theres an obvious bias. how does this demonstrate lack of basic world understanding???
@@raxusquin Mister Incognito is being a brick.
Well in brain surgery you can hurt or kill 1 patient due to an error and in rockets you can have up to 8 people die at once (Challenger and Columbia). Either way both fields are beyond my knowledge.
you think rocket scientists can pause and retry? also kerbal space program -> surgeon simulator
Wired always does a good Job of finding enthusiastic professionals!
power couple. i love them
Thumbnail starts at 8:35 :D
So when someone sarcastically asked if you’re some kind of rocket scientist….
um.... its impossible to go light speed, aka speed of light, or even close to it, its physics not rocket science
Well, it is possible to get close to it (although really hard, but we have done it on a subatomic scale in particle colliders), but yes, impossible to ever reach it due to the laws of physics (as it would require infinite energy to get anything to the speed of light).
I love these videos
When a child says rocket scientists it’s almost a joke because no one is actually a rocket scientist lol…..incredible! These 2 look like me, they are young and literally has an impossible career. WAY TO GO GUYS 👏👏👏👏
I'd like to know how damaging to the ozone layer and to earth's atmospheric gaseous ecosistems are the rocket launchings in general. I. E: in average, how many commercial 30k feet plane flights have the same impact of a massive rocket launch? Thanks !
Would heavily depend on the fuel. Nasas rockets use hydrogen and water. The exhaust product is water. But even when using kerosene or methane, the exhaust is still mostly water and Co2. Not really harmful for the ozone layer. CFCs are a much bigger issue.
13:41 How about Pioneer 10 and 11? Where are they now?
You launch straight up to get out of the densest part of the atmosphere ASAP, to reduce the overall drag force experienced during launch.
Their being named "Fletcher" is a clinic in serendipity.
Or maybe they're married
Check out what "Fletcher" means.
I am German and I had to turn on captions to catch the German scientists name, haha!
All I know for sure is have the brain surgeon and the rocket scientist swap places and things are going very bad that day.
Imagine being born on a shuttle and basically your task is to be the first person to leave the solar system and come back
4:25 A rocket by definition is an aicraft that uses jet propulsion using an internal oxygen supply instead of ambiant air. Examples include fireworks, missiles, rocket planes (X-15, Me-163), space rockets, and even water rockets!
What… what… his first answer is completely wrong wtf. I am a rocket scientist too. Rockets launch straight up because we want to take the steepest path we can out of earths thickest part of the atmosphere. Then once we are higher, we tilt in the direction we want the orbit to go. This tilt can happen pretty early in a flight you see it almost right away with the space shuttles
I was thinking the same thing...
People citing errors:You're explaining things in a way that no layperson would understand. They're simplifying for those of us who didn't take those classes. Thanks though.
Whoa... a married couple of rocket scientists. Imagine the dinner table conversations!
amazing video, now I need Brain support one...
Very impressive young scientists.
So I was looking into getting a degree in Aerospace but now that I know the requirements I don’t know if I want to anymore
Love the legos
I thought drag is also a big factor in the first scenario. Why did they leave that out?