The Assassin (Sha ren zhe Tang Zhan)

Today on "Impossible engineering,"

the Orion spacecraft,

the most advanced exploration vehicle ever built...

The space launch system will be the most powerful rocket

that's ever left the face of the earth.

Transporting humans to distant worlds...

We're going farther than we've ever gone before

into deep space, uncharted territory.

But to do this, engineers must take a look back

at the trailblazing innovations of the past...

This is really cool. This is like going back in time.

Here we go!

...That made the impossible...

This is an incredible piece of engineering.

...Possible.

captions paid for by Discovery Communications

4, 3, 2, 1.

NASA has been at the cutting edge of space travel

for over 50 years

from man's first step on the moon

to the epic international space station.

And today, they're hard at work on their next project,

a mission to top every mission that came before it...

Taking man to Mars.

Mars is like the holy grail of space exploration.

Designing a spacecraft that can survive

the over 100 million-mile journey to the red planet

is an epic engineering challenge.

Orion is just a huge engineering feat.

There are thousands of people

that are working very hard to make Orion a success.

The best engineers in the world

are all working right here on this project.

This isn't easy. We're going to space.

If it was easy, everybody would be doing it.

At the core of this revolutionary spacecraft

is the crew capsule.

It's the largest NASA has ever built,

15 feet in diameter

with enough space to accommodate four astronauts.

It's a state-of-the-art service module

equipped with unique life support

and propulsion systems

and four winged solar arrays

spanning nearly 60 feet across.

Orion will travel farther into deep space

than any other human exploration vehicle in history.

I think it's important to learn about the other planets

we have in our solar system,

how they were formed, and whether we might be able

to live there.

And to be able to answer the question,

ultimately, if we're alone.

The first hurdle facing Lara and her team at NASA...

Figure out a way to get such a large spacecraft

off the ground and into orbit.

When you fly a mission like that,

you have to take a lot of components with you,

a lot of equipment.

With that crew, they're gonna be gone a long time.

And in order to push all of that equipment

a long way away, it has to be very powerful.

To get Orion off the ground,

NASA engineers look

to the innovators of the past for inspiration.

As long as man has looked to the heavens,

he's dreamt of traveling to the stars.

In the 2nd century a.D., an ancient mesopotamian scribe

wrote about a ship blown to the moon by a storm.

And according to legend, in the 1500s,

Chinese astrologer wan hu

tried to reach the moon using rockets

traveling in a chair powered by gunpowder.

Aah!

But once the smoke cleared, he was nowhere to be seen.

Whether he made it into space remains a mystery.

Ah!

Aaaaah!

It would take the genius

of American engineer Robert Goddard

to take the seemingly impossible dream

of a rocket powerful enough to leave the earth's atmosphere

and turn it into reality.

Space historian Amy shira teitel is in roswell, new Mexico,

recreating one of Goddard's landmark engineering feats.

This rocket is a replica of the a5

built by rocket pioneer Robert Goddard in 1935.

And it was in this desert landscape,

away from populated areas,

that Goddard was first able to fire his rockets

to really show how powerful they were.

Goddard was fascinated by space travel as a child.

In 1915, he launched his first rocket.

But the gunpowder he used to fuel his early prototypes

was extremely inefficient.

He knew that, to ultimately leave

the pull of the earth's gravity,

he would need a far more powerful fuel source.

And so he turned to liquid propulsion,

a mix of gasoline and liquid oxygen

that would burn with a hotter reaction

and create a more powerful rocket.

Burning gasoline and liquid oxygen

together in a combustion chamber

creates a high pressure, high velocity stream of hot gas.

Passing it up through two pipes and down a nozzle

accelerates the flow of the gas even more,

producing thrust to propel the rocket upward.

The higher the temperature, the greater the thrust.

This is actually a replica of his 1926 rocket

that he used as a proof of concept demonstration

of the power of liquid propulsion.

He named it Nell, and it flew 41 feet in just 2 seconds

before it crashed.

It was a short but incredibly significant flight.

Goddard created the blueprint for the modern rocket.

In 1920, he published a paper claiming his designs

could be used to send payloads to the moon.

Not everyone agreed.

His radical ideas flew in the face

of accepted scientific views.

Scientists believe that because there's no air in space,

there would be nothing for a rocket to push against.

So it wouldn't be able to fly.

But Goddard had other ideas.

Goddard based his theory

on one of the most basic laws of physics

written by sir Isaac Newton in 1686.

It stated that for every action,

there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Unlike his contemporaries,

Goddard believed this theory would also apply

in the vacuum of space.

So here's Newton's third law of motion in action.

Imagine this skateboard is the rocket.

And the medicine ball is the hot exhaust gases

escaping from that rocket.

As I throw it forward, the force of me throwing the medicine ball

will propel me backwards

with the same force in the opposite direction.

So here we go.

That's Newton's third law in action.

Goddard successfully launched

34 liquid-fueled rockets,

reaching altitudes as high as 1 1/2 miles

at speeds approaching 750 miles an hour.

And today, one of his engineering masterpieces,

the a5 rocket, has been replicated

by the Albuquerque rocket society

and is set to launch in the new Mexican desert.

So this is really cool.

This is like going back in time.

This is it.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

That's amazing!

Oh.

This is really incredible.

You can just imagine Robert Goddard and his team

being out here, doing this exact thing 80 years ago.

Robert Goddard

made the seemingly impossible possible.

He researched, developed, and understood

the basic, fundamental principles

of modern space flight

and developed the rockets to make it happen.

Without Goddard's contribution,

human space flight would still be just a dream.

To reach Mars,

the engineers of the Orion spacecraft

need to supercharge Goddard's ingenious design...

8.4 million pounds of thrust,

it's taller than the statue of Liberty,

longer than a football field.

...And build the largest,

most powerful solid rocket booster in the world.

At NASA's michoud assembly facility,

work is underway on the Orion spacecraft's

monstrous rocket booster system.

Pat whipps is tasked

with building the propulsion system

that will send Orion on two test missions

beyond low-earth orbit.

The space launch system rocket will be the most powerful rocket

that's ever left the face of the earth.

Orion's solid rocket boosters

will generate over 75 percent of its thrust,

enabling the spacecraft

to carry a payload of almost 80 tons.

The rocket's core stage is a giant fuel tank.

It will store

the cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen

used to power Orion's four rs-25 engines.

Rs-25 engines were first used

during the space shuttle program.

The engineering that's gone into these engines

is just incredible.

I call them the Mona Lisa of mechanical engineering.

Steve wofford heads up the team

testing the space launch system's engines

at the stennis rocket facility in Mississippi.