This is launch pad 39, at the Kennedy Space Center!
This is where all the Apollo missions launched from.
This is where more than 50 Space Shuttle missions launched from.
This pad here, this is the flame trench
where all the, the steam generated
and the fire generated by those rockets comes out
uhm
I
I am
just
uh
astonished to be standing here
in this place
and here is something you might not know
The difficulty with getting to orbit
is not just the altitude
it's mainly the speed
If you want to go to orbit
Then you have to go 15 thousand miles an hour
if you're going up to International Space Station height
15 thousand miles an hour
That's what most of that fuel goes on
If you don't have that speed
then you're going to go up...
...and you're going to come straight back down
If you can't go fast enough to dodge the curvature of the Earth
Then you're just going to come straight back down.
The energy budget isn't just on altitude, it's on speed.
It goes from chemical energy in the rocket
To kinetic energy as it flies
and goes across
And then burns it off as heat and friction
as it plunges back down into the atmosphere.
If you're just falling through the atmosphere
you don't burn up
but if you're going 15 thousand miles per hour
plunging into it
and using it as drag to stop
then, you get the trouble with burning up on reentry.
So there you go
the problem with orbit is not altitude
but speed.
And that is something you might not have known.
[Translating these subtitles? Add your name here!]
And that's that shot gone.