I would love to put something
on the surface of the moon.
But, it's tremendously expensive
to put things in space.
The whole space launch industry,
people building rockets
and putting things in space
is going through this massive revolution.
Everyone is basically working towards this
goal of democratizing space.
I certainly see
the new space wave coming
and I'm going to try my best
to just ride it.
As a kid, my dad and I
would go out to a field
with a couple of a little model rockets
and shoot them off but,
I didn't get really serious
about it until three years ago.
My name is Joe Barnard,
I'm an amateur rocketeer.
I'm not sure if amateur is the
right word to use for that
because at this point
they're pretty advanced.
I saw this video of SpaceX testing
one of their rocket landings.
These are things that are the size
of 17-story buildings
that are just nimbly going up into the air,
hovering and coming back down gently.
I saw the video of this and realized
that's what I want to be doing.
And I was like, oh, I could probably
figure out how to code.
I had like, just bought a
3D printer for fun,
I could probably design
some rocket parts.
I figured, maybe that would be a
good way to show up at SpaceX's doorstep
and say, hey, look at this thing.
Like, I'm willing to teach myself
these concepts.
Can I have a job?
The goal has since changed.
Like, I've had opportunities to do that
at this point,
I'm just way more excited right now
about turning this into
something bigger than it is.
Excellent.
All right, welcome to the
rocket factory.
It's more of an apartment than a
rocket factory, honestly.
Most of this apartment where you'd
usually put like a TV
or where you'd put like a couch
or something, is just rockets.
I founded a company
called BPS.Space.
The company develops
amateur rocketry components
that are focused on matching the pace
of advancement in the real space industry.
We're just kind of
starting out right now.
You can learn a tremendous amount
by just working a lot with software
and working at the
small scale of rockets.
One of the things that I can't
emphasize enough
is how little I knew
about rockets when I got started.
I had recently graduated with a
degree in audio production
from the Berklee College of Music.
I was working as a wedding
videographer and
I was just willing to fail a whole lot
and learn from mistakes
you know, everyday basically.
So this is the graveyard.
All of these are flight computers.
This is just how like,
iterative design works.
So, all of these computers are
basically leading up to this,
which is the most recent series of
flight computers and launch computers
and things like that.
This is what goes inside
almost all of my rockets.
It's got a little orientation sensor,
it has an altitude sensor,
it has a little Bluetooth chip
so you can talk to it with your phone.
So this is the App I built
and there's the computer
that just popped up.
It's really like mission control
for your phone.
When you start learning something
you make these little, tiny improvements
that seem like miracles.
Obviously there are industries
that you don't want to have
self-taught people in.
Like, you don't want to have
a surgeon who just experiments
on people until he gets it right.
Like, that's not good.
But for things like software,
where you can just reload new code.
For things like hardware,
where you can 3D print something
and it doesn't work
so you just print again.
Right now, it's tremendously
cost-prohibitive to put things into space.
But there are so many new space launch
companies that are just trying to
get into this market.
Everyone is basically working
towards this goal of democratizing space.
You have larger companies,
these guys have really ambitious projects.
But, at the smaller scale
there are lots of companies targeting
how low can we get that cost
and how quickly can we get
your thing in space?
I haven't been able to land
a model rocket yet, right.
But, I'm getting really close.
Just in the last few months
I've started actually
conducting these landing tests.
We're going to drop the rocket
from a drone
and we're going to simulate the second-
half of flight without needing to also launch it.
One of the hardest things
about doing these launches
is running like ten different cameras
and also launching a rocket,
and also making sure
you're on top of safety.
This is a totally solo thing.
All right, that's rolling.
So much of how I learn this stuff
and how I improve
it just through
having all of these cameras.
I could do it without it,
but it just solves a lot of problems.
Cool.
What we can see right off the bat
is that the rocket came down
and burned the motor
a little bit too late.
As it comes down it's really at an angle here
even though it starts to really correct here,
it's too late, it's still moving
pretty fast at that point.
And, I'll have to update that
in the flight software,
I'll have to look at the flight data
and see if something went wrong.
But this is a good test overall.
A pretty constant theme of this
whole project has been like,
just the willingness
to continue pushing forward.
There are a lot of people
who want to go really high and fast,
they want to build big rockets.
The problem with that is
if you pour so much engineering time
and effort into one of these things
and you make one mistake,
like all of that is gone.
And, the same thing applies at
the small scale, except that the small scale,
you can test again the next week
'cause they're cardboard rockets.
I'll reset some of these things,
like this wire was too long
so it didn't heat up enough to actually
cut open the landing legs.
I'll reload a motor, with a lot of these things
you're just looking for like what is the most
dead, simple solution I can have.
If you were SpaceX
or a real aerospace company,
you'd spend you know, $500,000.00
fixing this problem with science.
I do it with blue tape.
If I'm running into some error
like I can't figure out why,
this chip isn't working
or something is broken on here,
or it won't communicate,
I can just go to the internet
and look up anything on these forums
and someone has had that problem before.
Almost certainly.
You know like, I did teach myself,
but it's, a lot of this stuff is just because of
everyone else sharing
what they're learning online.
What we want to do is find out
how sensitive the thrust vector
control system should be, so that we can
effectively keep the rocket upright.
Fundamentally, how most of my
rockets fly is different
than most model rockets.
Traditional model rockets fly like darts.
They have little fins on them
that keep them stable through the air.
But, if you watch the launch of
like a Falcon 9 or an Atlas V,
any of these massive rockets
they don't have fins.
And what they use is something called
thrust vector control.
The motors that are at the bottom
that are pushing out all this fire
and this flame,
they're moving back and forth
in just small deviation so that
they can steer the rocket up into space.
That's how my rockets work too.
The thrust vectoring mount,
which holds the motor in
points it in different directions
and that’s right here.
Man, okay, don't put this in
if it doesn't go well but,
I have a pretty high confidence that
what I've changed for this test
will really improve the landing results.
You know, I still don't think we're
gonna touch down very softly on this one.
Like, standing upright, but I think
we should have some better results here.
When you tell people that you're
flying with hobby rocket motors,
they're kind of like, oh, you know,
why is this 25-year-old playing with toys?
And it's so much different than that.
We're not going to space or anything,
but these are huge advancements.
I think in the next five years
we're going to see a whole lot more
excitement about space
just because of that.
I think we're about to go through a
newer and much bigger revolution
in space projects, things like that
than we did in the 60s
when we sent people to the moon.
The nerves are going,
I'm super nervous.
It doesn't matter that I've
rehearsed this stuff a bunch times
it doesn't matter that I’ve like,
brought all these things out to a field
40 plus times at this point,
it doesn't matter that it's all
really rehearsed.
I'm just nervous 'cause every time
there's a chance that something that I've added,
or something that I've
taken away from the rocket
is like that one component that like
is necessary for the whole thing to go well.
It landed on the legs!
That was cool, man.
I feel great.
That's going to be
some really solid data.
A couple of other people have done
thrust vectoring before but,
certainly no one has come as far
as the BPS program has.
I intend to take it further.
But I think making a lot of these
advancements at the small scale
where I can afford to fail hard
and fail often,
those are just like,
really important things.
When people ask questions,
like why do we spend so much money
on space travel?
I just think there's literally unlimited
potential for the growth of humanity.
I would love to send something
to the moon, but, there are a lot of steps
in between where I am now
and what is required to send something
that far, that accurately.
