I remember the feeling of awe as my dad showed me the Apollo 11 rocket ship launch into space in 1969. Watching Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin land and walk on the surface of the moon gave me chills. I was only seven while I watched this. Most children my age wanted to become President, or an astronaut. To me, being an astronaut had its own perks, but as a young child I was interested on what happened behind the scenes of the launch and landing. I was curious on how everyone cooperated and conjoined to work together to finally have a successful launch. Except, what filled my seven-year-old mind with the most amount of enjoyment and surprise was how the engineers made the rocket ships. I wanted to know how they programmed the engine, thrusters, …show more content…
Even with the failed launches before that, it still filled me with amazement. At the time as a child all I could think was, “How did they do that? I want to be able to build things like that.” As I had begun to grow up, my perspective had not changed, but had widened. Now instead of asking questions along the matters of, “How did they do that?” I wanted to figure out what type of metal they used to withstand the velocity of launching off the ground and through the atmosphere. I wanted to know how they built the ship to have the perfect aerodynamics to not build up too much air resistance to where it could not break out of Earth’s gravitational pull. I wanted to know how they engineered the cockpit of the ship, so the astronauts could withstand speeds upwards of 25,000 miles per hour. I wanted to know how they kept the engines and thrusters cooled during takeoff. I am interested in writing the blueprints for the ship, programming the dimensions and calculating how the weight and shape would affect momentum, acceleration, velocity, and air resistance. Physics class had helped me understand the foundation of