Original subtitles

[pensive music]

[machinery clicks]

- We've all probably heard the phrase,

"It's not rocket science,"

but sometimes it's exactly that,

especially if you try to engineer a machine

that can take man to the Moon

or launch one to take out your enemies.

Tonight:

How lethal was one of the world's first rockets

launched 500 years ago?

- For the 15th century, this is as high as tech gets.

- How about a German weapon so advanced,

it threatens to change the course of World War II?

- There's no sirens, no evacuation.

it just gets there and boom.

[explosion booms]

- [Dolph] What about something so precise,

it could do the impossible?

- It looks like SpaceX bet someone

that they could land a pencil from orbit on its eraser.

- I'm Dolph Lundgren.

On screen, I'm all about the action,

but offscreen, I have degrees in engineering.

I even studied at MIT.

I learned that machines and the people behind them

can transform the world.

Join me as I explore the gears, grit,

and genius behind History's Greatest Machines.

[intense music] [machinery whirs]

Before the 16th century,

rockets were mostly used as fireworks,

but then, Korean engineers invent another use for them:

powering a machine so explosive

it all but guarantees victory on the battlefield.

- Picture this: you're a Korean soldier under siege

at the Battle of Haengju in 1593.

The Japanese are advancing upon the fort

and you are pinned in pretty tight.

And not only that, you're outnumbered 10 to 1.

It's not looking very good.

- Well, it turns out that your engineers

have developed a new machine.

They wheel it out and all hell breaks loose.

[rockets rumbling]

- [Dolph] It's not magic; it's engineering,

and it starts with a really explosive idea: gunpowder.

- China invents gunpowder around the ninth century

and a couple centuries later,

there occurs the Gunpowder Revolution.

- All across Eurasia,

armies start to recognize the raw power of gunpowder.

I mean, before this, warfare is all swords and spears

and basic ranged weapons like bows and catapults.

- [Dolph] The Koreans reimagined gunpowder in a new way.

[intense music]

Say hello to the hwacha.

- When you look at it, it has two wheels,

and above that, there's this metal-and-wood frame,

and encased within it,

there are 200 holes big enough to hold an arrow.

- [Austin] The wheels make this a mobile weapon.

It means that the wielders of the hwacha

can react in real time to the battlefield.

It's an incredibly flexible weapon system.

- [Dolph] Engineers talk about key components.

In this, it's the fuse, one fuse attached to each rocket,

linking them together.

- This is synchronized firing of 200 arrows at one time.

For the 15th century, this is as high as tech gets.

Imagine the alternative.

You would have to coordinate 200 individual archers

to all fire their arrows simultaneously.

- [Dolph] The arrows are loaded into the tubes,

then a soldier lights the fuse,

[rockets whooshing]

and the hwacha ignites,

blasting rocket-propelled arrows toward the terrified enemy.

- It has been described as a cross

between a medieval machine gun and a flame thrower.

You're basically just firing

and seeing how many of the enemy you can cut down.

- [Dolph] The design is way ahead of its time.

When the tube is fired, exploding gas blasts backwards,

propelling the arrows through the air.

Now hundreds of arrows can be launched

twice as far as a bow and arrow can reach.

- What the Koreans have come up with

is essentially the first rocket launcher.

- [Dolph] On May 23rd, 1592,

Japan invades Korea with a massive army,

and the hwacha makes its battlefield debut.

- [Don] Japan's forces are led by Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

He has a massive battle-hardened army of 150,000 troops.

This is one of the largest invasions in pre-modern history.

There isn't gonna be anything like this

until Napoleon invades Russia a couple of centuries later.

- [Dolph] The Koreans retreat to a remote fortress

with 3,400 troops, facing 30,000 Japanese.

It's not looking good.

- [Austin] This should be an absolute slaughter.

The Korean defenders are outnumbered almost 10 to 1.

- [Don] As wave after wave of Japanese soldiers

advance in tight formations,

the Korean defenders roll out their secret weapon:

40 hwacha units.

- [Hakeem] Flying through the sky now

are hundreds of rocket-propelled arrows

going straight for the advancing Japanese army.

- [Don] These rocket-propelled arrows

slam into the Japanese ranks.

Arrows pierce the armor and find all the vulnerable places,

faces, hands, necks, legs.

Suddenly, whole lines of these soldiers collapse.

- [Austin] It's carnage.

These are the smoldering remains of what,

at the beginning of the day,

looked to be an unstoppable force.

- By dusk, the Japanese retreat

and it's all thanks to the hwacha.

[arrows whoosh]

- Now, cut to 500 years later,

it's June 1941, and more than 3 million German

and Axis soldiers cross into the Soviet Union

in the largest military invasion in history.

It's called Operation Barbarossa.

And to survive, the Soviets will need

to create a new weapon.

[tense music]

- The Soviets need something that can turn the tide.

They need something highly destructive,

but it also has to be cheap, simple, and quick to build.

- [Hakeem] Traditional artillery just won't do.

It's too slow to deploy, too difficult to maneuver,

and it just doesn't have the rate of fire necessary

to deliver the goods.

Soviet generals want volume, speed, and terror.

- Around this time, you have an engineer, Georgy Langemak.

He has been working on a device for the past few years.

It's a rocket launcher

that can shoot off multiple rockets simultaneously.

The code name for this rocket launcher

is based on a popular song of the era, "Katyusha."

[intense music]

- [Dolph] The Katyusha is deceptively simple.

A framework of metal rails mounted on a truck bed

designed to fire a bunch of rockets all at once.

- [Hakeem] Mounting this multi-launch rocket system

on the back of a truck is actually pretty brilliant

because it's highly mobile so you can fire off your rockets

and then before counter battery artillery

comes to destroy you,

you're already gone, on to your next firing location.

- [Dolph] The Katyusha carries 16 launchers,

each loaded with a huge rocket.

- [Sami] It packs a pretty serious punch.

I mean, just one of these rockets

can wipe out an entire enemy location.

- [Hakeem] It fires its rockets

using an electric ignition system

that fires all the rockets at once.

That's how it launches a deadly volley of explosives

in just seconds.

- [Sami] Basically, imagine watching

the finale of a fireworks show,

but all the fireworks are pointed at you.

- To consider how devastating of a weapon this is,

let's do the math.

A battery of four Katyusha systems,

each able to fire off 16 rockets,

means that these four can deliver 64 rockets,

which means four tons of explosives

all landing in enemy territory in seven seconds.

- [Dolph] It's enough to vaporize

an area the size of a city block,

exactly what the Soviets need to beat back Germans.

Now they just have to build them

and get them onto the battlefield.

- They move fast, mass producing these Katyushas

in factories all across the country.

Within months, they are rolling these things

off the assembly lines straight onto the front lines.

[intense music]

- [Dolph] On July 14th, 1941,

the Katyusha makes its combat debut

in a battle in the small town of Rudnya.

- [John] German forces are advancing.

You've got tanks, you've got armored vehicles,

you've got infantry.

Suddenly these rockets start screaming out of the sky

and raining all kinds of death upon the forces there.

- [Hakeem] To the Germans on the receiving end,

these things sound so eerie

and they're so devastating

that they're given the nickname "Stalin's Organ".

[missiles whirring harmonically]

- The sound is like a pipe organ from hell.

- [Reporter] Towns and villages are recaptured by the hundreds

as the tremendous Russian drives

have hurled the Nazi enemy from so much of Russian soil.

- [Don] The seven Katyushas just annihilate the German infantry,

causing massive casualties

and a panicked retreat from the battle.

- [Dolph] Stalin's Organ becomes the soundtrack

of Soviet vengeance on the Eastern Front.

- By the end of the war, the Russians have built

at least 10,000 Katyusha rocket launchers.

And they're putting them everywhere.

They're mounting them on trucks, they're mounting them on tanks.

They're even mounting them on railroad cars.

- The Katyusha is so popular in the Second World War

that it outlasts the Second World War.

It's used during the Cold War,

and some of them are still around today

in combat in various parts of the world.

[rockets whoosh]

- One ironic footnote deserves a mention here.

Georgy Langemak, the guy who invented Stalin's Organ,

he doesn't even see his weapon in action on the battlefield.

He's sentenced to death in the Gulag by Stalin.

- By the 1940s, rockets have proven

their terrifying destructive power over and over again.

But a question remains:

Can you take all that power and control it?

One man thinks he can turn a rocket into a machine

that can strike surgically from distances never seen before.

His name is Wernher von Braun.

- Von Braun grows up obsessed with rocketry.

When he's a kid in Berlin in the 1920s,

he reads Jules Verne's science fiction classic,

"From the Earth to the Moon"

and from then on, he has this dream to actually get there.

- At 12, he's arrested

for what he calls his first ballistic experiment.

He straps a bunch of fireworks to his wagon

and he sends it off, leaving a trail of fire behind.

- [Dolph] Eventually, von Braun becomes a leader

in Germany's secret rocket program.

- In the late 1930s, the Nazi regime

establishes a research and testing facility for weapons

far enough from the front lines

that it's not going to get interfered with.

- [Lance] This is where von Braun

and his team turn theory into reality.

They start building labs and launch pads

that are designed to push rockets farther

than anyone has gone before.

- [Natalia] By 1942, what Germany needs is a low-cost way

to bombard England from a distance

of 200 miles away.

He's being asked to do more with rockets

than rockets can do.

- [Dolph] Von Braun delivers

the world's first long-range ballistic rocket.

Hitler calls it Vengeance 2, or V-2, for a reason:

it's lethal and it's incredibly fast.

- So at a time where most planes and rockets

only go a few hundred miles per hour,

this thing goes 3,500.

- [Dolph] That's over four times the speed of sound.

[tense music]

Test launches of the V-2 begin on June 13th, 1942.

Top Nazi officials like Hitler's Minister of Armaments

and War Production, Abbott Spear,

are eager to see what this supersonic rocket can do.

[rocket booms]

- [Nehemiah] The rocket lifts off

and immediately, it starts spinning,

and once it hits supersonic speed, the fuel system gives out

and the thing cartwheels over a half a mile over the Baltic.

[explosion booms]

- You want a weapon to explode, but not like this.

The Nazi brass aren't happy, but von Braun is ecstatic

'cause for the first time, they've launched a guided rocket

that broke the sound barrier and that's a huge step.

- [Dolph] For the next two years,

von Braun and his team make improvements to the V-2,

including making it bigger to increase its load.

- [John] It has 2,000 pounds of explosives

strapped into its nose cone,

so it's gonna deliver a heck of a punch.

- [Dolph] They design the V-2 to fly higher.

So high, it becomes the first human-made object

to reach space.

Plus they refine the navigation system.

- The V-2 is the first of its kind

to be able to be pre-programmed before launch

to be steered to reach its destination.

- Coordinates get punched in, longitude, latitude, distance,

and once it's in the air,

it steers itself to its target up to 200 miles away.

The Nazis see its power and they want more of them,

but it's not an easy rocket to build.

And to build thousands of rockets,

the Nazis turn to forced labor,

pulling prisoners from the Mittelbau concentration camp.

- [Martin] Much of the work of assembly

of the components of the V-2,

that's being carried out by concentration camp inmates.

- Thousands of malnourished workers

working in horrible conditions are killed

trying to build this rocket.

[tense music]

- [Dolph] By 1944, the V-2 is ready to go.

On September 8th, the first one hits a suburb of Paris,

flattening buildings and killing six people.

- It's faster than the speed of sound,

so it's on top of you before you even know that it's coming.

[rocket roars]

There's no sirens, no evacuation,

it just gets there, and boom.

[tense music]

- [Natalia] After that first blast, hundreds follow.

Paris, Antwerp, London,

targeting civilians where they live and work.

It's absolute chaos.

- On December 16th, 1944,

a V-2 hits a crowded cinema in Antwerp.

Hundreds of Allied soldiers are inside.

- It's a direct hit.

It causes the roof to cave in

and more than 550 people inside are killed.

It is the most destructive rocket hit of World War II.

- [Lance] The Allies are scrambling,

thinking, "Where are these things coming from?

How are they being launched?"

You can't intercept them.

You can't shoot them down. They're ghosts.

- [John] The Germans, in the last years of the war,

launch 3,000 V-2 rockets

and they end up killing roughly 9,000 civilians and soldiers

and wounding many more.

- [Dolph] By May 1945, the war in Europe comes to an end.

Nazi Germany surrenders.

As innovative and deadly as the V-2 rockets are,

they arrive too late to change the course of the war.

- [Lance] But make no mistake, this is an awesome machine.

So much so that at the end of the war,

the Allies are scrambling to get

V-2 hardware and blueprints and personnel.

- By the early 1960s,

the Cold War competition between the US and the USSR

enters a whole new frontier: space.

Now, the race is on,

and the first to land men on the Moon wins.

[crowd cheering] [tense music]

- September 12th, 1962,

President Kennedy is at Rice University in Houston

and he sets this audacious goal.

He says, "We are going to land a man on the Moon

and return him safely back."

- So the Moon is 240,000 miles away from Earth,

which is to say nothing about the fact

that the Earth is orbiting the sun,

and it's spinning on its axis.

And, of course, the Moon is orbiting the Earth.

No technology exists to do this yet.

Kennedy wants to pull this off in eight years.

And the only way he is gonna be able

to solve that problem, if he can,

is by throwing a lot of money and a lot of talent at it.

- The US is going to spend $20 billion on this program.

That's equivalent to $190 billion in today's dollars.

- So the engineers have huge demands on them.

This rocket has to, first of all,

be powerful enough to break Earth's gravitational pull.

From there, it's gotta be precise enough

to reach the Moon,

and then it has to be stable enough

to do all of this and make it back to Earth

while keeping the astronauts safe and sound.

- [Dolph] Leading The team is a familiar name:

Nazi scientist and V-2 inventor Wernher von Braun.

- Wernher von Braun is one of the most influential

and controversial figures in the history of space flight.

He's a genius, but he comes with a lot of baggage.

- [Paul] Wernher von Braun is part of NASA

thanks to Operation Paperclip.

This is a covert US program

to bring 1,600 German scientists to the US

after World War II.

- When Wernher von Braun surrenders to the Americans

in May of 1945, he brings with him

300 railway cars full of rocket parts.

The Saturn V team includes

a number of these Nazi rocket scientists,

and that's disturbing, but the alternative

is that they would've gone to the Soviets

and become part of their space program.

[tense music]

- [Dolph] To reach all the way to the Moon,

The German team comes up with the Saturn V rocket.

- [Lance] The Saturn V is the largest

and most powerful rocket that's ever been built.

It's four times the size of any other rocket.

It's taller than the Statue of Liberty.

- [Dolph] Its size and muscle solve for a problem:

Saturn V has to carry nearly a million gallons of fuel

to get to the Moon.

So the engineers decide

to create the rocket with three stages.

Stage 1 has five massive engines

that run on a mix of rocket fuel and liquid oxygen.

That produces a controlled explosion

large enough for blast off.

- [Paul] These monsters burn for about 2.5 minutes

to lift the rocket off the ground

and push it through the lower atmosphere,

which is the densest part of the atmosphere.

And at this stage, the rocket is fully fueled,

meaning it's the heaviest.

This is by far the hardest part of the launch.

- This first stage

burns through 20 tons of fuel every second.

That's more than 20 times

what Lindbergh used to cross the Atlantic.

Every second.

- [Dolph] After the first stage burns out and drops away,

the second stage takes over,

pushing the rocket through the upper atmosphere.

By the time it's done,

Saturn V has lost about 9/10 of its weight in fuel.

- [Greg] And finally, the third stage ignites

and that gives us the propulsion

to take this craft out of Earth's orbit

to the Moon.

All of these stages have to work together perfectly.

Failure is not an option.

[tense music]

- [Dolph] In November 1967,

NASA is ready to launch Apollo 4,

the first un-crewed mission using the Saturn V rocket.

It's a critical test,

and almost immediately, there's a problem.

- During the pre-launch and the countdown,

everything is going perfectly

until just a few seconds before launch,

the computer starts showing, "Error."

Saturn V's systems are saying it's not safe to launch

and no one knows why.

- The launch leaders call in the Red Team.

This is a group of expert engineers whose job is

to solve critical, last-minute problems.

- [Lance] Mission control pauses the countdown with just

one minute to spare, and they send

these guys in to figure out what's wrong.

[tense music]

So imagine the situation, this rocket is fully fueled

with some 3,000 tons of rocket fuel

and Red Team's supposed to go in there

where one spark from static electricity

or from a wrench hitting a piece of metal

could cause the whole thing to blow sky high.

- [Paul] The Red Team suspects that the problem is

a relay module, essentially an electrical switch,

and they replace it

and it seems to stabilize the rocket systems.

- [Mission Control] Five, four, three,

two, one, zero.

[Saturn V roars]

- [Lance] Saturn V launches successfully,

the mission goes off without a hitch,

and this seems to prove the Saturn V systems

and that this might, just might,

be the rocket that could take a man to the Moon.

- [Dolph] Fast forward to July 16th, 1969. It's go time.

The Saturn V rocket, carrying the Apollo 11 spacecraft,

is rolled out to the launchpad at Kennedy Space Center.

Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins

must trust this machine with their lives.

- [Mission Control] Three, two, one, zero.

[Saturn V roars]

Lift off. We have a lift off.

- [Lance] The massive rocket lifts off

pushing some 7.5 million pounds of thrust,

piercing through the clouds.

- [Dolph] Each stage of the rocket

performs exactly as planned.

After nearly 76 hours in transit,

Apollo 11 slips into lunar orbit.

Armstrong and Aldrin climb into the lunar module

and begin their descent to the surface of the Moon.

- [Armstrong] Tranquility base here. The Eagle has landed.

- [Lance] Armstrong climbs off the lunar vehicle

and he says those iconic words.

- [Armstrong] That's one small step for man,

one giant leap for mankind.

- They plant the American flag and talk about a statement.

In the middle of the Cold War, the Stars and Stripes

are on the Moon.

- It all starts with that giant Saturn V rocket,

the powerhouse that makes this mission possible.

[pensive music]

- The Apollo missions of the '60s and '70s are a success

with one hitch.

At $1.5 billion a piece,

those missions are incredibly expensive.

So NASA comes up with a brilliant idea.

What if the rockets we launch into space could be recycled?

[pensive music]

- [Lance] By the early 1970s, tensions are still high

between the US and the Soviet Union,

but the Apollo era is over.

The Moon has been reached several times

and public interest is wearing out.

It feels like the Space Race is losing momentum.

- [Paul] In 1972, President Nixon green lights

the Space Shuttle Program.

The whole idea: to make space flight much more frequent

and much more routine.

[engines roar]

- [Dolph] To launch more missions,

NASA needs to fix a key issue with the Saturn V.

- [Paul] The rocket that gets us to the Moon,

the Saturn V, is a beast,

but after liftoff, most of it's gone for good.

- You launch them, they break apart,

and then the pieces just fall into the ocean.

[tense music]

- [Dolph] Meet the solution: The Space Shuttle Columbia.

Designed to fly again and again.

It's built as a three-part system,

an orbiter with wings, a huge external fuel tank,

and two solid rocket boosters.

- [Nehemiah] These rocket boosters generate

a combined thrust of 5.3 million pounds.

That's like launching 20 fully loaded 747s

straight into the sky all at once.

- [Dolph] The orbiter can carry seven astronauts

and an astonishing 50,000 pounds of cargo.

- You're talking about a spacecraft

that carries more astronauts

than any other spacecraft in human history.

And on top of that, it's hauling satellites, telescopes,

space station modules.

- It's NASA saying,

"We're not just visiting space, we're moving in."

[tense music]

- [Dolph] After nine years in development,

the Space Shuttle's moment of truth finally arrives.

- On April 12th, 1981 at Kennedy Space Center in Florida,

a brand-new spacecraft rolls onto the launchpad.

- It's the very first flight and so much can go wrong.

That's why they have John Young,

legendary astronaut leading the mission.

- [Lance] This guy is one of NASA's best.

He's been to the Moon twice. He's calm under pressure.

He's handled some of the most difficult missions out there.

He is the perfect choice

for captaining the Space Shuttle mission.

- [Paul] Many test pilots and NASA staff

consider this the boldest and riskiest

test of a spacecraft ever performed.

- For this first mission,

the shuttle doesn't even carry any cargo,

just the two astronauts.

NASA just wants it to get up there and back.

No cargo, just proof that it works.

- [Dolph] 600,000 people gather around the area.

Cameras are ready to broadcast the launch to the world.

- The countdown starts.

- [Mission Control] Five, four,

we've gone for main engine start.

We have main engine start.

[engines roar]

- [Paul] And at T-minus zero,

the two solid rocket boosters ignite,

slowly lifting Columbia off the launch pad

with Young and Crippen aboard.

- [Dolph] The two boosters propel the shuttle off the pad

rattling windows up to 40 miles away.

It breaks the sound barrier in seconds.

- About two minutes into flight,

the solid rocket boosters burn out and detach.

They then deploy parachutes

to smooth their descent into the ocean

where they'll be recovered and refurbished

to make them ready for another flight,

saving hundreds of millions of dollars.

- [Dolph] The orbiter and external tank continue climbing.

Then, it's time for the next separation.

- As the shuttle reaches orbit about 100 miles above the Earth,

the external tank is jettisoned,

and it burns up harmlessly in atmosphere.

- [Mission Control] It's exactly 24 hours ago.

You've been there for one day now.

- [Dolph] Young and Crippen orbit Earth

37 times over two days,

successfully putting the shuttle through its paces in space.

But the hardest part is still ahead:

the journey home.

- [Paul] Commander Young lines up the shuttle for reentry

and Columbia begins her descent back to Earth.

- [Natalia] The shuttle faces extreme heat,

temperatures soaring beyond 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

It is like flying through a wall of fire.

- [Dolph] 24,000 heat-resistant tiles

protect the shuttle on reentry.

They're so well insulated,

you could hit one side with a blowtorch

while the other side stays cool.

- Without this heat shield,

the heat would melt the shuttle's aluminum frame

in a matter of seconds.

It would essentially burn it up like a meteor.

- The Space Shuttle's tiles are designed to be reused

and not burn up like the old Apollo mission's heat shields.

So once again, they're saving serious money.

- [Dolph] Once it reenters the atmosphere,

Columbia transforms from a rocket-powered spaceship

to a controlled graceful flyer gliding back to earth.

- Now remember, this has never been done before

and the world is watching.

- [Mission Control] Columbia, you're really looking good.

Right on the money. Right on the money.

- [Lance] With no engines firing,

it glides gracefully with Young at the controls

to its landing strip

at Edwards Air Force base in California.

- [Young] Three, two, one. Touchdown.

- [Paul] It actually works.

It looks like this giant airplane

performing a landing maneuver from space.

It's unbelievable.

- [Mission Control] Welcome home, Columbia.

Beautiful, beautiful.

- [Dolph] After landing, the shuttle

doesn't head to a museum.

Most of its parts are refurbished

and it goes back to work

as more shuttles join the program.

- This marks a new era in space flight

and NASA builds a space shuttle fleet:

Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavor.

- [Paul] For almost three decades,

NASAs launches mission after mission,

deploying satellites, repairing the Hubble Space Telescope,

and building the International Space Station.

[pensive music]

- [Nehemiah] We all know about the setbacks,

the Challenger explosion in 1986,

the Columbia disaster in 2003.

The fact of the matter is

that Space Shuttle technology changes everything.

- [Lance] In 2011, after 135 launches

and more than 500 million miles flown,

NASA launches the Space Shuttle for the last time.

- The space shuttle is a truly remarkable machine,

a highly complex system designed to carry humans into space.

Even though its orbiter and rocket boosters

could be recovered and rebuilt,

it still costs a pretty penny

and needs government funding to launch.

In 2002, a California tech company called SpaceX

decides to change all that

by creating a cheaper, truly reusable rocket.

[intense music] [engines rumbling]

- [Lance] In the early 2000s,

the space industry is dominated by government giants,

NASA, Russia's Roscosmos, the European Space Agency.

Missions are rare, costs are sky high,

and innovation slows to a crawl.

- [Dolph] Enter a young innovator named Elon Musk.

He brings a Silicon Valley mindset to space engineering.

Build it, test it, blow it up, learn from it.

As a private company,

SpaceX can take risks NASA never could

because every failed test isn't a political disaster.

- They're aiming to slash launch costs

to just $70 million per launch.

That sounds like a lot,

but that's 20 times cheaper than the Space Shuttle.

[tense music]

- [Dolph] The plan is to completely redesign the machine

that gets us to space and make it fully reusable.

In 2002, SpaceX unveils its game-changing rocket:

the Falcon 9.

- [Nehemiah] The Falcon 9 rocket stands about 230 feet tall,

but it's only 12 feet wide.

Compared to prior rockets to outer space, it's a toothpick.

- [Dolph] But what makes it so cheap to launch

is an innovative engine called the Merlin.

- Unlike traditional engines, which were used once

and discarded or refurbished at an exorbitant cost,

like with the Space Shuttle, the Merlin engine

is designed to withstand multiple launches and landing

with much less extensive mechanical work needed.

- [Dolph] The jettisoned launch rocket uses new technology

that's supposed to let it land safely back on Earth.

- The Falcon 9's first stage has onboard computers

that constantly adjust its position mid-fall

using movable fins and a series of engine thrusts

to steer itself towards its landing pad.

- [Dolph] As the first-stage rocket is making its descent,

the second stage is supposed

to deliver the payload into orbit.

At least, that's the plan.

- SpaceX hits wall after wall.

Rockets explode, landings fail,

hundreds of millions of dollars go up in smoke.

[tense music]

- [Greg] On April 14th, 2015, SpaceX gives it another try.

And this time, the Falcon 9 launches without a hitch.

- [Mission Control] Stage one deployed.

- [Crew] Stage one gone.

- [Mission Control] The vehicle is super sonic.

- [Dolph] The payload reaches orbit,

but that's only half the mission.

[engine roars]

Footage of the rocket's attempt to land goes viral.

- [Paul] The rocket descends and lands on its target,

which is a barge sitting in the ocean.

At the last minute, it tips over.

Another explosion, another failure.

But SpaceX doesn't give up.

[tense music]

- [Dolph] Attempt number 20 comes on December 21st, 2015,

in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

All eyes are on Falcon 9.

- [Mission Control] Three, two, one, zero.

Ignition. Lift-off.

Go NASA, Go SpaceX. Godspeed.

[engine roaring]

- [Dolph] The launch may be flawless,

but what really matters is what comes next:

the rocket's return.

- [Greg] After lifting the Falcon 9

through the lower and thicker parts of the atmosphere,

the first stage separates.

It then ignites its engines for its controlled descent.

[intense music] [engine roars]

- Tension builds.

But against all odds,

it touches down upright on the landing ship.

They've done it.

- I mean, it looks like science fiction,

or like SpaceX bet someone

that they could land a pencil from orbit on its eraser,

and they actually win that bet.

- It's delivered GPS satellites, climate monitoring tech,

crews to the International Space Station,

and thousands of Starlink satellites.

- Rockets have taken us to space and powered devastating weapons,

but there's another kind of game-changing rocket

with a different mission: protecting pilots.

[tense music]

- [Hakeem] In 1934, British engineer James Martin

connects with his friend Valentine Baker, who's a pilot.

They start a company called Martin-Baker

that is focused on designing and building aircraft.

- [Greg] While testing a prototype aircraft,

Valentine Baker unfortunately crashes and dies.

And this just shifts James's perspective entirely.

He'd go from making aircraft to wanting to make something

that's gonna save those who are flying the aircraft.

He's going to produce ejection seats.

- [Dolph] When it comes time to test them,

Martin-Baker turns to their mechanic, Benny Lynch,

who ends up ejecting over 30 times.

[old-timey upbeat music]

- [Reporter] And the human guinea pig is ejected clear,

and his chute opens.

He floats safely to Earth.

- [Dolph] Martin-Baker's designs work well in prop planes,

but when jets are introduced toward the under World War II,

there is a new challenge.

- [Hakeem] Ejection seats just don't cut it anymore.

By 1947, jet fighters are going so fast,

they're moving nearly at the speed of sound.

And that means that for a pilot that's ejected,

the force they're gonna feel from the wind is incredible.

So a spring-loaded seat just doesn't have enough power

to clear them from the plane safely.

- [Dolph] Plus, by the mid 1950s,

the U.S. Navy is seeing some very grim statistics:

a 94% fatality rate

in ejections that happen below 1,000 feet.

- [David] Below 1,000 feet,

getting out of the plane is only half of the problem.

The other problem is once you eject at that low altitude,

you are racing against the clock.

You need that parachute to fully open

and slow you down before you hit the ground.

And there is not a lot of time.

- [Hakeem] The pilots need something with a lot more punch,

something that can blast 'em outta the airplane fast.

And for that, you need more power, a lot more power.

- [Dolph] The team turns to rockets.

In 1966, Martin-Baker develops the first seat

that uses rocket propulsion

to launch a pilot clear of the cockpit:

the MK6.

- The Martin-Baker ejection seat is basically a pilot seat

with a rocket directly underneath it,

perfectly aligned with the spine.

If it's not aligned, with that power,

that spine can break due to all that thrust.

- But you gotta remember, at this time,

rockets mean warfare and explosions,

or space exploration,

not safety gear.

So the things we've been using to blow stuff up

is now gonna save people?

- [Dolph] To eject, the pilot pulls the lever

between their legs and a small explosive charge

launches the seat clear of the cockpit.

- After the seat clears the aircraft,

that's when the rockets come into play.

A lanyard attached to the floor of the aircraft pulls tight,

and that's what ignites the rocket under the pilot's seat.

- [Dolph] This way, the pilot isn't firing a rocket

while still in the aircraft.

The second boost is what saves lives.

It punches the pilot up and out quick,

getting them out of danger.

- [Hakeem] The rocket pack propels the pilot 60 feet up

in less than half a second.

The pilot typically ends up about 120 feet above the jet.

- [Dolph] As that happens, it also generates

a whopping 14Gs,

something fighter pilots have to train for.

- Astronauts train for 3 to 4Gs.

14Gs is 14 times your body weight.

If you are 200 pounds,

14Gs feels like almost 3,000 pounds on you.

- [Hakeem] It's a brutal jolt,

but it's exactly what's needed for their survival.

They need to get outta there fast.

- There isn't a pilot in the world

that wouldn't trade the pain of 14Gs

for a second chance at life.

- [Dolph] Once the rocket launches the pilot

way clear of the aircraft,

parachutes open and the seat drops away.

- [Hakeem] It's not exactly a smooth landing,

but it's way better than dying in a plane crash.

- [Greg] The Martin MK6 quickly becomes the go-to ejection seat

for both U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air Force.

I mean, when we're talking hundredths of a second.

The MK6 is the difference between life and death.

- [Hakeem] As of today,

more than 7,000 pilots have been saved

by Martin-Baker rocket-powered ejection seats.

[pensive music]

- From the fiery blasts of history's first missiles

to the sleek high-flying machines reaching for the stars,

rockets have launched us forward,

each one a testament to human grit and genius.

Who knew a little rocket fuel could take us so far?

[intense music] [machinery whirs]