by Mark Kelly
It had been worth it, he now realized—even when he was afraid they’d all go to jail, it had been worth it.
Everyone was looking at him, and he grinned. “I’m in, but there is one thing.”
“What’s that?” Scott asked.
Mark waved the cast on his arm. “Next time, I’m going to be the astronaut.”
Author’s Note
Project Blastoff is fiction, a made-up story. As eleven-year-olds in New Jersey in 1975, my brother, Scott, and I pulled some crazy stunts, but we never actually built a spacecraft in Grandpa’s barn and launched it into orbit.
There are a whole bunch of reasons no kid—not even my brother and I—could have done this, but the unbeatable engineering problem is concocting fuel that is powerful enough. While rocket candy is for real and used for launching model rockets all the time, Mr. Drizzle’s super-charged secret formula does not, as of this writing, exist.
Beyond that the scientific and mathematical principles described in the story are factual as is the historical background on NASA missions. Most importantly, the story accurately depicts the hard work, cooperation, and brainpower required for any adventure as ambitious as space travel.
In the Glossary that follows are some definitions I hope will help with your own understanding of what it takes to launch anyone into orbit, as well as some suggestions for further reading.
Mark Kelly
September 2014
Glossary
Apollo-Soyuz: This was the first international manned space-flight, and it took place in the summer of 1975. The Apollo spacecraft, belonging to the United States, docked with a Soyuz craft, belonging to what was then the Soviet Union. The two countries historically had many disagreements, so it was important to world peace that they jointly planned and carried out a space mission.
Atoms: Tiny, basic units of matter, invisible to the naked eye.
Attitude: How an object is oriented in three dimensions, for example whether it is rolled one way or the other, facing right or left, or tilting up and down.
Buoyancy: The force of a fluid, like water, on an object in it, like a boat or a swimmer. If something floats, it is because of buoyancy.
Central Processing Unit, CPU: The computer’s brain, which can be compared to the one in your head. A person thinks about information; a CPU processes data.
Combustion: The production of light and heat when certain substances combine. Burning is a form of combustion. The forces of combustion can be used to make cars, rockets, and other vehicles move.
Compression: In this case, what happens to the air in a hollow rubber ball (a basketball, for example) when the surface hitting the ground flattens briefly, shrinking the space inside. As the compressed air presses the rubber back to its original shape, it adds to the ball’s bounce.
Friction: When two things rub against each other, that’s friction. The things don’t have to be objects. They can be a baseball moving through air or a boat moving through water. When there is friction, there is resistance, so friction slows down an object in motion.
G-forces: These are measurements of acceleration, which means the rate at which something moves faster. A force of 1-g means acceleration is the same as that caused by Earth’s gravity. Astronauts in a spacecraft accelerating at greater than 1-g are pressed against their seats and feel heavier than normal.
Galileo: Galileo Galilei was an Italian mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and scientist who lived from 1564–1642. He built a telescope and made important discoveries about the sun and planets. Like Newton, he wrote about motion and how different forces affect objects.
Gravitational pull: The attractive force caused by gravity. All objects have this, but because it’s weak, it’s most noticeable in the case of huge objects like stars and planets, and especially Earth.
Gravity: A force that causes all objects to attract one another. The pull of gravity is in proportion to an object’s mass. Because Earth has more mass than the Moon, an astronaut weighs more on Earth than he or she does on the Moon.
Gyroscope: A gyroscope is a device made up of an axle that is free to move any which way, and a wheel that spins around it. Because of the principles of angular momentum, the wheel’s spin enables the device to measure how the axle is placed in space (its orientation). A gyroscope is at the heart of the system that keeps a spacecraft stable.
Hydrocarbons: Hydrocarbons are chemicals made up of two elements, hydrogen and carbon. Elements are the most basic substances. Because of the way they combine with oxygen, hydrocarbons make good fuels.
M=D•V: This equation says that mass is equal to density multiplied times volume. It describes the relationship between mass (which, in the everyday world, is the same as matter or, very loosely, stuff), density (how tightly packed together the matter is) and volume (how big the space is in which the matter is packed). Mass is not the same as weight because weight changes depending on the force of gravity exerted on an object, and mass does not.
Methane, kerosene, and gasoline: Three chemicals that combust in a way that makes them useful as fuels.
Moore’s Law: In 1965 computer pioneer Gordon Moore predicted that hardware advances would enable computer processors to become twice as fast and twice as small every two years. He was pretty much right.
Newton: Sir Isaac Newton was an English scientist and mathematician who lived from 1643–1727. Among his books was Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, which many people believe is the most important scientific book ever written. It formed the basis for modern physics and showed how gravity applies to all objects.
Nitrogen tetroxide propellant: A gas used to power thrusters—small rockets—that make up the reaction control system (RCS). It is poisonous.
Reaction Control System, RCS: Several thrusters—small rockets—that make adjustments in a spacecraft’s placement in space (orientation) so that it moves as it should to get where it’s going. In the case of the Apollo-Soyuz mission, the poisonous gas inside one of the thrusters leaked into the crew compartment, briefly endangering Apollo astronauts.
Rocket equation: This equation describes the motion of an object (like a rocket) that is being pushed along by fuel as the fuel burns up and the object’s mass shrinks. It was published in 1903 by a Russian teacher and scientist, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.
Specific impulse: A measure of the amount of power the propellant in an engine can deliver over a particular period of time. To move a rocket from Earth into space, the fuel needs a high specific impulse. It can also be thought of as the amount of thrust you get from accelerating a pound of mass through the nozzle of a rocket motor.
Trajectory: The path along which something, like a spacecraft, arrow. or baseball, is moving after it has been set in motion.
Velocity: Similar to speed, it means how fast or slow an object moves in one direction. So if speed stays the same but direction changes, then velocity changes.
Suggested Reading
(Written for young children)
Aldrin, Buzz and Minor, Wendell, Reaching for the Moon, New York: HarperCollins, 2005. A picture-book autobiography of one of the first men to walk on the Moon.
Floca, Brian, Moonshot, New York: Atheneum, 2009. The story of Apollo 11, the first manned flight to the moon, told in picture-book form with lots of helpful diagrams.
Kelly, Mark and Payne, C. F., Mousetronaut, New York: Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books, 2012, and Mousetronaut Goes to Mars, New York: Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books, 2013. Fictionalized stories based on the smallest, bravest mouse that flew on the space shuttle Endeavour.
McNulty, Faith, and Kellogg, Stephen, If You Decide to Go to the Moon, New York: Scholastic, 2005. Everything from flight preparations to splashdown is covered in this mock how-to manual.
Suggested Reading
(Written for older children and adults)
Carpenter, M. Scott, et. al., We Seven: By the Astronauts Themelves, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1962. Each of the seven Mercury astr
onauts tell their stories.
Collins, Michael, Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journey, New York: Adventure Library 1974. Apollo 11 pilot and later Air and Space Museum director, Collins is a terrific writer.
Kranz, Gene, Failure is Not an Option, New York: Simon & Schuster 2000. Gene Kranz, former NASA flight director, recounts his NASA experiences from Mercury to Apollo and beyond.
Zimba, Jason, Force + Motion, Baltimore: Johns Hopskins University Press 2009. A guide that explains Newton’s laws of motion in visual terms.
On the web:
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/ has information on current and past NASA missions.
Author photo © NASA
MARK KELLY was a captain in the United States Navy when he commanded the final mission of Space Shuttle Endeavour in May 2011. A veteran of four space flights to the International Space Station, he is a graduate of the United States Merchant Marine Academy and holds a master’s degree from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School. As a naval aviator he flew thirty-nine combat missions in Operation Desert Storm in 1991. His first book for kids, Mousetronaut, was a #1 New York Times bestseller. He has also written Enough and Gabby with his wife, Gabrielle Giffords. He lives in Arizona.
Photo of Mark and Scott Kelly courtesy of the Kelly family
MARTHA FREEMAN is the author of more than twenty books for young readers, including the Chickadee Court Mystery series and the First Kids Mystery series. She lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2015 by Mark Kelly
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The text for this book is set in Minister Std.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kelly, Mark E.
Astrotwins—project blastoff / Mark Kelly with Martha Freeman.—First edition.
pages cm—(Astrotwins)
“A Paula Wiseman Book.”
Summary: “Young Mark Kelly and his brother and friends decide to build a rocket over the summer when their constant bickering starts to annoy their grandfather in this middle-grade novel based on the NASA astronauts’ real childhoods”—Provided by publisher. Includes facts about NASA and the space program.
ISBN 978-1-4814-1545-3 (hardback)
ISBN 978-1-4814-1547-7 (eBook)
1. Kelly, Mark E.—Childhood and youth—Juvenile fiction. 2. Childhood and youth—Juvenile fiction. [1. Kelly, Mark E.—Childhood and youth—Fiction. 2. Brothers—
Fiction. 3. Twins—Fiction. 4. Rockets (Aeronautics)—Fiction. 5. Grandfathers—
Fiction.] I. Freeman, Martha, 1956–II. Title. III. Title: Project blastoff.
PZ7.K296395Ast 2014
[Fic]—dc23
2014012400
