The Bluffers Guide To Rocket Science

Introduction Popular comment has it that “it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to ...,” as in “it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to program a mobile phone.” This is true—it takes a teenager. A rocket scientist would intellectualize the whole process, press two buttons at once, and crash the software. The last person you would want to ask is a rocket scientist. Blown opportunities Many more millionaires have gone bankrupt trying to develop rockets than satellites. They have overlooked the fact that the operative word in “controlled explosion” is controlled. Gravity depravity Nobody knows what gravity really is, so don’t blow your bluffing cover by trying to explain it. The only thing known for certain is that any two physical bodies will attract each other in proportion to their sizes (which fact is best not taken literally by oddly sorted couples). Lunartrick One Sunday afternoon, the 12-year-old von Braun strapped rockets to a cart, lit the fuse, and sent the fire-spitting vehicle careening down a street . . . . His life-long aim was to send a rocket to the moon. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that flying a lunar mission is tricky.