[MUSIC PLAYING]
Ignition sequence start.
6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0.
All engines running.
Liftoff.
We have a liftoff 32
minutes past the hour,
liftoff on Apollo 11.
Have you ever wondered
how rockets work?
Tower clear.
Have you ever looked out of
the window of an airplane
and wondered how something so
big and heavy can actually fly?
Have you ever
wondered what happens
to the human body in space
or how a space suit keeps
astronauts alive and able to
work in the vacuum of space?
These topics are all part
of aerospace engineering.
Aerospace engineering
is giving humans
the freedom to move
in three dimensions.
The design, construction, and
operation of aerospace vehicles
have allowed us to leave
the surface of the Earth
and fly through our planet's
atmosphere and out into space.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Mission Specialist,
Jeff Hoffman.
Hello, Jeff.
The instability of the whole
wide of the astronomy--
I'm Jeff Hoffman.
I'm a professor in the
Department of Aeronautics
and Astronautics at MIT.
Before coming to MIT, I spent
19 years at NASA as an astronaut
and I made five space flights.
You can see the patches
from those flights
here on my jacket.
I was also the first
astronaut to log
1,000 hours of flight
time on the space shuttle.
This course, 1600x,
is an Introduction
to Aerospace
Engineering in general,
but we're going to concentrate
on astronautics-- that is,
space flight-- and
especially human space
flight about which I can talk
from personal experience.
I want to share with you the
excitement of rocket science
and introduce you to
the basic concepts that
make space flight possible.
People use the term
"rocket science"
to refer to something
that's really hard.
Actually, launching rockets is
hard, and getting to the moon
was super hard.
But many aspects of
how we did these things
can actually be understood
without complicated math
and physics, and
that's exactly what
we're going to do
in this course.
Beautiful.
I teach this course at
MIT to first-year students
who have had high school physics
and some introductory calculus.
And in a very few lectures,
I use these subjects,
but I've designed this
course so that people
without a technical background
can still really enjoy it.
The course isn't going to turn
you into a locket scientist
by any means, but
it should really
give you some insight into what
rocket scientists and aerospace
engineers actually do.
Hey, take it from me.
Flying in space is
really exciting,
and here's your chance to
join in that excitement.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
