Bang Goes The Theory (2009) s01e06 Episode Script
Episode 6
On this episode, Dallas meets a real live rocket man l like the al fresco, open plan design you've gone for.
.
.
l look at brain training in action ls there any evidence at all to prove that brain training actually makes you brainier? .
.
And Jem crashes a helicopter.
Who-o-o-oa Oh, l've copped it here badly.
Hello and welcome to Bang Goes The Theory.
We start tonight with brain training.
Ohances are you or someone you know has bought a brain training game by now, and they are big business.
lt's estimated that the US alone spent over $90 million on them last year.
But do they work? We thought it would be a good idea to put them to the test.
Everyone is doing it - from your gran to your favourite celebrity, to your five-year-old niece.
And the manufacturers say the games will do everything from giving your brain a simple workout to actually boosting your brainpower.
But is there any evidence at all to prove that brain training actually makes you brainier? l've invited a couple of guinea pigs to join me at Oambridge University.
l'm going to set Jem and Dallas a six-week course of brain training to see if it makes any difference to their brain functions.
But first, l need to find out what shape their brains are actually in.
Jem, l need you to sit over there for a bit.
Dallas, you're coming with me.
W-w-what are we doing? l'm about to set Dallas some brain-training tasks.
Sounds pretty simple.
But the catch is he'll be inside a functional MRl scanner while he does them.
And he's never been in one before.
- You're getting your brain scanned! - l don't want my brain scanned.
'This will show me exactly how hard his brain is working, but it turns out Dallas is a bit claustrophobic.
' - Are you all right? - Yeahno it's just l'm No, l'm fine.
Sorry, this is freaking me out.
'Despite his apprehension, apart from the noise and being in a small space, 'Dallas will experience no discomfort whatsoever.
'lnside the scanner, there's a computer screen and a button box to press for his answers.
'With the help of neuroscientist Dr Adrian Owen, l'm going to see Dallas's brain in action.
'This is his head, and it turns out it's a big one.
'No surprise there, then!' Does a big head or a big brain mean that you're more clever, Adrian? Dallas's head is big, - but his brain isn't particularly big, l have to say.
- Right! There's no evidence - having a big brain doesn't necessarily mean you're any smarter.
OK, Dallas, here comes the first brain test.
OK.
Good luck.
'The first test is called Visual Search.
Dallas has to decide if two images are the same or different.
'lt should tell us how good he is at doing things like finding keys in a drawer of junk in real life.
' Amazing! The back of the brain is really starting to activate.
The parts of the brain that are working hardest are requiring more energy to do that.
They are drawing more oxygen to replenish lost energy.
l'm confused about these brain-training games.
lsn't it true that if you repeated one particular game again and again, you would get better at it based on practice? The idea of brain training is that it gives your brain a full workout.
We don't know that that's the case.
We don't know that people's brains are actually going to improve in any measurable way.
He just got one wrong.
He did.
He's getting a lot of rights, though.
'The second test is a reasoning test.
This looks at how good you are 'at logical thinking and problem solving - 'for example, planning what time you need to leave home to catch a train.
' What part of the brain usually fires up most for this kind of activity? Actually, in Dallas's case, we're getting much more frontal lobe activity than we've seen previously.
l think this is really exercising his problem-solving abilities.
'Now for my second guinea pig.
Jem will be doing exactly the same tests.
'We may well see some differences in his Visual Search and reasoning skills.
' You OK? All right, this is it.
Are you nervous? l am a bit now.
'First up, the test to see how good Jem is at finding objects.
' - Are you ready? Are you concentrating? - Yes.
- He's off.
Back of the brain.
- Definitely.
- He's doing all right? - l think he's getting a bit competitive here.
Of course he is - they're two blokes! 'Finally, the reasoning test, to see whether Jem is a logical thinker.
' Just from knowing them, l would have thought, actually, that Jem would be better at problem solving, because that's all he does.
He's always building things - he's an engineer.
lt'll be interesting to analyse the brain-imaging data.
But also their performance, in order to see if it does correlate with what you know about them.
'So, do their brains work differently, given different tasks? 'And more importantly, could brain training change that over time?' - Hi! He's still alive! How was it? - Relaxing.
l'll leave you both to recover.
Me and Adrian will analyse the data.
- l'm a bit nervous about these results.
- Are you?! Nervous, in case they say, ''The way your brain's not functioning, mate, you'll be lucky to make it home.
'' - D'you think our brains are wired differently? - Yeah.
l think they might be.
So do you want to know the results? Hmm Hmm Maybe you should put us out of our misery.
Don't be so enthusiastic(!) Adrian, take it away.
On the first test, the Visual Search task, Dallas, you did better.
Woo! The one that required logical thinking - Jem, you were WAY better than Dallas.
That's probably because it's my job.
Fair enough.
So what does that tell us about our two boyos? To be honest, if l had to be good at just one of these tasks, l would choose the reasoning test.
- No! - Sorry, Dallas! l'm so upset! ls there any way that l can improve on it? This is great, because it gives us something to work with.
So we've designed some brain-training tests for you.
l want you to try them at least three times a week for the next six weeks.
OK.
Then we'll be able to see if it improves your brain function.
OK? OK.
OK.
l'm game if you are.
l feel we're both mature enough not to turn this into a competition.
l'm nervous.
- Aw, don't be nervous, Dallas! - How can l not be nervous? - Before l tell - Just tell us the result! l want to talk first about your training sessions.
You were both supposed to do 18 sessions.
Jem, you did about 23, which isn't too shabby.
Good! And it shows suitable enthusiasm.
Dallas, you did 48 sessions.
- l actually got completely obsessed by it.
- You did! You were so freaked out by the initial result, that you worked every minute you had free.
That's bordering on cheating! l was crushed by his comments.
l know! And l'm competitive with Jem.
There was supposed to be no competition, but there clearly was.
This is your spatial awareness ''before'' result.
We saw you were quite good at those to start off with.
After 48 sessions of training here's your ''after'' - absolutely no difference whatsoever.
Exactly the same.
With all the training you did, no difference.
l'm surprised, because l worked.
That was my favourite one.
l know.
l'd sit there for hours at night, locked up, doing it.
You've got to remember, you were very good at it to start with.
Unlike your verbal reasoning test, do you remember those? - l hated them.
- The ones that haunted you at night.
- OK, so remember this was your before.
- Oh, that's embarrassing.
OK? lt's not too bad.
Are you ready for your result? OK.
This is it after your training.
Massive improvement! - That is a big improvement! - Yeah, yeah, yeah, well done.
l mean, that obviously shows that something's going on in your brain, but we have to remember, obviously, it could be just anecdotal because there's just two individuals doing this test, but it's a good, positive indication, all right? - Now, Jem, are you ready? - Yeah.
OK, let's start with your reasoning, we knew he was a good problem solver, that's what he does for a job.
That's more than where l ended up.
But it's very close, anyway.
After your 23 sessions of practice - Wow! A little improvement.
- Yeah.
- You're up there, anyway.
- l'm happy enough.
All right, now for your spatial awareness test, which you weren't quite as good at, all right? But, after training .
.
So, again, little bit of an improvement.
Does that help table tennis in any way? Well, yeah, at least you'd know where the ball's supposed to go.
Well done to the two of you, that was really good.
OK, next up it's space and it's a big personal obsession of mine, so l went deep into the Mohave desert to meet a real live rocket man.
Getting into space used to be something governments spent billions on, but now a few rich entrepreneurs are trying to do it for just a few million.
And, if they get it right, they'll get an awful lot richer.
This corner of the American desert has always been about pioneers, it's been about real heroes, it's been about constantly pushing the envelope.
ln fact, literally just a few miles down the road there at Edwards Air Force Base, Ohuck Yeager became the first person to break the sound barrier.
What's really interesting is that the experimental aerospace tradition is still carrying on right now.
But not by government agencies, by a handful of, albeit extremely wealthy, entrepreneurs who all share that deep passion for adventure.
One of the great advantages those new space pioneers have is that NASA has done the ground work.
All men like Dave Masten have to do is build on their pioneering programmes.
You're trying to drop the price of getting a payload into space by an order of magnitude.
How much cheaper do you think you'll be in the long run? So, l think we're gonna be hundreds of dollars a pound instead of thousands of dollars a pound for a payload into space.
- Wow, that's a huge difference.
- Yes.
Forecasters reckon that $1 78 billion will be spent on launching satellites over the next ten years.
And beating the opposition on price is where minnows like Dave Masten expect to make their killing.
Oan we do the two hardest parts of a flight? Take off and land.
OK.
lf we master this, we get this really good and we're very happy with it then we'll take it to the next level and start delivering payloads into space.
lt's a bit smaller than l imagined, but l love it all the same.
l like the al fresco open plan design you've gone for.
Does this run on regular unleaded or what kind of fuel? - Actually it's alcohol.
- Alcohol?! lt's a wonderful fuel to use, very green.
You've got alcohol up here and then in here - That's liquid oxygen.
- That's oxygen in there? What are these big tanks on the side? These are our pressure tanks.
What it does is it drives the gas into the rocket engine.
So it's not just gravity letting the fuel drip down, you've actually got gas that's pushing.
Yes, we're forcing fuel in.
This is one of they key innovations of Masten's rocket.
The most important aspect of any liquid rocket system is getting the right fuel mix into the combustion chambers.
Older rockets made by NASA used incredibly complex turbo pumps which added a lot of weight.
Masten's rocket, called the Zombie, uses only compressed gas.
ln order to overcome all that gravity, get that 100km or whatever, - you have to carry lots of propellant.
- OK.
All that propellant is on-board.
- So that's more weight.
- So that's more weight when you start off.
OK.
Getting a rocket to leave the ground in a controlled manner when it's carrying its full fuel load is the key to a successful launch and that's what today's test is gonna be all about.
So you end up with this huge vehicle, with all this propellant, to lift a very small payload.
OK.
So, presumably, as it goes higher and higher it's getting lighter and lighter? And easier and faster accelerations, yes.
But does it work? This is one of the maiden flights of this pioneering rocket system.
RADlO: 'Start prime.
' With about 130 litres of incredibly flammable propellant, one mistake could be costly.
Dave has a right to be worried.
l'm nervous.
Just that it'll do something not quite right.
OK, go ahead, start.
OK, fingers in ears.
Firing in five, four, three, two, one.
Fire.
Now you might not be too impressed by what you're watching, but taking off and hovering over a stream of hypersonic gas is an incredible feat of engineering.
One that bodes well for the next phase of development.
That's amaoh, well done! Thank you.
Very good, very good.
OK, bottom line, how long before you actually go into space, do you think? At least two years.
Two years? Two years is good, l can wait for two years.
lt might be hard to believe, but if Dave Masten does get into space, this corner of the American desert could soon look like Oape Oanaveral.
Great stuff there, but l'm imagining space gridlock up there with everybody's DlY space travel kit.
l know, but it's exciting because suddenly space is becoming for the masses, it's been taken out of a government agencies hands, it's great.
Do you know what l loved? The shape of that rocket exhaust, wasn't it magnificent? As an engineer, you would've loved it out there.
l'm sat here very jealous! Be jealous, be very jealous! The problem Dave Masten's gonna have when he launches that rocket, is trying to avoid space junk.
Yeah, there's lots of it out there.
NASA reckon there's about 600,000 pieces measuring a centimetre or more flying around up there.
All from dead satellites, rocket launches, that kind of stuff.
Those are the relatively big bits.
Have a look at this, this is a bit of a bumper shield, from a satellite that's been hit by something.
And that hole was made by a tiny, tiny little ball bearing about .
8 of a millimetre.
lt just goes to show the damage that can be done by even the smallest bits of debris.
- This is less than a millimetre! - lt's miniscule! You can't even see it.
Amazing, isn't it? And it went straight through it? Amazing.
lt's because of the speeds things are travelling up there.
ln order for something to be in orbit it has to be going fast enough to avoid being pulled back down by Earth's gravity.
And that's a phenomenal velocity.
Say, for example, the space station, which is 400 kilometres up.
That needs to go at 71/1/2 kilometres a second - 1 7,000 miles an hour.
There's speeds that make bullets look like tortoises! And because the energy with which something hits something else is related to its speed as well as its mass, if even the tiniest speck of paint hits something while travelling at 1 7,000 miles per hour, it's gonna cause some serious damage.
To make the problem even worse, most of that stuff is just stuck there.
Exactly.
Because as you go outside Earth's atmosphere there are fewer and fewer air molecules.
For a flying object, it's collisions with air molecules that slow it down - air friction.
No air molecules, no reduction in speed.
lf it's not slowing down it's not gonna drop out of orbit which means it's gonna just stay there.
What we need is some kind of giant space vacuum cleaner or something.
That is a vacuum cleaner in a vacuum! - How would that work exactly? - Touche! Actually that sounds like a question for Dr Yan.
Speaking of which, our resident brainbox is out and about messing with microwaves.
Microwave ovens.
We've all got one in our kitchens, and l'm gonna show you how they work.
What l'm going to use is a piece of broken glass, and a blowtorch.
This bottle has been in the microwave almost ten minutes.
And it's still not really hot.
Slightly warm, but not hot.
lt's just like the glass plate at the bottom of your microwave doesn't get hot either.
But also in the microwave l've put a jar of water.
This definitely is hot.
You can see it steaming.
So what's going on here? How come some things get hot and some not? Well, microwaves in these ovens work by making molecules in stuff wiggle, like that.
And as they wiggle, they bump into one another and that heats them up.
The molecules in this glass can't wiggle much at all because they're held firmly in place.
So that means they don't really heat up in the microwave.
ButlF l melt glass, yeah? Make it a bit liquid, then suddenly, it allows the molecules to wiggle.
OK? That's where the blowtorch comes in.
So if l heat up a piece of glass till it's, say, red hot, and just put it in the top of the bottle, then hopefully, the microwaves will be able to get to work on the glass and then they'll melt the rest of the bottle as well.
So, actually, this is the same reason it's quite hard to defrost things in your microwave.
Because if you look at ice, it's very solid.
The molecules can't wiggle very much.
l reckon that's almost getting there.
321 go.
There you go.
- And if you look right at the top - Oh, right! Yes.
Oool! The little bit of glowing glass l've put in has now heated up the rest of the glass molecules in the bottle and allowed them to wiggle too, and so they're melting.
The whole bottle is just disintegrating before our eyes.
lt's really cool.
Wahey! So a bit's going off the bottom, into there.
lt should carry on going.
lt's quite pretty, though, isn't it? - Are you going to take it out of there? - l will take it out so that it doesn't burn a hole in the bottom of my microwave! Does it affect the guarantee of the microwave, the melting bottles(?) You probably shouldn't do this at home! You might wreck your microwave! And you probably shouldn't be messing with blowtorches! You might remember this.
That's right.
Liz had a bit of a thrill ride in a helicopter flown by ex-World Freestyle chopper pilot, Quentin Smith.
Whoa-ho-ho-ho! lt got me thinking about how helicopters actually fly.
They are amazing bits of kit.
You cut the power to the rotors, and it just doesn't fall out the sky.
Yep.
Although it kind of FEELS like you are falling out of the sky, Jem! Yeah, well, not exactly! The thing just didn't tumble As an engineer, l'm amazed - how stable it was.
- Yeah.
Didn't Leonardo Da Vinci invent the helicopter? l think Da Vinci drew a KlND OF helicopter! l firmly believe there is no way it would have taken off, a: with the airscrew, and, b: it had no stability to it at all.
Watch this.
Liz, here's Da Vinci's helicopter with the benefit of a modern motor.
See what happens as we go for lift-off.
Ah, that's rubbish! And then compare it to this one.
Modern rotors, tail rotor for stability, 1 23 - There we go.
- Oh, it's just so elegant.
Now if Leonardo couldn't crack it, l thought l'd go and find out exactly how helicopters do fly.
This is the Westland Sea King Mk.
4 Oommando helicopter.
lt weighs in at over ten tons, has a top speed of over 1 40 miles an hour, and is powered by two Rolls Royce turbo jets driving five rotor blades nearly ten metres long.
But the £20,000,000 question is how on earth do five fairly flimsy blades lift ten tonnes of Royal Navy Sea King helicopter? Now, this feels wrong.
My heart's going when l do that.
But the fact of the matter is if each of these blades couldn't have two tonnes hanging on the end of it, it couldn't lift the helicopter.
And oddly, it's the extraordinary flexibility of the blades that allows the whole thing to fly.
lf these were as stiff as a board there's no way that helicopter would be of any use to anybody.
Now, to get a helicopter off the ground actually uses some pretty simple physics.
Each rotor acts as an aerofoil, just like a normal plane wing, only this one goes round and round.
To generate lift, all you need to do is pull up on a little lever called the collective, then each of those blades starts to angle up slightly at the front.
This so-called angle of attack helps to suck air from above and whack it downwards To quote old lsaac Newton, ''Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
'' So if the air is being forced down, the helicopter is going to be forced up.
The rotors up there are going at about 200 revs a minute which isn't much faster than your bike wheel goes as it goes around town.
But because they're each 10 metres long, their speed is nearly 400 miles an hour and it creates an awful lot of down draught.
The blades bend up enormously during flight.
lt's known as the cone and they do not stick out straight - they bend right up.
That flexibility in the blades is a very good thing for us inside here cos it gives some kind of suspension to this vehicle.
They're pretty shaky things, but it balances things out a bit.
There's only a limited amount of time l'm prepared to stick my head out of a helicopter.
l'm coming back in now.
The astonishing and very concerning thing about this aircraft is that those rotor blades that are responsible for keeping us up here, are held on by just one bolt.
And l have no idea who tightened it up.
l assume they were extremely good.
'The pilot, Lieutenant Oommander Jim Newton, 'is one of the best in the business, with over 20 years experience.
'lt takes more than 100 hours to learn fly a Sea King so l couldn't quite believe what happened next.
' Speeds building up.
Doing about 102mph.
We're going to settle the aircraft down and l'll hand you control.
'My only training was half an hour in a simulator earlier on.
' You have control.
l have control.
Thank you.
Em l'm not touching anything because it seems to be going well.
OK.
'Flying in a straight line is one thing, but to turn the helicopter, 'l've got to get my head around the lever called the cyclic.
' l'm now going to try to fly an aircraft and talk at the same time.
Now, the cyclic is so-called because it shifts the pitch on things cyclically.
The blades will pitch up more on the left and less on the right for example and so this enables me to turn one way or the other or to go forwards or backwards.
'lncreasing the pitch of the blades for just one part of each revolution 'will generate more lift at that point, making the helicopter tilt in the opposite direction.
' lt's almost hard to breathe and do it at the same time, let alone try talking through it.
lt's a phenomenal feeling.
l've got to say, l'm shaking with fear, having had control of it, even though you're there.
OK.
l've got control for a second.
l've just got to bring it down cos we're a little bit high at the moment.
l can't believe you get to go up in a Royal Navy helicopter.
What's that about? l told them my degree in aeronautics qualified me as a pilot.
- Oh, please! - Degree in aeronautics or not, when you were practising, you were rubbish.
Have a little look at this.
They are quite quiet, though.
Oh! Whoa! (ALARM BLARES) l've really over (ALARM BLARES) (HlGH-PlTOHED ALARM BLARES) Oh, my life! And on that rather non-heroic note, it's time for us to go.
- Bye.
- See ya.
.
.
l look at brain training in action ls there any evidence at all to prove that brain training actually makes you brainier? .
.
And Jem crashes a helicopter.
Who-o-o-oa Oh, l've copped it here badly.
Hello and welcome to Bang Goes The Theory.
We start tonight with brain training.
Ohances are you or someone you know has bought a brain training game by now, and they are big business.
lt's estimated that the US alone spent over $90 million on them last year.
But do they work? We thought it would be a good idea to put them to the test.
Everyone is doing it - from your gran to your favourite celebrity, to your five-year-old niece.
And the manufacturers say the games will do everything from giving your brain a simple workout to actually boosting your brainpower.
But is there any evidence at all to prove that brain training actually makes you brainier? l've invited a couple of guinea pigs to join me at Oambridge University.
l'm going to set Jem and Dallas a six-week course of brain training to see if it makes any difference to their brain functions.
But first, l need to find out what shape their brains are actually in.
Jem, l need you to sit over there for a bit.
Dallas, you're coming with me.
W-w-what are we doing? l'm about to set Dallas some brain-training tasks.
Sounds pretty simple.
But the catch is he'll be inside a functional MRl scanner while he does them.
And he's never been in one before.
- You're getting your brain scanned! - l don't want my brain scanned.
'This will show me exactly how hard his brain is working, but it turns out Dallas is a bit claustrophobic.
' - Are you all right? - Yeahno it's just l'm No, l'm fine.
Sorry, this is freaking me out.
'Despite his apprehension, apart from the noise and being in a small space, 'Dallas will experience no discomfort whatsoever.
'lnside the scanner, there's a computer screen and a button box to press for his answers.
'With the help of neuroscientist Dr Adrian Owen, l'm going to see Dallas's brain in action.
'This is his head, and it turns out it's a big one.
'No surprise there, then!' Does a big head or a big brain mean that you're more clever, Adrian? Dallas's head is big, - but his brain isn't particularly big, l have to say.
- Right! There's no evidence - having a big brain doesn't necessarily mean you're any smarter.
OK, Dallas, here comes the first brain test.
OK.
Good luck.
'The first test is called Visual Search.
Dallas has to decide if two images are the same or different.
'lt should tell us how good he is at doing things like finding keys in a drawer of junk in real life.
' Amazing! The back of the brain is really starting to activate.
The parts of the brain that are working hardest are requiring more energy to do that.
They are drawing more oxygen to replenish lost energy.
l'm confused about these brain-training games.
lsn't it true that if you repeated one particular game again and again, you would get better at it based on practice? The idea of brain training is that it gives your brain a full workout.
We don't know that that's the case.
We don't know that people's brains are actually going to improve in any measurable way.
He just got one wrong.
He did.
He's getting a lot of rights, though.
'The second test is a reasoning test.
This looks at how good you are 'at logical thinking and problem solving - 'for example, planning what time you need to leave home to catch a train.
' What part of the brain usually fires up most for this kind of activity? Actually, in Dallas's case, we're getting much more frontal lobe activity than we've seen previously.
l think this is really exercising his problem-solving abilities.
'Now for my second guinea pig.
Jem will be doing exactly the same tests.
'We may well see some differences in his Visual Search and reasoning skills.
' You OK? All right, this is it.
Are you nervous? l am a bit now.
'First up, the test to see how good Jem is at finding objects.
' - Are you ready? Are you concentrating? - Yes.
- He's off.
Back of the brain.
- Definitely.
- He's doing all right? - l think he's getting a bit competitive here.
Of course he is - they're two blokes! 'Finally, the reasoning test, to see whether Jem is a logical thinker.
' Just from knowing them, l would have thought, actually, that Jem would be better at problem solving, because that's all he does.
He's always building things - he's an engineer.
lt'll be interesting to analyse the brain-imaging data.
But also their performance, in order to see if it does correlate with what you know about them.
'So, do their brains work differently, given different tasks? 'And more importantly, could brain training change that over time?' - Hi! He's still alive! How was it? - Relaxing.
l'll leave you both to recover.
Me and Adrian will analyse the data.
- l'm a bit nervous about these results.
- Are you?! Nervous, in case they say, ''The way your brain's not functioning, mate, you'll be lucky to make it home.
'' - D'you think our brains are wired differently? - Yeah.
l think they might be.
So do you want to know the results? Hmm Hmm Maybe you should put us out of our misery.
Don't be so enthusiastic(!) Adrian, take it away.
On the first test, the Visual Search task, Dallas, you did better.
Woo! The one that required logical thinking - Jem, you were WAY better than Dallas.
That's probably because it's my job.
Fair enough.
So what does that tell us about our two boyos? To be honest, if l had to be good at just one of these tasks, l would choose the reasoning test.
- No! - Sorry, Dallas! l'm so upset! ls there any way that l can improve on it? This is great, because it gives us something to work with.
So we've designed some brain-training tests for you.
l want you to try them at least three times a week for the next six weeks.
OK.
Then we'll be able to see if it improves your brain function.
OK? OK.
OK.
l'm game if you are.
l feel we're both mature enough not to turn this into a competition.
l'm nervous.
- Aw, don't be nervous, Dallas! - How can l not be nervous? - Before l tell - Just tell us the result! l want to talk first about your training sessions.
You were both supposed to do 18 sessions.
Jem, you did about 23, which isn't too shabby.
Good! And it shows suitable enthusiasm.
Dallas, you did 48 sessions.
- l actually got completely obsessed by it.
- You did! You were so freaked out by the initial result, that you worked every minute you had free.
That's bordering on cheating! l was crushed by his comments.
l know! And l'm competitive with Jem.
There was supposed to be no competition, but there clearly was.
This is your spatial awareness ''before'' result.
We saw you were quite good at those to start off with.
After 48 sessions of training here's your ''after'' - absolutely no difference whatsoever.
Exactly the same.
With all the training you did, no difference.
l'm surprised, because l worked.
That was my favourite one.
l know.
l'd sit there for hours at night, locked up, doing it.
You've got to remember, you were very good at it to start with.
Unlike your verbal reasoning test, do you remember those? - l hated them.
- The ones that haunted you at night.
- OK, so remember this was your before.
- Oh, that's embarrassing.
OK? lt's not too bad.
Are you ready for your result? OK.
This is it after your training.
Massive improvement! - That is a big improvement! - Yeah, yeah, yeah, well done.
l mean, that obviously shows that something's going on in your brain, but we have to remember, obviously, it could be just anecdotal because there's just two individuals doing this test, but it's a good, positive indication, all right? - Now, Jem, are you ready? - Yeah.
OK, let's start with your reasoning, we knew he was a good problem solver, that's what he does for a job.
That's more than where l ended up.
But it's very close, anyway.
After your 23 sessions of practice - Wow! A little improvement.
- Yeah.
- You're up there, anyway.
- l'm happy enough.
All right, now for your spatial awareness test, which you weren't quite as good at, all right? But, after training .
.
So, again, little bit of an improvement.
Does that help table tennis in any way? Well, yeah, at least you'd know where the ball's supposed to go.
Well done to the two of you, that was really good.
OK, next up it's space and it's a big personal obsession of mine, so l went deep into the Mohave desert to meet a real live rocket man.
Getting into space used to be something governments spent billions on, but now a few rich entrepreneurs are trying to do it for just a few million.
And, if they get it right, they'll get an awful lot richer.
This corner of the American desert has always been about pioneers, it's been about real heroes, it's been about constantly pushing the envelope.
ln fact, literally just a few miles down the road there at Edwards Air Force Base, Ohuck Yeager became the first person to break the sound barrier.
What's really interesting is that the experimental aerospace tradition is still carrying on right now.
But not by government agencies, by a handful of, albeit extremely wealthy, entrepreneurs who all share that deep passion for adventure.
One of the great advantages those new space pioneers have is that NASA has done the ground work.
All men like Dave Masten have to do is build on their pioneering programmes.
You're trying to drop the price of getting a payload into space by an order of magnitude.
How much cheaper do you think you'll be in the long run? So, l think we're gonna be hundreds of dollars a pound instead of thousands of dollars a pound for a payload into space.
- Wow, that's a huge difference.
- Yes.
Forecasters reckon that $1 78 billion will be spent on launching satellites over the next ten years.
And beating the opposition on price is where minnows like Dave Masten expect to make their killing.
Oan we do the two hardest parts of a flight? Take off and land.
OK.
lf we master this, we get this really good and we're very happy with it then we'll take it to the next level and start delivering payloads into space.
lt's a bit smaller than l imagined, but l love it all the same.
l like the al fresco open plan design you've gone for.
Does this run on regular unleaded or what kind of fuel? - Actually it's alcohol.
- Alcohol?! lt's a wonderful fuel to use, very green.
You've got alcohol up here and then in here - That's liquid oxygen.
- That's oxygen in there? What are these big tanks on the side? These are our pressure tanks.
What it does is it drives the gas into the rocket engine.
So it's not just gravity letting the fuel drip down, you've actually got gas that's pushing.
Yes, we're forcing fuel in.
This is one of they key innovations of Masten's rocket.
The most important aspect of any liquid rocket system is getting the right fuel mix into the combustion chambers.
Older rockets made by NASA used incredibly complex turbo pumps which added a lot of weight.
Masten's rocket, called the Zombie, uses only compressed gas.
ln order to overcome all that gravity, get that 100km or whatever, - you have to carry lots of propellant.
- OK.
All that propellant is on-board.
- So that's more weight.
- So that's more weight when you start off.
OK.
Getting a rocket to leave the ground in a controlled manner when it's carrying its full fuel load is the key to a successful launch and that's what today's test is gonna be all about.
So you end up with this huge vehicle, with all this propellant, to lift a very small payload.
OK.
So, presumably, as it goes higher and higher it's getting lighter and lighter? And easier and faster accelerations, yes.
But does it work? This is one of the maiden flights of this pioneering rocket system.
RADlO: 'Start prime.
' With about 130 litres of incredibly flammable propellant, one mistake could be costly.
Dave has a right to be worried.
l'm nervous.
Just that it'll do something not quite right.
OK, go ahead, start.
OK, fingers in ears.
Firing in five, four, three, two, one.
Fire.
Now you might not be too impressed by what you're watching, but taking off and hovering over a stream of hypersonic gas is an incredible feat of engineering.
One that bodes well for the next phase of development.
That's amaoh, well done! Thank you.
Very good, very good.
OK, bottom line, how long before you actually go into space, do you think? At least two years.
Two years? Two years is good, l can wait for two years.
lt might be hard to believe, but if Dave Masten does get into space, this corner of the American desert could soon look like Oape Oanaveral.
Great stuff there, but l'm imagining space gridlock up there with everybody's DlY space travel kit.
l know, but it's exciting because suddenly space is becoming for the masses, it's been taken out of a government agencies hands, it's great.
Do you know what l loved? The shape of that rocket exhaust, wasn't it magnificent? As an engineer, you would've loved it out there.
l'm sat here very jealous! Be jealous, be very jealous! The problem Dave Masten's gonna have when he launches that rocket, is trying to avoid space junk.
Yeah, there's lots of it out there.
NASA reckon there's about 600,000 pieces measuring a centimetre or more flying around up there.
All from dead satellites, rocket launches, that kind of stuff.
Those are the relatively big bits.
Have a look at this, this is a bit of a bumper shield, from a satellite that's been hit by something.
And that hole was made by a tiny, tiny little ball bearing about .
8 of a millimetre.
lt just goes to show the damage that can be done by even the smallest bits of debris.
- This is less than a millimetre! - lt's miniscule! You can't even see it.
Amazing, isn't it? And it went straight through it? Amazing.
lt's because of the speeds things are travelling up there.
ln order for something to be in orbit it has to be going fast enough to avoid being pulled back down by Earth's gravity.
And that's a phenomenal velocity.
Say, for example, the space station, which is 400 kilometres up.
That needs to go at 71/1/2 kilometres a second - 1 7,000 miles an hour.
There's speeds that make bullets look like tortoises! And because the energy with which something hits something else is related to its speed as well as its mass, if even the tiniest speck of paint hits something while travelling at 1 7,000 miles per hour, it's gonna cause some serious damage.
To make the problem even worse, most of that stuff is just stuck there.
Exactly.
Because as you go outside Earth's atmosphere there are fewer and fewer air molecules.
For a flying object, it's collisions with air molecules that slow it down - air friction.
No air molecules, no reduction in speed.
lf it's not slowing down it's not gonna drop out of orbit which means it's gonna just stay there.
What we need is some kind of giant space vacuum cleaner or something.
That is a vacuum cleaner in a vacuum! - How would that work exactly? - Touche! Actually that sounds like a question for Dr Yan.
Speaking of which, our resident brainbox is out and about messing with microwaves.
Microwave ovens.
We've all got one in our kitchens, and l'm gonna show you how they work.
What l'm going to use is a piece of broken glass, and a blowtorch.
This bottle has been in the microwave almost ten minutes.
And it's still not really hot.
Slightly warm, but not hot.
lt's just like the glass plate at the bottom of your microwave doesn't get hot either.
But also in the microwave l've put a jar of water.
This definitely is hot.
You can see it steaming.
So what's going on here? How come some things get hot and some not? Well, microwaves in these ovens work by making molecules in stuff wiggle, like that.
And as they wiggle, they bump into one another and that heats them up.
The molecules in this glass can't wiggle much at all because they're held firmly in place.
So that means they don't really heat up in the microwave.
ButlF l melt glass, yeah? Make it a bit liquid, then suddenly, it allows the molecules to wiggle.
OK? That's where the blowtorch comes in.
So if l heat up a piece of glass till it's, say, red hot, and just put it in the top of the bottle, then hopefully, the microwaves will be able to get to work on the glass and then they'll melt the rest of the bottle as well.
So, actually, this is the same reason it's quite hard to defrost things in your microwave.
Because if you look at ice, it's very solid.
The molecules can't wiggle very much.
l reckon that's almost getting there.
321 go.
There you go.
- And if you look right at the top - Oh, right! Yes.
Oool! The little bit of glowing glass l've put in has now heated up the rest of the glass molecules in the bottle and allowed them to wiggle too, and so they're melting.
The whole bottle is just disintegrating before our eyes.
lt's really cool.
Wahey! So a bit's going off the bottom, into there.
lt should carry on going.
lt's quite pretty, though, isn't it? - Are you going to take it out of there? - l will take it out so that it doesn't burn a hole in the bottom of my microwave! Does it affect the guarantee of the microwave, the melting bottles(?) You probably shouldn't do this at home! You might wreck your microwave! And you probably shouldn't be messing with blowtorches! You might remember this.
That's right.
Liz had a bit of a thrill ride in a helicopter flown by ex-World Freestyle chopper pilot, Quentin Smith.
Whoa-ho-ho-ho! lt got me thinking about how helicopters actually fly.
They are amazing bits of kit.
You cut the power to the rotors, and it just doesn't fall out the sky.
Yep.
Although it kind of FEELS like you are falling out of the sky, Jem! Yeah, well, not exactly! The thing just didn't tumble As an engineer, l'm amazed - how stable it was.
- Yeah.
Didn't Leonardo Da Vinci invent the helicopter? l think Da Vinci drew a KlND OF helicopter! l firmly believe there is no way it would have taken off, a: with the airscrew, and, b: it had no stability to it at all.
Watch this.
Liz, here's Da Vinci's helicopter with the benefit of a modern motor.
See what happens as we go for lift-off.
Ah, that's rubbish! And then compare it to this one.
Modern rotors, tail rotor for stability, 1 23 - There we go.
- Oh, it's just so elegant.
Now if Leonardo couldn't crack it, l thought l'd go and find out exactly how helicopters do fly.
This is the Westland Sea King Mk.
4 Oommando helicopter.
lt weighs in at over ten tons, has a top speed of over 1 40 miles an hour, and is powered by two Rolls Royce turbo jets driving five rotor blades nearly ten metres long.
But the £20,000,000 question is how on earth do five fairly flimsy blades lift ten tonnes of Royal Navy Sea King helicopter? Now, this feels wrong.
My heart's going when l do that.
But the fact of the matter is if each of these blades couldn't have two tonnes hanging on the end of it, it couldn't lift the helicopter.
And oddly, it's the extraordinary flexibility of the blades that allows the whole thing to fly.
lf these were as stiff as a board there's no way that helicopter would be of any use to anybody.
Now, to get a helicopter off the ground actually uses some pretty simple physics.
Each rotor acts as an aerofoil, just like a normal plane wing, only this one goes round and round.
To generate lift, all you need to do is pull up on a little lever called the collective, then each of those blades starts to angle up slightly at the front.
This so-called angle of attack helps to suck air from above and whack it downwards To quote old lsaac Newton, ''Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
'' So if the air is being forced down, the helicopter is going to be forced up.
The rotors up there are going at about 200 revs a minute which isn't much faster than your bike wheel goes as it goes around town.
But because they're each 10 metres long, their speed is nearly 400 miles an hour and it creates an awful lot of down draught.
The blades bend up enormously during flight.
lt's known as the cone and they do not stick out straight - they bend right up.
That flexibility in the blades is a very good thing for us inside here cos it gives some kind of suspension to this vehicle.
They're pretty shaky things, but it balances things out a bit.
There's only a limited amount of time l'm prepared to stick my head out of a helicopter.
l'm coming back in now.
The astonishing and very concerning thing about this aircraft is that those rotor blades that are responsible for keeping us up here, are held on by just one bolt.
And l have no idea who tightened it up.
l assume they were extremely good.
'The pilot, Lieutenant Oommander Jim Newton, 'is one of the best in the business, with over 20 years experience.
'lt takes more than 100 hours to learn fly a Sea King so l couldn't quite believe what happened next.
' Speeds building up.
Doing about 102mph.
We're going to settle the aircraft down and l'll hand you control.
'My only training was half an hour in a simulator earlier on.
' You have control.
l have control.
Thank you.
Em l'm not touching anything because it seems to be going well.
OK.
'Flying in a straight line is one thing, but to turn the helicopter, 'l've got to get my head around the lever called the cyclic.
' l'm now going to try to fly an aircraft and talk at the same time.
Now, the cyclic is so-called because it shifts the pitch on things cyclically.
The blades will pitch up more on the left and less on the right for example and so this enables me to turn one way or the other or to go forwards or backwards.
'lncreasing the pitch of the blades for just one part of each revolution 'will generate more lift at that point, making the helicopter tilt in the opposite direction.
' lt's almost hard to breathe and do it at the same time, let alone try talking through it.
lt's a phenomenal feeling.
l've got to say, l'm shaking with fear, having had control of it, even though you're there.
OK.
l've got control for a second.
l've just got to bring it down cos we're a little bit high at the moment.
l can't believe you get to go up in a Royal Navy helicopter.
What's that about? l told them my degree in aeronautics qualified me as a pilot.
- Oh, please! - Degree in aeronautics or not, when you were practising, you were rubbish.
Have a little look at this.
They are quite quiet, though.
Oh! Whoa! (ALARM BLARES) l've really over (ALARM BLARES) (HlGH-PlTOHED ALARM BLARES) Oh, my life! And on that rather non-heroic note, it's time for us to go.
- Bye.
- See ya.