And this is something a little different.

Today's story actually takes place

on the other side of the country.

Meet Joe Barnard, a rocket scientist

who inspired by a certain aerospace company

has started to develop his own self landing rocket

just on a slightly different scale

and with no formal education.

I mean, this guy designs and builds pretty much everything

all by himself and is able to keep the lights on

by documenting the entire process

and selling some of the components.

However, right about now,

he's preparing for his biggest challenge yet.

This has been an absolutely

massive project, and it wouldn't had been possible

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(birds chirp)

(computer beeps)

(drone buzzes)

- Okay, and it's time.

Here we go.

(bright music)

(rocket fires)

The BPS Echo test vehicle.

This is actually the computer I use to land the rockets.

(computer beeps)

(rocket fires)

This is like extremely basic stuff.

We're only firing a single core vehicle,

which means we only need four clamps.

These four here.

(machines whirl)

You know, this is how they really do it

in real aerospace companies.

They have just one desk,

and there's like just trash all over it.

Okay, so the whole thing is put together,

the motor's inserted.

(computer beeps)

(clamps creak)

Hey, bingo!

And then if we release the clamps.

This is what happened at launch.

It's good to go.

And that's how they work.

(computer beeps)

(switch clicks)

(rocket fires)

And

done.

Well, done with that part.

Now there are like several hundred other more parts.

Before I got any footage of anything working,

the general consensus was, no, you can't do this.

I put this by the door

so that if there's a fire,

it's gonna be a lot harder to get out.

- [Announcer] Five, four, three, two, one.

(rocket fires)

(rocket fires)

I studied at the Berklee College of Music.

The joke is that at Berklee they teach you

how to say, "Do you want fries with that?"

I have been making YouTube videos of like

cover songs and original songs

in my parents basement for years.

(indie rock music)

♪ And when she said no ♪

♪ I said no, no, no ♪

♪ I said no ♪

♪ No ♪

So I got better at film making,

and some point I realized people will pay me money for this.

And that's a surprisingly big motivator.

I had been working in film for awhile.

It was just something I saw scrolling on Facebook.

It was this little video of SpaceX doing a test

with what's called the Falcon 9 Dev-R.

It's a rocket booster,

but it's not going into space.

It's just doing little hop tests down in Texas somewhere.

I saw that, and I was like, oh, man.

I need to be working for these people.

I had to like prove in a non-go-back-to-college kind of way

that I was serious about it.

I thought maybe I could try to like land a model rocket.

It's just a model rocket.

Like how hard could it be?

(drum roll music)

And I still haven't been able to land it.

Welcome to the rocket factory (laughs),

which is my apartment,

not a factory.

There's a lot of propellant in one apartment,

and it's all in a fireproof box.

Don't worry, Mom.

We've got our washer here,

and a 3D printer number one.

And the dryer here,

and 3D printer number two.

We can do both laundry and 3D printing services here.

Moving to Nashville was like

the most painful experience of my life.

I had been in Boston for a few years

watching all of my friends slowly leave.

It was just a slow steady downward hill of emotion.

I had to move home with my parents for a few months

just 'cause like money's tough, man.

I got some recognition for my work

from like larger aerospace entities.

- One potential future for our hobby.

- [Joe] One of them is SpaceX.

And like Elon has like seen my tweets.

They send a big Dragon spacecraft up to the space station,

and then they tried to land their booster

on the drone ship out in the ocean.

- [Announcer] And the Falcons have landed.

- It was a realization of like uh-oh.

Like they're really serious.

There's been like several different instances

where it seems like a drop could've panned out.

And then it just has never felt like the right time.

Every single BPS launch has taken place

between this piece of wood and this launch pad.

And at some point, I'd spent enough money

so that I was like, all right, something has to change.

So we're gonna have to do something else.

So that this can be not cashflow negative.

So for awhile I thought we could sell the flight computers

directly to model rocketry consumers.

I made this in September of 2015.

I have failed a whole lot.

And I figure if I can save other people some time

trying to do these similar things, that would be great.

We're in the black now.

The business works.

It makes money,

but it did not for awhile.

Most projects or tasks or jobs that look difficult are,

but not if you've been doing them for awhile.

So like all of these things that are just so dry

and boring to learn, they all become cool

once you know what you're working toward.

You can learn most things on YouTube.

It's kind of coming full circle though.

Like I learned all of these things

through YouTube tutorials.

The YouTube tutorialer has become the YouTube tutorialee.

The goal has for a lot of these flights is just to continue

getting it closer and closer to landing.

I've done tests where it lands a little too high.

I've done tests where it hits the ground

because it's going too fast.

Three,

two,

one.

(rocket fires)

The thing that like gets to me the most

is probably imposter syndrome.

Like I don't feel like I should be doing this.

I don't feel like I'm good enough to be doing this.

Even like the people who accomplish a whole lot of stuff,

I thinks they feel that sometimes too.

And so it's really easy to, you know, if someone says like,

hey, what's your next plan?

What's the next big thing?

Are you gonna go orbital, or are you gonna try to build

a rocket that goes to space?

And the answer is like I have no idea if I can.

What if this is it?

Like what if I plateau here?

And I don't think that's rational.

But that's what gets to me the most is just thinking

like I'm gonna hit a wall at some point

of I don't know.

The flight computer, I still need to build.

That's not that hard to do,

but I just need to do it.

(rocket fires)

The launchpad computer.

This is called Impulse.

It's another custom design board.

This computer controls all of the events

that happen on the launch pad.

Upload.

(computer beeps)

There it is.

Okay, cool.

There are all of these different stages

that the flight computers have to go through

in order to actually fly a rocket.

I keep using the pronoun we to describe BPS

both because I do plan on scaling up to more people

and because there's such tremendous support on platforms

like Patreon by people who are not just

supporting financially but like providing

really solid advice.

It's extremely cheesy to be like, well, really

we're more of a community, but that's what it feels like.

(upbeat music)

(computer beeps)

(machines whirl)

There we go.

There's a little flight computer package.

(rocket fires)

So sometimes when you spend a lot of money on rocket motors,

just because of the way that money works

you have a little bit less to spend on food.

And the great place to go to get cheap food

is right here at the Food Lion.

Now the Food Lion has food.

It's a grocery store.

But the thing about it is you're still paying.

Hazelnut's objectively the best coffee,

and no one carries it.

And primarily you're paying in your hope

and your will to live.

Got the coffee.

Got the seltzer, the food line Brent.

(cans thud)

(laughs)

Oh my god, I shouldn't have picked it up.

(laughs)

Oh, my poor little seltzers.

We have eight boards to build today.

And we'll go through the whole process.

(gentle music)

That's probably enough.

(board clanks)

(laughs)

BPS produces a bunch of signal flight computers

roughly every two months.