Up Goer Five
Up Goer Five
US Space Team's Up Goer Five The only flying space car that's taken anyone to another world (explained using only the ten hundred words people use the most often) [A list of Saturn-V parts, top to bottom, with their "Up Goer" description follows.] [Launch Escape System (LES)]: Thing to help people escape really fast if there's a problem and everything is on fire so they decide not to go to space [LES side nozzle]: Thing to control which direction the escaping people go [LES fuel]: Stuff to burn to make the box with the people in it escape really fast [LES bottom nozzles]: Place where fire comes out to help them escape [Apollo spacecraft.] [Command Module (CM)]: Part that flies around the other world and comes back home with the people in it and fall in the water. [CM capsule parts]: People box, door, chairs [Service Module (SM)]: Part that goes along to give people air, water, computers and stuff. It comes back home with them but burns up without landing. [SM oxygen tanks]: Cold air for burning (and breathing). This part had a VERY big problem once. [Lunar Module (LM)]: Part that flies down to the other world with two people inside [LM descent stage]: Part that stays on the other world (it's still there) [LM feet]: Feet that go on the ground of the other world [Instrument Unit]: Ring holding most of the computers [S-IVB third stage]: Part that falls off third (this part flew away from our world into space and hit the world we were going toward) [Fuel tanks]: Wet and very cold [Liquid hydrogen (LH2) tank]: The kind of air that once burned a big sky bag and people died and someone said "Oh, the [humans]!" (used for burning) [Liquid oxygen (LOX) tank]: The part of air you need to breathe, but not the other stuff (used for burning) [Helium pressurizing tanks]: Things holding that kind of air that makes your voice funny (it's for filling up the space left when they take the cold air out to burn it.) [J-2 engine nozzle]: Fire comes out here [S-II second stage]: Part that falls off second [LH2 tank]: More sky bag air (for burning) ( cold + wet) [LOX tank]: More breathing-type air (for burning) ( cold + wet) [Tank-to-engine fuel lines]: Thing that brings in cold wet air to burn [J-2 engine nozzles (qty. 5)]: Fire comes out here [S-IC first stage]: Part that falls off first [LOX tank]: More breathing-type air (for burning) ( cold + wet) [Helium pressurizing tank]: More funny voice air (for filling up space) [LOX fill line]: Opening for putting in cold wet air [RP-1 fuel tank]: This is full of that stuff they burned in lights before houses had power.It goes together with the cold air when it's time to start going up. [F-1 engine nozzles (qty. 5)]: Lots of fire comes out here. [Bottom of spacecraft]: This end should point toward the ground if you want to go to space. If it starts pointing toward space you are having a bad problem and you will not go to space today.

This comic is an illustration that will later be used in Randall 's book ' Thing Explainer ', where he took it upon himself to explain a number of things, including the Saturn V rocket shown here, using only the one thousand most commonly-used words in the English language.
This comic is a diagram of the Saturn V rocket. "Saturn" isn't a very common word apparently, and neither is rocket, so Randall decided to use "Up Goer" which is a fair approximation of a craft designed to lift a payload from the earth to space, although perhaps 'thing that goes up fast' may or may not be simpler. The Saturn V vehicle, which was in use by NASA from 1967 to 1972, is the vehicle as a whole. The engines of the Saturn V (the part that makes it go up) were divided into three stages. The first stage ( S-IC ) had five F-1 engines which burned refined kerosene mixed with oxygen as its fuel. That stage burned for 2 minutes 48 seconds and pushed the whole thing up about 61 kilometers (~38 miles) into the sky. After it fell away the S-II stage was activated. It used 5 J-2 engines in the same configuration as the F-1s, and burned liquid hydrogen mixed with liquid oxygen for 6 minutes 35 seconds pushing the astronauts up to 184 kilometers (114.5 miles). The third stage ( S-IVB ) was a single J-2 engine burning liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. This stage was used in two parts, the first was to put the spacecraft into a stable orbit around Earth to perform a systems check and make sure the craft will be safe for going to the moon. This would usually take three orbits around Earth. As they came around the Earth they would burn the second part of the fuel, which is called a trans-lunar injection which put them on course for the moon. The first burn took 2 minutes 45 seconds, which put them in orbit 185 kilometers (115 miles) high.
It was first used as the launch vehicle for the Apollo 4 mission, and it was used as the launch vehicle for most of the subsequent Apollo missions (the exceptions being Apollo 7, Skylab 2-4, and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project missions, which were launched using the smaller Saturn IB launch vehicle). One of the last missions of this design was the unmanned launch of Skylab , the U.S.'s first space station; for this payloader configuration, the Saturn V launch vehicle was officially designated the Saturn INT-21 .
The Service Module (SM) Oxygen tanks have a note that states "This part had a VERY big problem once". This is a reference to the Apollo 13 mission. 55 hours after launch, mission control requested the oxygen tanks contents be stirred to get an accurate reading of its contents. There was a large bang , and power fluctuated throughout the craft. NASA had to scramble to ensure the safe return of the astronauts. Needless to say, the moon landing for that mission was canceled.
The Hindenburg disaster is referenced in the text "The kind of air that once burned a big sky bag and people died and someone said "oh, the [humans]!". The term "big sky bag" is used as the closest approximation of zeppelin which is a big bag filled with a lighter-than-air gas which makes the whole contraption float. The phrase "oh, the [humans]" is a workaround of the simple-words rule, technically containing only the word humans, while being read "concentration of humans" or "humanity". The Hindenburg on the day of the disaster was filled with hydrogen , despite being initially designed for use with helium . Helium cannot catch fire as it is a noble gas and thus completely inert, but helium was unavailable due to a US export ban on the element. The risks seemed acceptable at the time because the Germans had a history of flying hydrogen-based passenger airships. The original quote is "Oh, the humanity!" (See this video about the Hindenburg disaster - the quote appears at 0:47). In the book Thing Explainer in the explanation for The pieces everything is made of (i.e. the Periodic table ) hydrogen is again "named" by using a picture of the burning Hindenburg and also this quote is said by Cueball standing next to the square with the element with his hands over his mouth. See more below regarding the book.
The bottom tank, which Randall describes as "...full of that stuff they burned in lights before houses had power" is highly refined kerosene, called RP-1 , it is similar to jet fuel, burns well and is not likely to explode; unlike liquid hydrogen , which is much more likely to explode.
Earlier flirts with simple words can be found in 547: Simple and 722: Computer Problems .  The use of simple words was revisited again in 1436: Orb Hammer and 1322: Winter .
The comic is based on NASA-MSFC 10M04574 produced at Marshal Space Flight Center. Randall omitted the "S".  The image was for sale as a poster from up-ship.com which Randal mentioned.  A different scan is downloadable from Heroic Relics .
The phrase "You will not go to space today" has become something of a catchphrase for xkcd — variants of it recur in the title text of images in four What If? articles:
Randall has in 2015 written an entire book with this type of simplified language blueprints. Thing Explainer was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on November 24, 2015 and actually had a copy of this comic in it. On the day of the book's release Randall also released a comic with a game, to celebrate the book: 1608: Hoverboard . In this game the space capsule used for landing back on earth is shown, thus both referencing the book and this comic. This part of the space ship can also be seen in the book above the Sky toucher and the moon landing is also depicted in Worlds around the sun . When the book was released Randall had Minute Physics do a "commercial" version of this comic .
The news about the upcoming release of the book was sent out on the Blag in May as New book: Thing Explainer . After that, the book was advertised at the top of the xkcd page with link to the Blag article and links to Preorder at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Indie Bound, and Hudson. Also, there were two other news with links: "In other news, Space Weird Thing is delightful , and I feel surprisingly invested in @xkcdbracket's results." (The link was removed sometimes before Monday the 10th of August 2015. within two weeks of the brackets final result was revealed.)
The song Space Weird Thing is a tribute to David Bowie 's Space Oddity rewritten in the simple language used in this comic, which is also attributed in the text about the YouTube video. The other news item is related to 1529: Bracket , see that comic for more details.
US Space Team's Up Goer Five The only flying space car that's taken anyone to another world (explained using only the ten hundred words people use the most often) [A list of Saturn-V parts, top to bottom, with their "Up Goer" description follows.] [Launch Escape System (LES)]: Thing to help people escape really fast if there's a problem and everything is on fire so they decide not to go to space [LES side nozzle]: Thing to control which direction the escaping people go [LES fuel]: Stuff to burn to make the box with the people in it escape really fast [LES bottom nozzles]: Place where fire comes out to help them escape [Apollo spacecraft.] [Command Module (CM)]: Part that flies around the other world and comes back home with the people in it and fall in the water. [CM capsule parts]: People box, door, chairs [Service Module (SM)]: Part that goes along to give people air, water, computers and stuff. It comes back home with them but burns up without landing. [SM oxygen tanks]: Cold air for burning (and breathing). This part had a VERY big problem once. [Lunar Module (LM)]: Part that flies down to the other world with two people inside [LM descent stage]: Part that stays on the other world (it's still there) [LM feet]: Feet that go on the ground of the other world [Instrument Unit]: Ring holding most of the computers [S-IVB third stage]: Part that falls off third (this part flew away from our world into space and hit the world we were going toward) [Fuel tanks]: Wet and very cold [Liquid hydrogen (LH2) tank]: The kind of air that once burned a big sky bag and people died and someone said "Oh, the [humans]!" (used for burning) [Liquid oxygen (LOX) tank]: The part of air you need to breathe, but not the other stuff (used for burning) [Helium pressurizing tanks]: Things holding that kind of air that makes your voice funny (it's for filling up the space left when they take the cold air out to burn it.) [J-2 engine nozzle]: Fire comes out here [S-II second stage]: Part that falls off second [LH2 tank]: More sky bag air (for burning) ( cold + wet) [LOX tank]: More breathing-type air (for burning) ( cold + wet) [Tank-to-engine fuel lines]: Thing that brings in cold wet air to burn [J-2 engine nozzles (qty. 5)]: Fire comes out here [S-IC first stage]: Part that falls off first [LOX tank]: More breathing-type air (for burning) ( cold + wet) [Helium pressurizing tank]: More funny voice air (for filling up space) [LOX fill line]: Opening for putting in cold wet air [RP-1 fuel tank]: This is full of that stuff they burned in lights before houses had power.It goes together with the cold air when it's time to start going up. [F-1 engine nozzles (qty. 5)]: Lots of fire comes out here. [Bottom of spacecraft]: This end should point toward the ground if you want to go to space. If it starts pointing toward space you are having a bad problem and you will not go to space today.
