# Bag of Wonder: The Rocket > Count down, lift off and ride the giant Saturn V all the way to the Moon. A free interactive 3D exhibit for children aged 2 to 6, from Curiosity's Child in Troy, Michigan. - Interactive exhibit: https://bagofwonder.com/look-inside/rocket/ - Ages: 2 to 6. The story is pitched at the youngest; the tap cards give older children more to chew on. - Cost: free, with no sign-in, no ads and no tracking. - Works on: phones, tablets and computers, in a web browser. Sound on for the narration. ## What it is Interactive 3D model of the Saturn V rocket that carried Apollo 11 to the Moon. A time slider follows the rocket on its launch pad, the astronauts boarding, the countdown, liftoff, the first and second stages dropping away, the flight around Earth and the trip to the Moon. A second slider pulls the real stages apart with labels, shows the fuel tanks inside, the folded Moon lander in its shroud and the three seats in the capsule; tapping a part shows a child-friendly fact. How to play: press play to hear the story (read aloud in Kelly's voice, with the words on screen). Slide the time slider back and forth to see any part again. Slide "Pull apart" to see what is hidden inside. Tap any glowing button for a fact. ## The story 1. This is the Saturn V, a giant rocket taller than a 30-storey building. 2. Three astronauts, Neil, Buzz and Michael, climb into the little capsule at the very top. 3. Countdown! Five, four, three, two, one… 4. Liftoff! Fire and smoke push the rocket up, up, up. 5. The first part runs out of fuel and drops away, down into the ocean. 6. The second part fires. The little safety tower is not needed now, so it flies away. 7. The second part drops away too. The third part pushes the astronauts all the way into space. 8. First they travelled around the Earth. Then the third part fired again and sent them off towards the Moon. 9. The shroud opens like a flower. The capsule turns around and picks up the Moon lander. 10. After three days of flying, the astronauts reach the Moon and fly around it. 11. Eagle is going down to land on the Moon! Come and watch it land. ## The parts, and what we tell children These are the tap cards, word for word. - **First stage**: It has five giant engines, which burned all their fuel in under three minutes. Then it fell into the ocean. - **F-1 engines**: Each engine bell is taller than a grown-up. Together they shook the ground for miles. - **Fins**: There are four fins at the bottom to help the rocket fly straight. - **Interstage ring**: This ring held the first and second stages together. It dropped away just after the first stage. - **Second stage**: It has five more engines, burning super-cold liquid hydrogen. - **J-2 engines**: These engines only work high up, where the air is thin. Their fire is almost see-through. - **Third stage**: It has one engine that fired twice: once to reach space, and once to head for the Moon. - **Kerosene tank**: The first stage burned kerosene, a fuel a bit like what jet planes use. Most of the rocket is fuel tanks. Full, it weighed as much as hundreds of elephants. - **Liquid oxygen tank**: Fire needs oxygen, and there is none in space. So the rocket carries its own, so cold that it is a liquid. - **Liquid hydrogen tank**: Hydrogen is the lightest fuel there is. It is kept so cold that it turns into a liquid. The second and third stages burned it. - **Lunar module hideaway**: The Moon lander rode folded up inside here, like a present in a box. In space the four sides opened like a flower. - **The Moon lander (Eagle)**: This is the lander that carried two astronauts down to the Moon. Its legs were folded up for the ride. - **Service module**: It carried the engine, air and power. Its power-makers even made the astronauts' drinking water! - **Command module (capsule)**: The three astronauts rode here. It was the only part that came back to Earth. - **Astronauts' seats**: The three seats were side by side, shaped to hold the astronauts snugly. They lay on their backs for the launch. - **Escape tower**: It is a safety rocket on the very top, ready to pull the capsule away if anything went wrong. It was never needed, and it flew off a few minutes after launch. - **Launch tower**: This red tower is even taller than the rocket. Its arms carried fuel, power and the astronauts to the rocket. - **Swing arms**: Nine arms reached across to the rocket. The top one had a little room where the astronauts climbed in. At liftoff, all the arms swung away. - **Launch platform**: The rocket stood on this platform, with a big hole underneath for the fire to go through. - **Rocket fire**: The five engines made a flame hotter than a volcano. All that fire pushing down is what lifted the rocket up. - **Steam clouds**: Water was sprayed under the rocket to keep the pad cool. The fire turned it into big white clouds of steam. - **Earth**: From up here the astronauts could see the whole round Earth, blue and white. - **The Moon**: It is about 384,000 kilometres away. The trip took three days. ## Getting the science right What we checked, and the myths we steer around: - Apollo 11 launched on a Saturn V from Pad 39A in Florida on 16 July 1969. The rocket was about 110 metres (363 feet) tall. - The first stage burned for under three minutes; the first and second stages fell into the Atlantic Ocean. - The escape tower was never needed and was thrown off soon after the second stage lit. - The paint follows NASA's Apollo 11 launch photographs. The stage shapes come from NASA's own 3D-print set. - Gentle on purpose: no explosions or crashes; stages "drop away" and the tower "flies away". ## How to use it with children Count down out loud together and watch liftoff. Then use the pull-apart slider to see that most of the rocket is fuel tanks, and find the three seats in the little capsule at the top. Ask more than you tell, and let the child drive. Then step away from the screen: make a balloon rocket on a string: air rushing out one way pushes the balloon the other way, just like the rocket's fire. A grown-up holds the balloon; burst balloon pieces are a choking risk for little ones. Then do a whole-body countdown and blast off. A few minutes together is plenty. The exhibit is a doorway to the real thing, not a replacement for it. ## Credits and licenses The real scans, maps and photographs belong to their makers, under the licenses below. The words, story and code are Curiosity's Child's. - 3D shapes of the Saturn V (NASA's own 3D-print set) and the lunar module: [NASA 3D Resources](https://science.nasa.gov/3d-resources/), public domain, with thanks; shown here for learning, not made or endorsed by NASA - The launch pad in Florida, the sky, the round Earth, deep space and the Moon: watercolour paintings Kelly made with Grok - Paint, launch platform, tower, fuel tanks, seats, fire and smoke built in code from NASA's Apollo 11 photographs - Narrated by Kelly, in her own voice - Real sounds from Freesound ([CC0](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/), thank you!): [a Florida spring morning](https://freesound.org/s/118464/) (Bansemer), [a real rocket launch, heard from 20 km away](https://freesound.org/s/613855/) (felix.blume) - Space is silent, so its gentle hum and the music-box tune were made for this page ## More on the Space shelf - [The Planets](https://bagofwonder.com/look-inside/planets/index.md): Fly past the Sun and all eight planets, and peek inside them. - [The Moon](undefined): Phases, craters and the far side, then land with Eagle and leave footprints that last for ages. - [The Mars Rover](undefined): Land on Mars with a real robot explorer and its little helicopter. ## About Bag of Wonder A free library of interactive 3D "look inside" science exhibits, made at Curiosity's Child, a licensed home daycare in Troy, Michigan. Secular and science-based; welcoming to all. - All exhibits and how we make them: https://bagofwonder.com/llms.txt - For grown-ups and AI assistants: https://bagofwonder.com/look-inside/about/ - To cite: "The Rocket", Bag of Wonder, Curiosity's Child (Troy, Michigan). https://bagofwonder.com/look-inside/rocket/