Firefly Aerospace uses rocket engine to light birthday candles in epic cake video

[Judi Lynn]

By Elizabeth Howell 6 hours ago

3, 2, 1... Happy Birthday!

Let's light that candle! The folks at Firefly Aerospace took a brief break from rocket development recently to fire up an engine in honor of co-founder Max Polyakov, who turned 43 years old Tuesday (June 30).

The Reaver rocket engine, in true celebratory form, was used to light candles on a large birthday cake as high-speed cameras rolled, according to a new video. (The other planned use for the engine will be to launch small satellites to orbit cheaply, using Firefly's Alpha rocket.)

"Anyone that's getting older understands that one of the most difficult problems is figuring out how to light all those darn birthday candles on the cake," said Firefly's other co-founder, Tom Markusic, in the video, which the company released on Twitter and YouTube. In the video, Markusic wore a multi-color birthday hat and a T-shirt that says "Texas Rocket Science," a nod to Firefly's headquarters in Cedar Park, just north of Austin.

- video at link -

More:
https://www.space.com/firefly-aerospace-lights-birthday-cake-with-rocket-engine-video.html?utm_source=notification

[SeattleVet]

1. Thanks! Just sent the video to a friend who has a birthday in a few months...

so we can start getting the hardware together!

(Many times embedded Tweet videos don't seem to work properly for me, and won't resize right...this is for those having the same problem! Here's the YouTube version of the video from the article.)

[Judi Lynn]

2. That's great! Thanks for this YouTube link. n/t