There is a fundraiser that I attend every year for the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space museum. This is an organization that I support both personally and through my business because of the awesome work they do for mainly aviation but also for space exploration AND they expose children to hobby rocketry. Anyway, long story short, one of the items at the live auction this year was a trip to Cape Canaveral through United Launch Alliance to a rocket launch. My brother and I had both agreed to make sure we saw something like this in person before it was too late. So we won the trip and it looks like on March 4 of this year we will be headed to Florida to see an Atlas V launch. I figure it will provide me with some good ideas for my L3 build .

Here are some of the specs for it, not sure what all the numbers mean but they look pretty impressive to me...

Propulsion
Main Engine
Delivering more than 860,000 lbs of thrust at liftoff and an impressive range of continuous throttling capability, the RD-180 main engine, is a powerful combination of innovation and performance. Designed and manufactured by NPO Energomash, the liquid oxygen/liquid kerosene, two-thrust-chamber RD-180 engine is a complete propulsion unit equipped with hydraulics for control valve actuation and thrust vector gimbaling, pneumatics for valve actuation and system purging, and a thrust frame to distribute loads.

Nominal Thrust (sea level): 860,200 lb
Specific Impulse (sea level): 311 seconds
Length: 140 in
Weight: 12,081 lb
Fuel/Oxidizer: Liquid Oxygen/Liquid Kerosene

Solid Rocket Boosters
When missions demand additional thrust at liftoff, Atlas integrates up to three solid rocket boosters (SRB) on the Atlas V 400 series launch vehicle and up to five SRBs on the Atlas V 500 series vehicles. The Atlas SRB, manufactured by Aerojet, uses the world’s largest monolithic filament-wound carbon composite case.

Peak Vacuum Thrust: 380,000 lbf
Total Vacuum Impulse: 26,200,000 lb-seconds
Length: 792 in
Maximum Diameter: 62.2 in
Weight: 102,800 lb
Burn Time: 88.3 seconds

Upper Stage
Both the Atlas and the Delta IV upper stages rely on the RL10 propulsion system to power their second stages. Logging an impressive record of more than 385 successful flights and nearly 700 firings in space, RL10 engines, manufactured by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, harness the power of high-energy liquid hydrogen and boast a precision control system and restart capability to accurately place critical payloads into orbit.

The Atlas V Centaur upper stage is powered by the RL10A and can be configured with either one or two engines.

Nominal Thrust: 23,300 lb
Specific Impulse: 450.5 seconds
Fuel/Oxidizer: Liquid Hydrogen/Liquid Oxygen
Length: 91.5 in
Diameter: 46 in
Weight: 367 lb

Haven't figured out what class those motors are but they seem big to me 😛 Hopefully I'll come back with some cool pictures to share!

I thought this was pretty funny too. Here is the "users guide" for the Atlas V just in case you ever need to fly one...

http://www.ulalaunch.com/site/docs/product_cards/guides/AtlasVUsersGuide2010.pdf