---
title: "Watch These Mad Geniuses Light Birthday Candles With a Rocket Engine"
description: "The team at Firefly Aerospace used one of its rocket engines to try to light all those pesky candles on a birthday cake for its co-founder Max Polakov."
date: "2020-07-01"
modified: "2020-07-01"
authors:
  - name: "Jon Christian"
    job_title: "Executive Editor"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/jonc"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/watch-mad-geniuses-light-birthday-candles-rocket-engine"
categories:
  - "Off-World"
  - "Space"
tags:
  - "firefly aerospace"
  - "rocket engines"
  - "space"
  - "the digest"
---

# Watch These Mad Geniuses Light Birthday Candles With a Rocket Engine

![The team at Firefly Aerospace used one of its rocket engines to try to light all those pesky candles on a birthday cake for its co-founder Max Polakov.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/watch-mad-geniuses-light-birthday-candles-rocket-engine.jpg>)
*\<em\>Image: @Firefly\_Space via Twitter\</em\>*

## Happy Birthday

Rocket engines are great for blasting off into space. But what about getting ready for a party?

The team at Firefly Aerospace — that's one of the spacetech contractors [NASA selected in 2018](<https://futurism.com/nasa-moon-9-private-partners>) to help it get back to the Moon — used one of its homebrewed rocket engines to try to light all those pesky candles on a birthday cake for its co-founder Max Polakov. The results were, well, about what you'd expect.

https://twitter.com/Firefly_Space/status/1277990670419005440

## Full Attack

The parts of the video in which employees pile praise on Polakov are awkward, but the sequence when they fire the engine is fun, especially because they set it up with a countdown like a real rocket launch.

The cake itself ends up as a hunk of charred rubble, burned beyond recognition. A single candle does remain lit at the end, though it seems likely that they put it there as part of the gag, because judging by the condition of the cake, it seems unlikely that it could have survived.

**READ MORE:** [Firefly Aerospace uses rocket engine to light birthday candles in epic cake video](<https://www.space.com/firefly-aerospace-lights-birthday-cake-with-rocket-engine-video.html>) \[*Space.com*\]

**More on rockets:** [*Amazing Vid Shows What You’d See If Rockets Were Transparent*](<https://www.space.com/firefly-aerospace-lights-birthday-cake-with-rocket-engine-video.html>)

## Author
I'm responsible for editing, assigning, and scouting at Futurism, as well as occasionally writing for the site. That work involves keeping an eye on a wide range of narratives and issues, but over the past few years I've become increasingly interested in how AI is shaping the future of media, the web, and information itself. My day-to-day often involves collaborating on reporting and commentary projects bylined by my colleagues, but I try to find time to do my own reporting as well; stories I've broken for Futurism have been cited by publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, Wired, Ars Technica, New York Magazine, the Columbia Journalism Review, Bloomberg, and more. I grew up in Southern Vermont and attended Vanderbilt University. Prior to Futurism, I contributed to outlets including the Boston Globe, Vice, Wired, Slate, the Atlantic, the Outline, Ars Technica and more, and did stints in farming and food service. I currently live in Brooklyn, New York, and in my free time I enjoy pinball, word games, cycling, running, and music production.

### Author social links  
[Bluesky](<https://bsky.app/profile/jonchristian.net>)