NASA to Brief Media About Ares I Thrust Oscillation Plans

[Chris Bergin]

Harwood on getting data from Ares I-X:

"We've asked and worked with the project to get vehicle accelarations and samples. We know the accoustics very well on the four seg motor.

"We'll also get data off STS-126. We're operating on ground test data and models. Ares I-X and 126 will be key data."

[Chris Bergin]

AP question their mass figures on the TMA.

Notes a factor of 10 on payload to orbit.

"Performance margins are robust. We have 8,000lbs of margin" (we'll check that against their actual documentation - cause it sure ain't 8,000lbs).

[Chris Bergin]

Fluff questions coming in, so let's see where we are.

TMA and interstage springs - but no mention of the crew seat pallet requirement.

Lots and lots of margin, claimed.

Seems like this is all aimed to get through the PDR.

[Chris Bergin]

Ah, Todd H asks about crew seats.

We decided at this point we don't want to put any more mass on Lunar Orion (but you have all that margin! ). It's still on the table, but not the mainline plan. Ho ho.

[Chris Bergin]

Looks like they are going to put some images of the TMA and the Interstage dampers on NASA.gov shortly, btw.

[Namechange User]

I don't buy it's as great as they all claim.  Hanley's words were chosen very carefully.  CONSTELLATION Program is not looking at any alternatives....that one word can imply a lot and then later you here him clarify about responses to "stakeholders".  There's more than they claim going on. 

[AnalogMan]

Is it not show on NASA TV?

Came to this late try:
http://www.nasa.gov/news/media/newsaudio/index.html

[Chris Bergin]

Mark Kirkman, cool

"Without the mitigation what G would the crew see?"

"5-6Gs on the crew without doing anything. If we just used the passive system in the interstage - it would be below 1G - active system to less than 1/4G".

Mark asks about 8,000lbs reserve lunar vs ISS.

Says Lunar is 7,700lbs.

[Chris Bergin]

Astro Office had no vetos - on a question about dissent (my word).

"Nobody vetoed anything in this process."

"The crew was represented from the beginning. The crew likes this reccomendation as it's so robust. We've had very good agreement on the solutions."

"The crew office has been active literally since day one on the vehicle."

"We've had a lot of conversations around the requirements - on crew health limit and the operational limit.

"We had a lot of conversations around the operational limit.

"To date we have held to the 1/4G limit. Going forward, we'll get data from the centrifuge. We just don't know enough to make an engineering case to go above the 1/4 G limit."

[Chris Bergin]

"7,700 lbs of reserve on the lunar Orion. TO mitigation will use up about 1,200lbs of that."

[Chris Bergin]

Bloomberg get mixed up with "two" mass aborbers and "tuned" mass aborber.

Seems to be drawing to a close now.

[Chris Bergin]

They admit that they wouldn't do the PDR if TO mitigation wasn't at this stage. That is very key if you want my opinion.

Question about how many items are in their risk matrix.

"We're left with a couple in the red zone. We'll be redoing the list when we come out of the PDR.

"Performance is coming down from red.

"Schedule for the J2-X. That's coming down (from red)."

"There's nothing on our list that is a major issue. Everything is typical for a vehicle development."

[Analyst]

So everything is fine. Great. Didn't expect otherwise. [Danger: irony]

Analyst

[Chris Bergin]

And the teleconference has ended.

Post your *informed* opinions on this thread, as we create our article from their own documentation.

[GimmeSpace]

Chris, thanks for the live updates, very cool..

With the first crew going up in 5 years or more, I really don't see this as a show stopper.

Call me a dumb newbie if you want, I'm still not buying the doom and gloom...